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You may include it as a Volunteer activity even though you got course credit.
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*~*~*~* Official AMCAS "Work/Activities" Tips Thread 2019-2020 *~*~*~*
Started by Matthew9Thirtyfive
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Demonstrate the characteristics you feel are important in a med school candidate through involvement, description, and anecdotes. Let adcomms connect the dots for themselves. Or be very subtle. Avoid the "humble brag."
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deleted972488
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greatjoyousday
Full Member
I am including one hobby because it is the backbone of my personal statement and it seems odd to leave it out of the W&A section entirely. My problem is that my father has been my main mentor and trainer for this hobby. It's not the type of thing that anyone can attest to my skills at besides my teacher (because it's one on one lessons which he's certified to give). Can I list him as my point of contact? I know it's super taboo to put down family members as contacts but I genuinely do not think there is anyone else who could speak to what I've done besides him.
Hobbies spaces don't require a Contact, but you can list him anyway, along with his certification if you like.
1) It isn't that it's "bad," it's that you are losing a chance to show a) that you have stress-relieving leisuretime activities and possibly even that b) you have an interest that might help you stand out and be memorable, considering that every application has the usual expectations for ECs.
2) Correct, unless it's an activity that continued into the college years.
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deleted972488
TAing.
-Are you applying to top research schools as a strong candidate?
-Are the basic science research projects each very different from the others and need lots of space to adequately describe?
If your answers are no, are you really using three spaces to discuss research projects?
excitingelectron
Full Member
After submission, I made the mistake of looking at my app again and found an error that I missed before. I accidentally listed my on campus tutoring job (ending this month) as ending in June of 2020, basically making it look like the job is continuing for another year (but I have no projected hours accounted for). Do I:
1. Try to email AMCAS (assuming this would be a waste of time)
2. Send emails to the schools when AMCAS primaries get sent out, correcting it and apologizing for the typo
3. Let it be and if it comes up in an interview clarify then
4. ???
wishing AMCAS had a 24 "undo" button
1. Try to email AMCAS (assuming this would be a waste of time)
2. Send emails to the schools when AMCAS primaries get sent out, correcting it and apologizing for the typo
3. Let it be and if it comes up in an interview clarify then
4. ???
wishing AMCAS had a 24 "undo" button
greatjoyousday
Full Member
My volunteering hours for both clinical and nonclinical are a little over 100 each. I realize this number is not ideal, but I worked a lot throughout undergrad in order to keep my loans at a minimum, and the consequence was not having a lot of spare time. Volunteering is something that's very important to me and something I intend to do throughout my life, but my W&A section definitely doesn't show that. Would it be worth it to add a sentence in one of the entries trying to explain this? The problem is I don't have much space left and the sentence would have to be quite short so I'm unsure if it would seem like I'm just trying to make an excuse. I plan on finding somewhere to volunteer during my gap year and will talk about that either in secondaries or in an update letter. Should I just let my gap year volunteering speak for itself?
Thank you for the advice!
Thank you for the advice!
If this is a job you've held for the last year, and you declared XX hours for two years, then it looks like you've actually completed only half the hours so far (unless you specified that all hours had been completed in the narrative). Would this interpretation derail your entire application? Probably not, since it was a job and not a volunteer position.
If my understanding sounds correct, then I would:
4) Clarify the error if the opportunity comes up with Secondaries, but otherwise leave it alone. If a Contact is emailed/called for validation, you have indeed completed the number of hours claimed, so no harm, no foul.
5) I share your wish.
Adcomms will look at the entire load you carried. Not just the academic load. Not just the ECs in which you participated. But also the work hours. So long as you didn't start all volunteering 9 months ago (which looks like box checking), have also listed your collegiate jobs, and generally looked "busy," I think you'll be fine.
So make no excuses. And get something started ASAP for your gap year so you can report them on Secondaries, which will mainly start showing up in three weeks (rarely sooner, sometimes later).
Who should I put as the contact for my Poster/Presentations section (grouped together a few different poster presentations at various regional/national meetings)?
Also, is it okay to put future poster presentations under this umbrella (abstract has been accepted by the conference but the actual presentation is in December)?
Also, is it okay to put future poster presentations under this umbrella (abstract has been accepted by the conference but the actual presentation is in December)?
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deleted972488
Your PI?
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907914
If you have multiple PIs, put the most important one at the contacts/at the top of the description followed by each additional entry. For the additional labs, input it like "XXXXX research project - June/201X - July 201X, Contact - Farmer McMuffin, PhD"
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1) Yes, your PI.
2) If the abstract has been accepted, you can list it in the same space, with the future conference name and date in the narrative. Whether you can afford to attend or not is immaterial.
