A non-medical volunteering with the poor is something adcoms associate with altruism whether you think it's right or not.
I agree and disagree with this statement. To support my argument, I point out that pre-meds are told that clinical volunteering "kills two birds with one stone." It helps to gain clinical experience and also shows the pre-med to be "altruistic." Therefore in the eyes of thr ADCOMS,
clinical volunteering is already showing altruisim. I will mention non-clinival volunteering in a bit.
In the admissions game there are five types of "volunteers," they are:
1. The pre-meds thay have volunteered long before ever being pre-med, and will continue a life of service long after acceptance. These individuals are genuinely altruistic.
2. The pre-meds that will "coincidentally" rack up many clinical and non-clinical opportunity at the time they become pre-med. Some like to consider themselves altruistic, and some do not. These are typically gunners nonetheless who try to break out of the more typical cookie-cutter mold. Less informed gunners will still do things like mission trips for the purpose of looking unique even though it is common and does not look "good" anymore. These pre-meds may or may not continue after acceptance. This represents a good number of SDN members. All in all these pre-meds would not have volunteered otherwise.
3. The more typical cookie-cutter pre-meds that will do hospital volunteering in order to kill two birds with one stone. They will show their altruism and get the required clinical experience. They will do a minimal commitment, and will grin while doing so. Once they are accepted they will drop the volunteering. They never intended to volunteer in the first place. This represents a good portion of the population and their need to mark this off.
4. The pre-meds who strongly dislike volunteering will sign up at a hospital but will do whatever it takes to either give absolute minimal effort, or to ditch the opportunity completely. They may either skip on a regular basis, sign in and leave, have friends sign them in, dramatically embellish hours, or lie about the experience together. As much as some members refuse to believe their existence, they exist, get into medical school, and bexome doctors.
5. The last type of volunteer isnt really a volunteer. They are either the high achiever that never volunteers at the hospital, or someone who did not realize it was an unwritten rule. Simce a small number of applicants get in without volunteering, they may be successful coming in on stats and research alone. If they are re-applicants, they may revert to numbers two or three. Therefore they not volunteer at all or stop once accepted if they do it as a re-applicant.
This pretty much sums up the volunteers you will find. I knew very few people who were volunteering heavily regardless of studies. Plenty of the gunners will find themselves as number two on the list, yet try to pass themselves off as altruistic and bash anyone further down the list.
The definition of altruism is to selflessly give yourself to the welfare of others. Unless you are number one on the list, you are doing the activities in order to get into medical school. Even when doing non-clinical volunteering, an applicant can still blow it off and cause more harm than good, or they may just quit the moment they get accepted. Now is that really altruism?
