Hours/week for activities?

[swtiepie711]

---

Members do not see this ad.

Did you include it?
Did you include it for all of your activities, some or none?

Not sure what to do b/c it's not a required field and I'm having trouble estimating it for some of my activities. For example, some had more hours during the summer & then dwindled in the school year.

What is a minimum hrs/week where you'd include something on your app? I guess what I mean is, would you even put something on your app where you committed <1 hr/week (i.e. a monthly meeting?)?
How many hours/week would you consider somehting to be a solid serious commitment?

These questions stem from the following: To me, at first glance, 1-2 hrs/week seems like a small commitment, but then again if you have multiple activities that adds up really quickly. A commitment of 4 hrs/week or more seems HUGE in medical school, etc.

Thanks so much for any insight! I'm trying to come up with something accurate & realistic, but it's hard since I didn't track my hours and at this point it's all guesswork.

 

[mcl]

Did you include it?
Did you include it for all of your activities, some or none?

Not sure what to do b/c it's not a required field and I'm having trouble estimating it for some of my activities. For example, some had more hours during the summer & then dwindled in the school year.

What is a minimum hrs/week where you'd include something on your app? I guess what I mean is, would you even put something on your app where you committed <1 hr/week (i.e. a monthly meeting?)?
How many hours/week would you consider somehting to be a solid serious commitment?

These questions stem from the following: To me, at first glance, 1-2 hrs/week seems like a small commitment, but then again if you have multiple activities that adds up really quickly. A commitment of 4 hrs/week or more seems HUGE in medical school, etc.

Thanks so much for any insight! I'm trying to come up with something accurate & realistic, but it's hard since I didn't track my hours and at this point it's all guesswork.

Don't spend a lot of life energy on this. I've found that most people only fill out the hours/week when it's some type of employment, research position, or if they held an office within an organization. You can give an estimate or leave it blank.

 

[swtiepie711]

Thx for the thoughts. Do you think itd be fine to leave it blank for everything? I feel like it looks odd to put hrs down for some activities and not others...

 

[mcl]

Thx for the thoughts. Do you think itd be fine to leave it blank for everything? I feel like it looks odd to put hrs down for some activities and not others...

I think that if some activity took a significant amount of your time, you should list it--ie, you were on the planning committee for a charity fundraising event or you spent scheduled time in a lab contributing to a research project. It doesn't look strange from the reviewers perspective to see some items with work hours and some without.

 

[swtiepie711]

Thank you for the insight. I guess it's tough because a number of things I've been involved in have highly fluctuating hours and were over a long time frame, so when you divide out the hours it's like 2 hours/week. At first glance, to me this seems very little, but then again for a full time med student when this is an extracurricular over the course of 4 years, that seems like a lot. Not sure how programs interpret these things. I have a feeling I'm worrying too much over something silly....