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907914
What would you say to an individual who already submitted with around 100 hours as a blood bank phlebotomist labelled as clinical volunteering?
Not my only listed clinical volunteering - also listed 120ish hours of phlebotomy at a VA hospital. Lots of clinical employment and clinical military experience. Non-clinical volunteering listed is 200 hours military/veteran mental health liaison and 120 hours of what is basically military pay management.
Not my only listed clinical volunteering - also listed 120ish hours of phlebotomy at a VA hospital. Lots of clinical employment and clinical military experience. Non-clinical volunteering listed is 200 hours military/veteran mental health liaison and 120 hours of what is basically military pay management.
Whose blood were you drawing? Who ordered the tests? What medical conditions might you have intuited from the tests ordered?
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907914
The blood bank was at a donor center drawing blood of soldiers to be utilized in the on-base hospital. This specific blood drive is one that I helped organize while I was a student at that hospital and subsequently returned for 5 years just to help out annually.
I already submitted so I cannot change it, but is it likely I will be asked about it?
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907914
Also added more detail of other things I have done, if that matters for the context of the application.
I think it's pretty clear it was not a clinical experience from what you related here, so it would be recategorized without asking questions if your entry made it clear you drew donors' blood, rather than recipients'.
Considering the hospital plebotomy entry and clinical military activity, the mistake won't hurt you.
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907914
Understandable. It didn’t even cross my mind that it was non-clinical. My mind thought “Phlebotomist = Clinical.” But this def. makes sense.
Is recategorization frowned upon?
I also listed mental health advocate/liaison as non-clinical. I helped direct soldiers in my unit and veterans in the surrounding community towards mental health resources they needed (sometimes transporting them to appointments, sometimes scheduling appointments, sometimes having conversations about their options etc.) this included instances of homeless vet interactions and a few visits/outreach to the local VA hospital. Should I have classified that as clinical as opposed to non-clinical?
Yes, from what you've said here, many would consider it so.
Don't worry about recategorizing. You're solid anyways.
Thanks everyone for the responses. One further question about this:
Currently, I have my poster/presentations section formatted like so: [Poster title], [Conference name], [Conference date]. The problem is, after listing the poster titles and the conferences along with their dates, I only have 10 characters left.
Would it be frowned upon to not include the authorship information in this case? I have listed four posters where I was third/fourth/fifth author (contributed to the data/poster, was not the presenter) and one where I am the first author. Would it be better for me to just take out one of the posters where I did not present and include the authorship info? Read conflicting things on different forums, so would appreciate any insight yall can give on this!
Currently, I have my poster/presentations section formatted like so: [Poster title], [Conference name], [Conference date]. The problem is, after listing the poster titles and the conferences along with their dates, I only have 10 characters left.
Would it be frowned upon to not include the authorship information in this case? I have listed four posters where I was third/fourth/fifth author (contributed to the data/poster, was not the presenter) and one where I am the first author. Would it be better for me to just take out one of the posters where I did not present and include the authorship info? Read conflicting things on different forums, so would appreciate any insight yall can give on this!
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907914
Include all posters and only put the authorship for the first.
Authorship on posters doesn’t really matter so much. Authorship of publications is more important.
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deleted972488
The title of the poster isn’t super important, but neither is most of the authorship information. You could just put “first author” or “contributing author” in lieu of the title.
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907914
Really, title of poster isn’t important?
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deleted972488
To adcoms? I can’t imagine so. They care that you got the opportunity to present and I’m assuming that the research itself is described elsewhere in the activities.
Sounds good. I was able to cut out some more characters by playing around with date formatting, so I think I'll list the posters in categories of "Contributing author:" and "First author:" (in case anyone else in future is wondering how I did it). Thanks so much yall!
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For my research experiences, is it okay if I just have one line describing what the actual projects I worked on was about and spend the rest of the time describing the experience itself and what I learned from it? Should I bother with results/field-specific procedures at all? I see examples where people list the actual assays and techniques they did in all their jargon-filled glory and even explain them sometimes, but I feel like that would be an absolute waste of space for me given my approach.
My application is a bit odd in that I have 3 entries on research with 1700-1800 hours total in the same lab and an honors thesis, but none of these entries are designated most meaningful, and I don't have any publications/posters (besides campus symposiums)/conferences/etc. since my intention of doing research was more explorative than results-driven. I only have so many entries because they're separated into 1) a summer program that introduced me to my lab and research in general, 2) work study under a mentor, and 3) independent work that became my honors thesis, so there's a natural narrative progression.
