New here and question about volunteer hours

[cjosey]

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I am a newly registered member but have been lurking for over a year. I am a 38-year-old mother of 4. I work part-time (until the end of summer) and am planning on taking the MCAT in Spring 2012.

My question is about volunteer hours.

Since the end of the semester I have been looking for additional volunteer opportunities both medical and non-medical. I recently volunteered at the Special Olympics and have some more volunteer opportunities scheduled over the next couple of months at things like Relay for Life, but if I want to include these on a medical school application...how do I provide verification? The hospital volunteering I will be doing after some many hours they provide documentation, but not sure about the others. Advice would be appreciated.

I look forward to being a more active participant🙂

Cat

 

[Prncssbuttercup]

Keep a list of places you volunteer, and keep a 'volunteer coordinator' name/phone with the list. I am not certain that they WILL verify it, but they can if they choose... In AMCAS you'll have 15 entries to fill, including work history, ECs, etc... so if you have a ton of misc volunteer stuff you may have to include it in one heading, or decide which ones are more important to you...

 

[Eik Ooc]

I am submitting both MD and DO applications this cycle. Other than being able to provide a contact name, you aren't compelled to supply verification. I think there's just an expectation of honesty.

I'm slightly worried about this myself. A small portion of my clinical volunteer hours (~40) were at an understaffed and underserved urban facility that did a poor job of tracking volunteers, especially those who worked at night. I'm not too confident that the volunteer coordinator could actually verify hours since there wasn't a log available after normal business hours.