the ideal pre med club?

[vincikai]

I am thinking to start a fresh premed club in my school maybe I will even name it "SDN" lol. In your opinion what would be the ideal pre health club provide to its follow student members?
It would be a great help for me if you list them out, thanks.

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[Oceaner]

but pre-med clubs are so... tacky...

 

[DropkickMurphy]

I am thinking to start a fresh premed club in my school maybe I will even name it "SDN" lol. In your opinion what would be the ideal pre health club provide to its follow student members?
It would be a great help for me if you list them out, thanks.

Go ahead and name it SDN. That way Lee can sue you.

 

[Bacchus]

You need to educate these damn kids so they don't come on here and debate how an MD is better than a DO or vice versa. In addition, have students from your university come talk to the outgoing classes that plan on applying. There is far too much ignorance in the process for anyone's good.

 

[emttim]

You need to educate these damn kids so they don't come on here and debate how an MD is better than a DO or vice versa. In addition, have students from your university come talk to the outgoing classes that plan on applying. There is far too much ignorance in the process for anyone's good.

By this same token, there's far too many ignorant pre-meds out there, so I don't see why anyone would want to start their own pre-med club...that's like writing "Idiots Wanted" on a sharpie and holding it up above your head.

If you want to start a meaningful club, find a hobby or sport that you enjoy which your school doesn't have a club for, then found that. It'll look a lot less cliche and won't get any eyerolls from others.

 

[Koala 33]

Get enough funding to provide free food at meetings (like pizza) and watch how fast your attendance goes up.

 

[DropkickMurphy]

Get enough funding to provide free food at meetings (like pizza) and watch how fast your attendance goes up.

Hell, I sat through a grant writing course for high school teachers on campus the other day in exchange for pizza.

 

[hermit]

If you want to start a meaningful club, find a hobby or sport that you enjoy which your school doesn't have a club for, then found that. It'll look a lot less cliche and won't get any eyerolls from others.

Best answer to this question you are going to get. Short of being an officer, membership in pre-med clubs goes nowhere on an application. I get that you are looking to START one, but if you are going to go to all the trouble of getting your school administration's approval etc, you will get A LOT more mileage in the long run from doing something that is UNIQUE!

You are probably going to ignore this advice...

 

[gujuDoc]

I am thinking to start a fresh premed club in my school maybe I will even name it “SDN” lol. In your opinion what would be the ideal pre health club provide to its follow student members?
It would be a great help for me if you list them out, thanks.

I don't think it would be legal to name it SDN anymore then it would be legal to say you started an organization called American Medical Student Association but not affiliated with the real AMSA who's headquarters are in Reston, Va.

Second off, I'd say that premed clubs are the biggest waste of time and it is better to do something else with your time like volunteerig, shadowing, and exploring interests outside of medicine like sports, art, music, etc. or to spend your time doing some research.

I think there are other more subtle ways of showing leadership and that when adcoms look for leadership they aren't looking for the person that was an officer of xyz organization but people who've demonstrated leadershhip in general. If you are part of a church and say in the choir or the music director, then that is leadership. If you volunteered at different events and you led the team, then that is leadership. If you have learned classical dance or played an instrument and went with a group of people to perform before an audience be it for community service or for a paid show then that is leadership. If you are a manager in your work, that is leadership.

That is all they would prefer to see. Officerships in clubs don't hold any water at all.

 

[GoldShadow]

Is it a good example of "leadership" if, like emttim said, I were to start a club I genuinely have an interest for that doesn't exist at my school? After all, it certainly takes more work to found and lead a club than to join and become an officer.

 

[gujuDoc]

By this same token, there's far too many ignorant pre-meds out there, so I don't see why anyone would want to start their own pre-med club...that's like writing "Idiots Wanted" on a sharpie and holding it up above your head.

If you want to start a meaningful club, find a hobby or sport that you enjoy which your school doesn't have a club for, then found that. It'll look a lot less cliche and won't get any eyerolls from others.

I think I love you. No seriously, I agree. It makes far more sense to be innovative in your thinking and use your skills whether it is skills as a classical dancer, singer, musician playing different instruments, art, sports, etc. and doing something with it.

Like Severus who used to post on here during the past year. She has used tennis skills to create camps for younger kids. or another thing is if you learn some sort of musical instrument or stuff of that nature you can perform in nursing homes and hospitals with a group of students and that would probably look better then the typical premed club kind of thing.

 

[Kenshinsan]

Hell, I sat through a grant writing course for high school teachers on campus the other day in exchange for pizza.

Were you that hungry or that broke? Or just a combination of both?

 

[gujuDoc]

Go ahead and name it SDN. That way Lee can sue you.

You took the words out of my mouth. I'm not sure what the technical words would be but I'm assuming copyright infringement.

