Question about Volunteer work after submitting application

[AtomicPancakez]

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Hi all,

Should I put volunteer hours I plan to do after I submit my application during the summer?
Ex. I submit my application in June and plan on doing volunteer work in July should I include that in my application

 

[Mr Roboto]

No.

 

[Genore]

You can't include future events on the AMCAS, as I understand it. You can however include the work in an update to the school, though you might want to have more than a few volunteer hours for this.

 

[Catalystik]

Should I put volunteer hours I plan to do after I submit my application during the summer?
Ex. I submit my application in June and plan on doing volunteer work in July should I include that in my application

If you are already involved in the activity, you are allowed to enter a closing date in the near future. If you haven't yet started the activity, the application won't let you enter a future month.

 

[SpartanWolverine]

Just to get as specific as possible:

Experience Dates
Include the start and end dates for each experience. Some Experience Types, such as
Awards, Presentations/Posters and Publications, require only one date. Medical schools
want information about experiences you have begun prior to application submission;
therefore, your start date must be no later than the current month. Similarly, medical
schools ask that the experience end date coincide with the start of medical school; even if
the experience will be ongoing the latest end date must be no later than August of the
current application cycle.

Total Hours
Enter the total number of hours that you completed (or expect to complete) related to this
experience during the date range that you indicated. If this is a repeated experience,
include only the number of hours completed for that specific date range.

So: You cannot put a future activity start date, but you can estimate future hours if you have already started the activity.

 

[Stoptheclot]

^^ All of the above. BUT two things:
1. several schools have a section on the secondary applications where you can fill in "Are there any other updates you want to add to your initial application?" So even if you submit your primary without the volunteering experience, you can add it later to individual secondaries.
2. if you submit your secondary before you've even begun volunteering, those new experiences/hours work great for meaningful "update letters" that you could send to schools that you've interviewed at.

Good luck!

 

[Planes2Doc]

The best thing you can do is just keep it as a current activity. I would not put a closing date since that would not look good to ADCOMs. For best results of your ECs, you should only quit them once you have an acceptance in hand. Any sooner will make you look like a "box-checker," and ADCOMs don't like that.

Now if you were going to start a completely new activity in the very near future, I would include that. But don't bother putting in future hours for a current activity.