High School Clinical Expierence

[thing2008]

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I am in my high school's premedical academy. By the time I'm a senior I will have 100 Clinical experience hours and over 700 community service hours. When I apply for med school can I use thoose stats in addition to all the work I do in college? I have records of every clinical and community hour with narratives of the activity and signatures from my preceptors.

Is this giving me an advantage for my future? I have wanted to enter the medical since middle school. I'm so happy I'm getting this opprutunity and I'm gratefull.

If you have any questions or want any clarifications don't hesitate to ask. Thank you all! Have a great night.

 

[longhaul3]

Good for you! 700 hours of community service is admirable work for a high-schooler. Most kids your age would balk at doing even a fraction of that. How much do you know about the medical school application process? If you end up finishing college still thinking med school, you'll end up filling out the AMCAS application, a common application for US medical schools, and it doesn't ask about what you did in high school. Convention also dictates that you shouldn't write about your high-school life in your more open-ended application materials, either.

So, you won't be reporting any of this directly, but don't fret. If you actually do end up doing all of that community service, hopefully you will have developed a taste for it and will be eager to continue throughout college, med school, and beyond. This probably isn't what you want to hear, but consider an analogy.

It may or may not be relevant to you but likely will still make sense: Have you ever watched or played golf? In watching just one swing, you can tell the difference between someone who grew up playing the game and someone who picked it up as an adult. The player who started early looks natural, smooth, and easy, whether he's any good or not. The player who started late may hit the ball long and straight, but his swing will always be more stilted and unnatural.

There's no way he can ever capture what he missed out on, much the same way you'll never reach truly nativelike proficiency in a language learned after a certain age. So your future is bright! Keep it up.

 

[thing2008]

Good for you! 700 hours of community service is admirable work for a high-schooler. Most kids your age would balk at doing even a fraction of that. How much do you know about the medical school application process? If you end up finishing college still thinking med school, you'll end up filling out the AMCAS application, a common application for US medical schools, and it doesn't ask about what you did in high school. Convention also dictates that you shouldn't write about your high-school life in your more open-ended application materials, either.

So, you won't be reporting any of this directly, but don't fret. If you actually do end up doing all of that community service, hopefully you will have developed a taste for it and will be eager to continue throughout college, med school, and beyond. This probably isn't what you want to hear, but consider an analogy.

It may or may not be relevant to you but likely will still make sense: Have you ever watched or played golf? In watching just one swing, you can tell the difference between someone who grew up playing the game and someone who picked it up as an adult. The player who started early looks natural, smooth, and easy, whether he's any good or not. The player who started late may hit the ball long and straight, but his swing will always be more stilted and unnatural.

There's no way he can ever capture what he missed out on, much the same way you'll never reach truly nativelike proficiency in a language learned after a certain age. So your future is bright! Keep it up.

Thank you! Awesome response 🙂

 

[cy123]

Out of curiosity, what is a high school premedical academy?

And no you will not get to count high school hours on your med school app (unless you apply BS/MD I guess). You'll start at 0 hours from first day of college. Id love to know your rationale for getting all those hours, I hope its because you enjoy service and not to pad your resume.

 

[thing2008]

Out of curiosity, what is a high school premedical academy?

And no you will not get to count high school hours on your med school app (unless you apply BS/MD I guess). You'll start at 0 hours from first day of college. Id love to know your rationale for getting all those hours, I hope its because you enjoy service and not to pad your resume.

In my high school there are different 'academies' such as culinary, IT, Music. They have one for pre-medical sciences and I fell in live with that one in middle school and applied for that one. You take 5 regular high school classes then you have two medical classes. Below are the med classes that I took.

IT went like this:
9th Grade: Anatomy And Physiology , Pre-Aice Biology
10th Grade: Health Science 2, Chemistry
11th Grade: Medical Laboratory Assistant, EMR and Physics
12th Grade: I'm in 11th but I am planning to take: Pharmacy Technician and Med Lab 2

This is a genuine interest and I love it. For the classes we have "Clinical Days" where we go to the hospitals to shadow doctors. I am loving it 🙂

 

[grapp]

Out of curiosity, what is a high school premedical academy?

And no you will not get to count high school hours on your med school app (unless you apply BS/MD I guess). You'll start at 0 hours from first day of college. Id love to know your rationale for getting all those hours, I hope its because you enjoy service and not to pad your resume.