Overall, I want to make it clear to med schools that I enjoyed basic research while I did it and learned a lot from it, but I don't want it to be a focal point in my application at all and I don't plan on pursuing it in the future. Based on all of this, I'm hoping it's okay to minimize talking about the actual content of my research yet still have a lot of entries on it. Any thoughts?
My application is a bit odd in that I have 3 entries on research with 1700-1800 hours total in the same lab and an honors thesis, but none of these entries are designated most meaningful, and I don't have any publications/posters (besides campus symposiums)/conferences/etc. since my intention of doing research was more explorative than results-driven. I only have so many entries because they're separated into 1) a summer program that introduced me to my lab and research in general, 2) work study under a mentor, and 3) independent work that became my honors thesis, so there's a natural narrative progression.
Overall, I want to make it clear to med schools that I enjoyed basic research while I did it and learned a lot from it, but I don't want it to be a focal point in my application at all and I don't plan on pursuing it in the future. Based on all of this, I'm hoping it's okay to minimize talking about the actual content of my research yet still have a lot of entries on it. Any thoughts?
Include them all.
"Co-author" takes fewer characters.
It's OK to truncate, summarize the title in fewer words, or provide a general topic.
Example: "First-authored and presented poster on Mating Dance of African Bees, American Pollinators Society, Feb 2018.
Also, co-authored but did not present posters on
1) Topic 1, [meeting], [date]
2) Topic 2, ditto
3) Topic 3, ditto. Same poster also presented at [meeting], [date]
4) Topic 4, abstract accepted for [meeting], [future date]"
Many readers and adcomms will appreciate your less-jargon-y approach to discussing your research. I think your idea is fine, given that you are not targeting the "Top" highly-selective, research-focused programs.
Great, thank you! And well, I kind of am targeting "top" programs, but my focus is more on social change/medical innovation, and I'll be doing behavioral economics research on patient-doctor communication in a policy center for my gap year. I'm just taking a bit of a different approach when applying to those schools, I suppose, and the rest of my app will reflect that.
Sounds interesting (to me). Research in a less-common-for-premeds discipline will help you stand out.
Is it recommended that we max out the character limit for the description and summary of our most meaningful experiences? I know short and concise is preferred for the typical EC's (ED volunteer, foodbank etc), but what is the consensus for atypical and meaningful activities?
Say what you need to say in a succinct manner, and then stop. Do not fill the MM space with fluff. It makes adcomms testy.
I have a single publication as middle author in a peer-reviewed journal, and I'm having a lot of trouble writing a good "Experience Name" for the entry as well as summarizing it at all in layman's terms (let alone in one sentence). It's in the field of computational neuroscience, and it involves a complicated mathematical analysis of networks of simulated neurons.
It's approved and published now, but one of the reviewers of the paper said "It is a topic that receives too little attention. However, even specialists will find the paper difficult to read. Part of it is simply the difficulty of the topic, but it is also written in a very difficult style and it is full of ambiguities." That's a direct quote.
Would it be better to dramatically oversimplify (not truly give an accurate representation of the paper)? Or just assume that they'll figure it out if they care?
It's approved and published now, but one of the reviewers of the paper said "It is a topic that receives too little attention. However, even specialists will find the paper difficult to read. Part of it is simply the difficulty of the topic, but it is also written in a very difficult style and it is full of ambiguities." That's a direct quote.
Would it be better to dramatically oversimplify (not truly give an accurate representation of the paper)? Or just assume that they'll figure it out if they care?
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deleted972488
I'm confused. Why would you need to summarize it in one sentence? For the experience name, you can just use the "publications" tag and put something like "peer-reviewed journal article" and then just put the citation in the description.
Make a separate entry for the research that went into the publication... and explain it as simply as you did here: "Computational neuroscience involving mathematical analysis of networks of simulated neurons."
Ah, thank you. I was misinterpreting this entry in the initial FAQ, and I was trying to apply it to my publication as well as to my general research entry.
You could name the Publications space "Co-Authored Computational Neuroscience Journal Article."
Do you know what to put as Contact for Honors category, i.e. Dean's List? Should I just put myself or find contact for my major advisor?
Use the College Registrar. They have a record of everything.
A co-officer, faculty advisor, co-member, or yourself.
How should I report the hours of a job I've been working full-time but transition to part-time?
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907914
However many hours you have worked there. If you want to put a full time/part time distinction feel free it it is not needed
You would report the total hours worked in the header, and then in the narrative explain the date span you worked full time and when you transitioned to part-time.
So we won't come off as lazy if we use 600/700 characters for the description and ~800/1325 characters for the summary ?
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907914
If you get everything across that you need to say then there is no reason to add anything additional.
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