 

[Meatwad]

Start a pre-med club and totally misguide them. This means less competition for you and all of us. Tell them adcoms like to hear that you are also interested in dentistry, think doctors are overpaid, and that in reality you only need 1 semester of physics.

If my school didn't already have a club I'd be doing this.

 

[GoldShadow]

The premed club at my school's actually pretty good, they have med students that are alumni of our school come and talk about their experiences, and members of the admission committee for the university's med school come talk about the application and admission process and whatnot.

 

[DropkickMurphy]

Were you that hungry or that broke? Or just a combination of both?

Nah, I just never turn down free food......

 

[midn]

If I ran a pre-med club, I'd run it a lot like ROTC just because there was a lot of emphasis in getting people leadership experience.

Face it, people join clubs to build their resume so make it worthwhile. Make multiple commitees and see to it that people have meaningful leadership roles.

 

[Lamont]

That is all they would prefer to see. Officerships in clubs don't hold any water at all.

i disagree. i got into med school based on my officerships in clubs (especially the opportunities brought about from my fraternity - being greek has some serious advantages if you like the situation). class president, SGA secretary, fraternity president, beta beta beta VP & treasurer, and it went from there. they notice if you are a leader. it definitely helps, everything does. dont spread yourself too thin, get involved in 3 or 4 organizations, become the president of one if you can, make your grades, slaughter the MCAT, and good luck.

oh yeah, get off SDN for a while, go have fun while you got it. med school does not equal fun. med school is difficult and requires a lot of discipline. good luck.

 

[MassTransport]

Really, the one thing I would've liked is some type of shadowing program, if your school doesn't have one.

 

[littlealex]

Premed clubs are so useless. I feel like only the gunners join it, and most of the time they are far from the strongest applicants.

 

[Sir Buckethead]

that would be very sad to be a weak gunner.

 

[smeagol]

If you want to start a club get a different idea.

Rounding up a bunch of premeds together and calling yourselves a club isn't too special.

 

[Hershi]

Start a pre-med club and totally misguide them. This means less competition for you and all of us. Tell them adcoms like to hear that you are also interested in dentistry, think doctors are overpaid, and that in reality you only need 1 semester of physics.

If my school didn't already have a club I'd be doing this.

not to be evil but I WAS THINKING THIS while reading this thread. hahaha

 

[Rachael1285]

I don't think it's fair to say that all pre-med clubs are useless, and even less fair to say that being in a pre-med club will be totally looked over by adcomms. I think it's like anything else - if you put work into it and get meaningful experiences out of it that you can discuss in essays or interviews, it certainly wasn't a waste of your time. If this is your interest, I would say go for it. My pre-med club brings in 1st- and 2nd-year med students from the IU satellite campus that is in Terre Haute to talk about their experiences and answer questions. We devote a meeting to discussing strategies for MCAT preparation. We volunteer in the community, such as working on United Way projects and raising money for the Relay for Life. We also have physicians from the community come in and discuss what it is like to be a doctor and what their specific specialty is like.

All of these are, IMO, good things to do. I think that being able to explain how you pulled a new club together, found other leaders to help you with it, found members, promoted your organization, decided how it would be run, etc. would give you some things to talk about at interviews. Good luck!

 

[Jacks Mannequin]

I think AMSA might be a better choice than a pre-med club. National AMSA does a lot with healthcare related issues if you're interested in bringing that to your campus. We have healthcare debates, advocacy of global health problems and fundraising for different charities among other events. Otherwise, typical pre-med clubs are kinda boring...

 

[gujuDoc]

I don't think it's fair to say that all pre-med clubs are useless, and even less fair to say that being in a pre-med club will be totally looked over by adcomms. I think it's like anything else - if you put work into it and get meaningful experiences out of it that you can discuss in essays or interviews, it certainly wasn't a waste of your time. If this is your interest, I would say go for it. My pre-med club brings in 1st- and 2nd-year med students from the IU satellite campus that is in Terre Haute to talk about their experiences and answer questions. We devote a meeting to discussing strategies for MCAT preparation. We volunteer in the community, such as working on United Way projects and raising money for the Relay for Life. We also have physicians from the community come in and discuss what it is like to be a doctor and what their specific specialty is like.

All of these are, IMO, good things to do. I think that being able to explain how you pulled a new club together, found other leaders to help you with it, found members, promoted your organization, decided how it would be run, etc. would give you some things to talk about at interviews. Good luck!

But the point is you can talk to med schools without paying or such clubs. You can talk to med students through this website without paying for such clubs. You can volunteer and do things without having to join such clubs. They are useless. How many times can you hear the same old stuff about admissions. it gets old.

