How do you balance your ECs + Volunteering?

[businessguy]

I would like to see how people balance their health-related volunteer experiences with non-health related experiences?

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[businessguy]

So far what I have is:

1. 4 years (450 hrs.) at local hospital with long-term care residents (High School)
2. 2 years - Big Brother for community kids (High School)
3. 1.5 years at local hospital (administrative)
4. 2-3 times/month for 1.5 years at local hospital (ER, ICU, etc..)
5. President/Founder of "Pre-med" Association at university
6. President of Student Affairs at university
7. Will be shadowing a couple of local docs (For how long?)
8. 1 year - Minor-Hockey Assistant Coach
9. 1 year - Elementary School Basketball Assistant Coach

10. Research.. where, how...

Any suggestions on how I can improve my first application next year?

 

[DoctorPardi]

Research shouldn't be tough to get into. Being you are the head of your univerisity's pre-med organization and all. Just go talk to a professor who's class you enjoyed and see what kindof research they are doing, and offer to help.

Also your EC's look extremely solid, I suppose like you mentioned you could have research, but that is easily solvedand you could spend a year doing that instead of one or two of the other things you are doing.

Currently I am doing the following:
Nurse's Assistant in OR of a hospital (1.5 years)
work in a pathology lab of a different hospital (6 months)
shadow an orthapedic surgeon once a week (1 year)

Research:
I have 4 hours right now, and by next fall I will have 14 total hours. I am doing plant research, which I thought would be very boring and stupid, but it is interesting and meaningful. Hopefully I can publish something, but either way I think research looks good.

 

[45408]

Any suggestions on how I can improve my first application next year?

Yeah. Relax. Do fun stuff. You've got a ton of stuff already done, so make sure you're a friendly guy in your interviews. Your academics had better be up to par as well, or this is all for nothing.

 

[bbas]

Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think high school EC's can be used on med school applications.

 

[DrBowtie]

Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think high school EC's can be used on med school applications.

You are correct. These can be discussed in the PS, but not in the experiences section.

 

[modelslashactor]

sorry to go off track, but along those same lines if you did something in high school AND college can it go on the amcas? I volunteered at two hospitals, one in high and one in college, can I just put "hospital volunteering" on the app and talk about both?

 

[ghostchild]

Looks impressive enough.
The secret to it is just concentrate on all the ECs and volunteer stuff. Don't even worry about the school work until the night before the big test and during class. Cramming really is a big part of it. If I studied until I truly understood everything inside and out, I wouldn't have half the ECs that I do.

 

[big_smiles]

I had 2 high school activities in the activities section. Oops. I didn't know about that. One was 500 volunteer hours and New Visions health careers program. That's interesting, because I never knew about this. Oh well. . the harm is done

 

[NatyaLaya]

Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think high school EC's can be used on med school applications.

I put down a high school EC because it was quite significant, something which I know really helped me get into my undergrad. No rejections yet...

I think the thing to think about is to realistically think about how much you can take on at a time. Work your way up, but make sure you have some slack to account for things that may pop up. good luck!

 

[Shredder]

I would like to see how people balance their health-related volunteer experiences with non-health related experiences?

if were talking about volunteering, the ideal balance between health related and non health related is a true balance--zero on both sides