It doesn't mean he can't use it for programs like BS/MD or for semi-competitive job field like EMS or just a good paying job in general. I hope he didn't just do it to pad his resume, but I hope he can use it for something else. (Not all EMS is competitive, I say competitive because some of the good services out there).

 

[cy123]

It doesn't mean he can't use it for programs like BS/MD or for semi-competitive job field like EMS or just a good paying job in general. I hope he didn't just do it to pad his resume, but I hope he can use it for something else. (Not all EMS is competitive, I say competitive because some of the good services out there).

I did mention the possibility for BS/MD in my post. As someone who's worked in EMS extensively I can assure you that EMS jobs care very little about your physician shadowing, community service, or your high school classes. They might care if you had actual direct patient care clinical hours (i.e. not volunteering where you're just stalking shelves/handing out blankets). Frankly, many EMS places dislike pre-meds as they know many only care about the resume padding. In a similar light, lab/research assistant jobs also don't see the relevance of volunteering/shadowing, and might see these as a sign of a pre-med using their positions simply for resume padding.

As far as a "good paying job in general" I can't really think of any, maybe something in social service I guess.

 

[grapp]

I did mention the possibility for BS/MD in my post. As someone who's worked in EMS extensively I can assure you that EMS jobs care very little about your physician shadowing, community service, or your high school classes. They might care if you had actual direct patient care clinical hours (i.e. not volunteering where you're just stalking shelves/handing out blankets). Frankly, many EMS places dislike pre-meds as they know many only care about the resume padding. In a similar light, lab/research assistant jobs also don't see the relevance of volunteering/shadowing, and might see these as a sign of a pre-med using their positions simply for resume padding.

As far as a "good paying job in general" I can't really think of any, maybe something in social service I guess.

Huh, my current department hired me based on my previous volunteering experience / community service, and also thought it was really cool that I had been able to shadow a general surgeon. If I call recall to my interview, they told me they were super glad I had that kind of passion for medicine. My service knows that I am a premedical student and think it's great that I want to go far, each and everyone of them to my knowledge supports me. I suppose it depends on what department it is and where your from.

 

[DentalAptitude]

One great thing about your extensive service is that it will help you if you apply for leadership positions that have requirements. For example, if you were in a (fictitious) service club that had a freshman chair on executive board, your experience and speech would be all that's considered for the role. By getting into "small" leadership positions like that early on in college, you will easily transition if you give your sincere effort into larger roles later on. You don't just run for president of a club/organization out of the blue, you work your way up to it. So that's one thing that will help alleviate your worries of your service being washed away. As others have said, high school experience is *generally* discouraged on applications.


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[GaStu1994]

I am in my high school's premedical academy. By the time I'm a senior I will have 100 Clinical experience hours and over 700 community service hours. When I apply for med school can I use thoose stats in addition to all the work I do in college? I have records of every clinical and community hour with narratives of the activity and signatures from my preceptors.

Is this giving me an advantage for my future? I have wanted to enter the medical since middle school. I'm so happy I'm getting this opprutunity and I'm gratefull.

If you have any questions or want any clarifications don't hesitate to ask. Thank you all! Have a great night.

There are some good answers here, but I disagree with those who say that you can't outright report these hours on AMCAS or your secondary(ies).

I know that you can indeed input and use hours like these from physician shadowing and/or clinical volunteering done while in high school into AMCAS because I did so this cycle and was accepted. This is my first and only cycle applying. I applied only to one school (Early Decision Program, Non-Rural Track) and was accepted less than a month after my interviews.

I shadowed in a small emergency department during high school for several hundred hours after I first became interested in medicine by taking a healthcare science course into which I was inadvertently placed my sophomore year. My experiences in emergency medicine during high school were deeply formative, comprised one of my three "most meaningful" experiences essays on my AMCAS, and were discussed at length during both of my medical school interviews (I only applied to one school – a public MD school in my home state). Two of the physicians I shadowed in high school (one of whom I ended up continuing to shadow throughout portions of undergrad) wrote letters of recommendation for my AMCAS, as well. There was never even the slightest skepticism or intransigence from my interviewers secondary to the fact that these experiences took place during high school.

Good job on keeping up with your hours so meticulously and getting signatures from all of your preceptors. I did the same and it really paid off in the end. Very best of luck!