Question about tutoring as non-clinical volunteering

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syruponasurfboard

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Hi! I've seen some people say that tutoring does not count as a non-clinical volunteering activity, or if it does, it's not a very good one. In my case, I volunteer with a nonprofit to tutor special needs children (e.g. I currently tutor someone with autism in English because she has exacerbated difficulties with this subject due to her autism). I have also received volunteering awards from this non-profit.

So can I still consider this a non-clinical volunteering activity?

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I would count this as non-clinical volunteering, particularly if you are tutoring people who are much younger than yourself and/or who don't have the resources to pay for tutoring. Tutoring a 3rd grader in a school where most kids are reading below grade level. Volunteer for sure, in my book.

When it is better tagged "teaching/tutoring" is when you are teaching other college students on a subject you've already taken or when you are providing services to people similar to yourself in your community (e.g. foreign language tutoring for teens in your community in preparation for a religious ritual). And, of courses, paid tutoring is a different tag. (Employment or teaching/tutoring, your choice).
 
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Hi! I've seen some people say that tutoring does not count as a non-clinical volunteering activity, or if it does, it's not a very good one. In my case, I volunteer with a nonprofit to tutor special needs children (e.g. I currently tutor someone with autism in English because she has exacerbated difficulties with this subject due to her autism). I have also received volunteering awards from this non-profit.

So can I still consider this a non-clinical volunteering activity?
You can, and it's a good one. The kind of tutoring that isn't good is for your fellow students, who are on campus.
 
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Both are true:

1) You are making a positive impact on someone's life if they are struggling with material that you hopefully can make easier to understand.

2) You are engaged in an activity that practically every premed applicant has done for a few hundred hours. And you will likely continue to do some form of tutoring/mentoring to underserved or disadvantaged students or adults when you are in medical school or are a professional.

OP: You are mixing the two thoughts, which, when looked through an "admissions lens," have two different meanings.

I explain that you can (and will likely) get credit for serving those with special needs in this article:

I also explain that under the competency model (see-do-teach), teaching is more a demonstration of an academic competency than service orientation.

Yes, some of us will give you some credit if this is part of your non-clinical volunteering portfolio, but I have been in many file discussions where this isn't enough to break a tie with someone else who has other non-clinical activities that are not involved with teaching/tutoring unless they were fully employed as teachers and have to contend with IEP's and other state-imposed standards/financial constraints.

Of course, you are not in the position to say, "the hell what the adcom thinks, this is a non-clinical activity." It really depends on who the louder voices are in an adcom deliberation and how we can give you credit.

I make this point: if you worked in the university learning services office to read textbooks out to a recording device so some child patient who has auditory processing challenges or reading challenges can better keep up with a school lesson/lecture... would you categorize it as a non-clinical activity or being a teaching assistant? Would it be clinical if you read the textbook to the student at the bedside? At some point, the screening rubric must render consistent results, and for me, it has always been easy to separate VERB from OBJECT. You are teaching/tutoring (academic competency) for a student with special needs (bonus points?).

Others are free to differ. That's why we have committees. And that's why you need to be careful that not every activity can be black-and-white except for the lens you wish to view it through... in this case, the screening rubric versus your altruism.
 
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