Tips for completing AACOMAS activities

[LiteralLungs]

Does anyone have advice for how to do the AACOMAS experiences and achievements section? I applied to MD previously, and I am reapplying to both MD + DO this summer. I have my 15 activities written with 3 most meaningful for AMCAS (700 characters + 1325 characters for MME).

I see that in AACOMAS, we have the following limits:
Unlimited experiences
5 achievements
600 characters for all of these sections

The general advice I received for writing AMCAS activities is to try and "show rather than tell". So instead of writing resume descriptions, write descriptive anecdotes to convey what you learned. Is this possible in the AACOMAS application?

For example, do people write multiple experiences for one activity since it in unlimited?

As an example, I might write 5 600 character experience descriptions for my scribing job.
1st experience--Resume description of scribe job
2nd experience---a patient anecdote from scribe job
3rd experience--another patient anecdote from scribe job
4th experience--a lesson about physicians from scribe job
5th experience--another lesson about physicians from scribe job

Likewise, you could do this for my hospice volunteering, my hotline volunteering, and my homeless shelter volunteering, and end up with many, many experience descriptions?

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[Proudfather94]

Does anyone have advice for how to do the AACOMAS experiences and achievements section? I applied to MD previously, and I am reapplying to both MD + DO this summer. I have my 15 activities written with 3 most meaningful for AMCAS (700 characters + 1325 characters for MME).

I see that in AACOMAS, we have the following limits:
Unlimited experiences
5 achievements
600 characters for all of these sections

The general advice I received for writing AMCAS activities is to try and "show rather than tell". So instead of writing resume descriptions, write descriptive anecdotes to convey what you learned. Is this possible in the AACOMAS application?

For example, do people write multiple experiences for one activity since it in unlimited?

As an example, I might write 5 600 character experience descriptions for my scribing job.
1st experience--Resume description of scribe job
2nd experience---a patient anecdote from scribe job
3rd experience--another patient anecdote from scribe job
4th experience--a lesson about physicians from scribe job
5th experience--another lesson about physicians from scribe job

Likewise, you could do this for my hospice volunteering, my hotline volunteering, and my homeless shelter volunteering, and end up with many, many experience descriptions?

If you spread it out like that you're going to annoy them. Try to condense your activities to one or two each. Put an example of something that happened in each that confirmed you wanted to be a doctor.
Have one for clinical volunteering and one for nonclinical volunteering. The art of this section of the application is to have the most impact you can have with the least amount of words. If you bomb them with several sections that are about the same activity that's going to make them frustrated.

 

[LiteralLungs]

If you spread it out like that you're going to annoy them. Try to condense your activities to one or two each. Put an example of something that happened in each that confirmed you wanted to be a doctor.
Have one for clinical volunteering and one for nonclinical volunteering. The art of this section of the application is to have the most impact you can have with the least amount of words. If you bomb them with several sections that are about the same activity that's going to make them frustrated.

Some activities need resume explanations so that it is clear what exactly I was doing. How did you do that and also add the anecdotes to each with only 600 characters?

 

[Proudfather94]

Some activities need resume explanations so that it is clear what exactly I was doing. How did you do that and also add the anecdotes to each with only 600 characters?

They're going to know what each of those positions do use the characters to talk about something specific that confirmed being a physician is right for you. You don't need to include everything from every thing you did they'll ask you more during the interview. If you bombard them with too much information they'll become annoyed and stop reading and likely reject you.

Do a section for paid employment talk about an interaction you saw a doc have with a patient.

Have a volunteering section that talks about how you helped the community. This is the hard part of this section. You need to balance what's important enough to add here and what can wait to be said in the interview.

 

[LiteralLungs]

They're going to know what each of those positions do use the characters to talk about something specific that confirmed being a physician is right for you. You don't need to include everything from every thing you did they'll ask you more during the interview. If you bombard them with too much information they'll become annoyed and stop reading and likely reject you.

Do a section for paid employment talk about an interaction you saw a doc have with a patient.

Have a volunteering section that talks about how you helped the community. This is the hard part of this section. You need to balance what's important enough to add here and what can wait to be said in the interview.

I saw that you said to condense each activity to one or two each. My major healthcare experience is also a major work experience, and I have both healthcare lessons and non healthcare-related lessons I want to convey on my application. I was thinking of splitting this job into a "healthcare experience" and "non-healthcare work experience" to convey the professional and work lessons I have learned. Is this what you mean by splitting things up if necessary?

 

[Proudfather94]

I saw that you said to condense each activity to one or two each. My major healthcare experience is also a major work experience, and I have both healthcare lessons and non healthcare-related lessons I want to convey on my application. I was thinking of splitting this job into a "healthcare experience" and "non-healthcare work experience" to convey the professional and work lessons I have learned. Is this what you mean by splitting things up if necessary?

If it's from scribing keep it as one experience. If you have 2 experience sections for one activity or do one for each individual activity you are going to have like 15 experiences that could fit into like 5 and they are going to notice and get annoyed. I would have people on here proofread this part of the app when the yearly thread opens.

 

[chilly_md]

The character limit is there because they want to read less, not more. You will have to trim down you descriptions from AMCAS accordingly.

 

[LiteralLungs]

I see that the sections on AACOMAS are as follows:

Extracurricular activities
Non-healthcare volunteer or community enrichment
Non-healthcare employment
Healthcare experience

Does TAing for a class in school fit under any of these? I received course credit.

 

[LiteralLungs]

Following up on this to know how TAing for a class should be classified on AACOMAS

 

[chilly_md]

Non-healthcare volunteer. They will be able to tell from the title that its different.