I was under the impression being a TA and doing research is an EC. I did both for credit though so now they're not? What are they considered then (for future reference when i apply)
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I was looking through old posts and I saw something about it, i can't find it at the moment though.
- Jun 23, 2008
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You can list whatever you want on your resume, even hobbies you pursued in a disorganized way. Do whatever you need to do to put your true self in the best light possible.
Oh alright thats good because obviously I'll want to explain my responsibilities as a TA and what I did the research on and stuff as I would for any other EC... and if they were just considered classes idk where I'd talk about that
the heading on the AMCAS is "Experiences". I very often see TA'ing and research, even when someone has an independent study bio research thing in the transcript section of the application.
You're right that on SDN, we use the term Extracurricular to refer to nearly anything besides our GPA and MCAT score. Actually, we should use the term "Experiences," as that is the name of the AMCAS section where you list such things. One of the subcategories under "Experiences" is Extracurriculars/Hobbies/Avocations.
Personally, I'd still list the TA experience under "Leadership," as the AMCAS form is asking you to list "Experiences," even though it is curricular, and already on your transcript. You have the opportunity to describe in what way you led people. If you were paid to be a TA, you could list it under "Employment" instead. As far as doing research for credit, I'd still list it as a "Research" experience, even if it were on my transcript, because you need space to explain your projects.
Personally, I'd still list the TA experience under "Leadership," as the AMCAS form is asking you to list "Experiences," even though it is curricular, and already on your transcript. You have the opportunity to describe in what way you led people. If you were paid to be a TA, you could list it under "Employment" instead. As far as doing research for credit, I'd still list it as a "Research" experience, even if it were on my transcript, because you need space to explain your projects.
Anyone who has done research and not expanded on it in the experience section is shooting himself in the foot.
Thanks. What are the exact categories under "Experiences?" Is there a website that shows a mock application or something
Looking at my old application, I also had
Honors/Awards/Recognition, Paid Employment-Not Military, Community Service/Volunteer-Medical/Clinical, Community Service/Volunteer-not Medical/Clinical, Leadership-not Listed Elsewhere, Research/Lab, and Other. (Presumably, also Military Service.)
Wow that sucks I feel bad I'm not going to be able to fill in every sub-topic. Oh well
edit: nevermind i guess just 1 rly
You can use each subcategory more than once. I only used nine spaces, because I lumped all the awards and honors into one space. (Didn't want to be boring, since we all presumably have them.)
I'm going to. Its my schools policy to do this and first you need to be recommended and then accepted into the research program by having two letters of rec, writing an essay, etc. This is NOT the normal path I would need to take to graduate and get my degree. To me, its an EC. Especially since I will have to spend random hours at school researching when everyone else in my major just goes to classes and that's it.
Really... TAing for credit.
I don't think that exists at my school, it is all paid work.
I went with the boring approach and it worked OK.
My issue was how to give heavier weight to medical volunteer and medical research experience which I'd done for hundreds of hours, rather than professional experiences (non-medical) that I'd done for thousands of hours. The way I accomplished this was to separately list each medical and volunteer type activity, and then to lump non-medical activities under a heading such as "leadership" or similar. As each experience required the start and end date, it could be pieced together pretty easily if someone chose, but I wanted to differentiate why I'd done each clinical experience and what I got out of each one; this was far more important than why I chose a non-medical job 10+ years ago.
I also listed a number of experiences under "research"; these were mostly done for credit, but choosing a full semester research project or research class still indicates experience and ability to do research, I think.
Yes it would be helpful to see how successful applicants complete the amcas primary; lots of things were unclear to me 1st time around.
What if I did research beyond this? Is there a way I can somehow reflect that I put in 20+ hrs a week for research not as a class? Sorry if this question seems obvious and there's a space to expound on that, I have never seen an AMCAS app.It is absolutely OK to list research that was done for credit. If people didn't do that, almost no one would have research experience.
It might be best to hold all questions until you've actually seen the application template and begun to fill it out.
Each Experience slot has a series of fields. There is a pull-down menu to label the experience. Reserach is one label, others are "teaching/tutoring", "volunteer, clinical" "employment, military" (there are non-clincal and non-military versions of those latter two), and several others.
Next is a place to show the start and end dates (month and year) of the activity, and the number of hours per week devoted to the activity.
Then you list the title of the activity, a contact if you have one, the contact's title, contact's location, and maybe there is a place for contact's phone number or something like that (I'm doing this all from memory because I don't have any appies handly at the moment) Then there is a place for a brief paragraph about the activity. Obviously, some activities don't have a logical "contact" and that's understandable. In other cases, your principal investigator, supervisor, advisor, chaplain or other person who can vouch for you.
Awesome, thanks for that rundown. I'll save the rest of my questions until the apps comes out.
