How to document EC's?

[cmluther10]

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I have a couple of questions. I am just starting my extra curriculars such as volunteering and clinical experience. I am in my freshman year still. An ER physician has been kind enough to allow me to not only shadow but help out and expose me to his everyday tasks at work. Meaning that I will have interaction with the patients in the Emergency Room. My first question is does this count as clinical experience? Second, how strict are medical schools with EC proof/documenting? Do I need to document and have proof for every day that I am volunteering in the hospital? Do I need to document every community volunteering day/experience? I see people list clinical experience and community volunteering all over the forums but how do they prove this to the medical schools? Do the medical schools ask for proof? If you do doucment it how detailed is it/ how do they do it? Thank you if you can get to my question.

 

[cwwm]

I'm pretty sure it's all on your honor. However, if they do find out you lied about something on your application, you're in deep trouble. Could be wrong about this though...

 

[LizzyM]

The application will ask the name of the activity, the start date (month/year) end date (month/year or "to present) and average number of hours per week during that inclusive period. You will also be required to classify the activity from a drop down menu of activities such as "volunteer, clinical", "employment, non-military" and "other"

The application will ask the name of the organization,the name of a contact person in that organization, and the location ( city/state/country).

You will also have a free text section (about a 1/4 page single spaced) to describe the activity.

You might consider a little spreadsheet or a stack of index cards to keep track of the information.

 

[IHOPness]

I started tracking mine in Excel. Yeah, I little over the top, but at least I can go back and reflect.

 

[Doubtnichts]

The application will ask the name of the activity, the start date (month/year) end date (month/year or "to present) and average number of hours per week during that inclusive period. You will also be required to classify the activity from a drop down menu of activities such as "volunteer, clinical", "employment, non-military" and "other"

The application will ask the name of the organization,the name of a contact person in that organization, and the location ( city/state/country).

You will also have a free text section (about a 1/4 page single spaced) to describe the activity.

You might consider a little spreadsheet or a stack of index cards to keep track of the information.

I have a couple questions about this. What if you don't know who to put as a contact person, for example, if I tutor someone, should I place him as the contact person? My second question is about the time. A lot of the stuff I only do while at school, but have been doing it for every semester. Should I just put the starting date till present and clarify that the time period doesn't include summers in the free text section?

 

[LizzyM]

I have a couple questions about this. What if you don't know who to put as a contact person, for example, if I tutor someone, should I place him as the contact person? My second question is about the time. A lot of the stuff I only do while at school, but have been doing it for every semester. Should I just put the starting date till present and clarify that the time period doesn't include summers in the free text section?

If you were tutoring an adult, you might leave "contact person" blank. If you were tutoring adults through a program (such as an organization at school that provides tutors for studnent athletes) then you would have a program organizer who would be the contact person. If you tutor a minor, you might list their parent or, again, provide tutoring through a service and list the program organizer.

The way AMCAS has you list time period and hours per week is a mess, IMHO. If you do something like research for 15 hours/wk during the 30 weeks of the academic year and 35 hours/wk during 10 weeks of summer and you list the activity as lasting 24 mos you would add 15 * 60 + 35* 20 = 1600 divided by 104 weeks for an average of 15 hrs/wk for 2 years. Frankly, I'd leave the hours per week blank and explain the time commitment in the free text so as to show 15 hrs/wk during semesters and full time in summers.

 

[Doubtnichts]

Thank you for your response/answers 🙂

 

[cmluther10]

Yes thank you everyone for your responses. Now I don't have to worry so much such as taking pictures of every time I perform community service like my high school teacher had tought us.