Save the “story approach” for areas where you have more space and use it lightly, perhaps in the PS or MM entries, if you have space, and if it adds significant interest to your narrative. Definitely do not use it for every activity entry. They are tedious to read through and rarely add detail we need to know.
See post #2 of this thread, items 14 and 20.
1) If you want to list the leadership component on its own (75 hours being sufficient), split out those 75 hours into another (Leadership) space, with it’s own dates. Don’t double count the 75 hours.
Phi Beta Kappa can be easily removed, as your GPA speaks for itself.
If consolidating two entries into one, can I just list PBK and the scholarship without listing anything else, in a bullet note format, or should I decribe more detail about those honors and awards?
The criteria for PBK vary among schools, so some indication of how selective it is at yours would be nice.
Thanks. I want to have it on there because there’s a gap of about 1.5 years after that activity before my next clinical experience and I marked it most meaningful on my first app. Mainly just concerned about schools thinking I was trying to deceive.
Having it on there does not help. Definitely do not mark it as a most meaningful again.
Haha definitely not the plan, I have much more clinical experience this time around. So your advice is that listing it could hurt me so I’m better off just not including it?
Gotcha. Aside from that, I’m sitting on 350 clinical volunteering and 170 shadowing. Is that enough to leave it off safely?
1) List them separately so adcomms will find them when they go looking for each category.
Thank you so much!
For AMCAS purposes this is not "clinical." Use the tag Paid employment: (nonmedical/clinical).
I have moved your question and the answers to it into our main AMCAS Work/Activities thread.
I suggest breaking it apart into Volunteer Clinical and Nonclinical, but you could also mention the scholarship in a grouped Honors/Awards Recognitions space or alternatively in a Collegiate Year's Highlights-titled space (tagged Other) where you include non-related items that stand out (since the college years were awhile ago). Or you could mention the scholarship aspect within the backstory of the relevant Volunteer slots.
Thank you for making those suggestions! I'm going to have to think on it a little in relation to the rest of my entries since I have some time, but I like the idea of the college year highlights section as I could bring in some other info from college that I was planning to leave out.
If you read through enough of this thread, you’d see there is general agreement with the reddit post to which you refer. Avoiding that approach for your DO application is also preferable. “Show, don’t Tell. “
rip do you think it is bad for AMCAS? I did it 4 times out of 15ish, not including the healthcare work/activities.
If it was only four, you’ll be all right.
Okay thank you!
Think of a way to create a connection between the 2000 hour activity and a reasonable response to the prompt. Or, save it for an update letter (where accepted) later in the cycle.. Or send the remaining schools a note, “Due to my error I failed to include . . . . “.
When should I send that email about the hours? Or does it go in some sort of a letter?
Email would go out now.
Okay, thank you so much!
I agree with your advisor that in general, it will "Count," depending on how you described your patient population. The feeding component, I would not count, but the help with mobility/leading activities for maintaining cognitive ability would. (Perhaps you can work it into a Secondary essay.) To put the two components into perspective, the personal interaction one on one would be more highly regarded than standing in front of a group and leading a class. So I think you did fine in describing the activity.
Hi Catalystik, Sorry if this is not the correct way to reach out, I am new to SDN. I had a question about contacts and activates. For the Fulbright, I do not have a specific contact name I could reliably put down due to time differences. Would it be alright to put down the contact at my former college's fellowships office since they would be much easier to reach out to? Additionally, one of my activities is serving as an English tutor, but this is something I do with a family I know from my host country. Who could I put down as a contact for this? Thank you for taking a look at this!
1) Yes.
It's fine to report anticipated hours so long as it is clear what hours you have already completed. If the future hours are in any way iffy, you might consider mentioning them as an aside in your narrative, like, "In addition to the above hours, I hope to complete XX to YYY more hours by (date)," rather than including those hours in the header's Total Hours space. We see all too often that those hours never happen, due to life circumstance.
Thank you, that's very helpful.
Hi Catalystik, I had another question. For activities where I was a volunteer, but also held a leadership position, should I put volunteer or leadership as the activity type on AMCAS? Thanks for looking at this! To help give some context, I was an assistant coach and president of a volunteering organization.
How long were you with the organization before taking on the leadership role? How many hours were from leadership only? If the roles co-existed, what percent of the time were you leading?
If you consider coaching itself as leadership, then the whole time for that activity. For the volunteer organization, I am an alumni now and help out, but in college I was in a leadership role 3/4 years. I hope this answers your question? Basically, since I feel as though both activities can qualify as leadership and volunteering, I am wondering which is more advantageous to list as. I am not sure if listing something as leadership means schools do not count that activity as volunteering anymore?
I consider coaching to be a form of teaching. You can tag it as Teaching or Volunteer, whichever is best to balance your application.
For the second activity, I suggest tagging it as Volunteer, but mentioning the leadership role in the name you give the space. In the narrative, state the date you assumed the leadership role (roughly) and the percent time dedicated to that role.