At our school, four of the better clubs are actually Mortar Board Society which does a lot of work in promoting early literacy in youth and Volunteer USF which has all sorts of volunteer activities for kids and that is a free organization to join. We also have a good organization that does stuff related to health issues and medical ethics. We call it the medical ethics society. They haven't been as active the past couple of years but when they were active they used to bring conferences and forums for discussion of ethical issues in medicine. That was informative. Finally, the Co-SIGN group was good. That was the college students interest group in neurology and neuroscience. The Co-SIGN group used to bring different speakers to talk about different topics in neuroscience research and neurology. We'd have people talk about parkinsons research, alzheimers research, multiple sclerosis, aging studies, etc. It was a rather interesting group and I really enjoyed it a lot.

I think if you want to start a group that is related to medicine it is better to start a premed branch of one of those groups like SIGN. SIGN is actually a medical student group for people interested in neurology but bringing it to the premed level through discussion of research and what not was a great idea on the part of the founders. Doing something like that with other fields of medicine where you are discussing different kinds of research or starting a group related to discussion and learning about ethical issues and/or political issues is also a useful club.

But if you just want a club to start asking questions about admissions then those are kinda pointless.

As per the issue of AMSA, well if you get involved with the kind of stuff they do at the national level and believe in their liberal philosophy that is good and all. If you are just going to do what a lot of premed chapters of AMSA do and talk about admissions then its ******ed.

 

[gujuDoc]

Premed clubs are so useless. I feel like only the gunners join it, and most of the time they are far from the strongest applicants.

I found that it wasn't the gunners but the lazier people who don't want to take their own initiatives who often joined such things.

 

[gujuDoc]

Really, the one thing I would've liked is some type of shadowing program, if your school doesn't have one.

I was the shadowing coordinator for 2 years with AED and I found that it was often very difficult to get something organized in such a way that you have an ongoing externship with rotations and the works. What was easier instead was to set people up with individual physicians in fields of interest. I found that the USF COM physicians especially were very open to letting you shadow once you emailed them your interest and it was easier to do such then create a program. I don't know how it is your area or what not but if you are closely connected to a medical school a good place to start looking for shadowing is with academic physicians as they are often more open to having students. At least people in Gville have had the same experiences as I've had in tampa with academians being more open. Another good place to start is with family physicians or family friends and members that are physicins.

 

[gujuDoc]

i disagree. i got into med school based on my officerships in clubs (especially the opportunities brought about from my fraternity - being greek has some serious advantages if you like the situation). class president, SGA secretary, fraternity president, beta beta beta VP & treasurer, and it went from there. they notice if you are a leader. it definitely helps, everything does. dont spread yourself too thin, get involved in 3 or 4 organizations, become the president of one if you can, make your grades, slaughter the MCAT, and good luck.

oh yeah, get off SDN for a while, go have fun while you got it. med school does not equal fun. med school is difficult and requires a lot of discipline. good luck.

No I think that you got in because you showed the passion to talk about it in a non cookie cutter way. You must have been very passionate about those things and it must have shined through. A lot of the other people I've seen here in Tampa have not been so passionate about those things and looked more like a typical cookie cutter. I'm willing to bet that is often the thing they look at with least importance here in the Fl. schools based on the trends and what I've heard from adcom members. I've seen that there is a bigger emphasis on the trio: clinical experience, volunteering, and research.

 

[maestro1625]

that would be very sad to be a weak gunner.

it happens WAY more than you'd think.

 

[KnuxNole]

I'm willing to bet that is often the thing they look at with least importance here in the Fl. schools based on the trends and what I've heard from adcom members. I've seen that there is a bigger emphasis on the trio: clinical experience, volunteering, and research.

I hope FL schools place a higher emphasis on those three things, considering that is a bulk of my EC(but not the only things I've done).

I'm glad I ran into this thread and feel a little better about how other people feel about pre-med clubs. It seems like almost ALL of my friends are either a part of AMSA, AED, or MAPS, and I thought I would be at a major disadvantage considering I was missing out on key EC's for my application.

 

[gujuDoc]

I hope FL schools place a higher emphasis on those three things, considering that is a bulk of my EC(but not the only things I've done).

I'm glad I ran into this thread and feel a little better about how other people feel about pre-med clubs. It seems like almost ALL of my friends are either a part of AMSA, AED, or MAPS, and I thought I would be at a major disadvantage considering I was missing out on key EC's for my application.

There is no doubt about it in my mind that they place those 3 things as more important. UMiami when they rank students to determine who should get an interview, places 20 pts for direct patient contact, 15 pts for other ECs, 15 pts LORs, and 10 pts for significant adversity one would have had to face.

USF COM, whenever I've spoken to the admissions director (Formerly REL) or other admissions people like Dr. Williams when he came to an AED meeting o Dr. Specter or others also have never stressed the need to be in a premed club but they have made it clear that one needs to shadow and volunteer. They place a high emphasis on clinical and non clinical volunteering both. Outside of that you can pretty much be involved in what ever interests you.