Underestimating the hours that you write on application?

[Lunasly]

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I know this may sound rather odd, but a medical student I recently spoke to told me that it's actually better to underestimate the number of hours that you write on your application. Of course, you wouldn't slash off a huge amount, but say you took off a few. The logic behind it is that if an administrator decides that they want to verify your EC's and they find out that you underestimated rather than overestimated the # of hours, then that would be look upon favourably compared to overestimating.

What do you all think?

 

[Ironmandoc]

I know this may sound rather odd, but a medical student I recently spoke to told me that it's actually better to underestimate the number of hours that you write on your application. Of course, you wouldn't slash off a huge amount, but say you took off a few. The logic behind it is that if an administrator decides that they want to verify your EC's and they find out that you underestimated rather than overestimated the # of hours, then that would be look upon favourably compared to overestimating.

What do you all think?

Just give the correct amount. Why is there any need to do either?

 

[sliceofbread136]

I think medical schools realize that many people don't keep track of their hours worked, and that an estimation is just that, an estimation. Personally, I took the number of weeks I've been working/volunteering and multiplied that by the hours I volunteer a week.

 

[EnergyDrink]

I think medical schools realize that many people don't keep track of their hours worked, and that an estimation is just that, an estimation. Personally, I took the number of weeks I've been working/volunteering and multiplied that by the hours I volunteer a week.

Doesn't AMCAS ask you how many hours/week you worked, not total hours?

I know this may sound rather odd, but a medical student I recently spoke to told me that it's actually better to underestimate the number of hours that you write on your application. Of course, you wouldn't slash off a huge amount, but say you took off a few. The logic behind it is that if an administrator decides that they want to verify your EC's and they find out that you underestimated rather than overestimated the # of hours, then that would be look upon favourably compared to overestimating.

What do you all think?

I was actually considering underestimating my hours to make it a little bit more believable. As a grad student I put in a solid 40 hours/week on my thesis. I also volunteer every day including weekends. I end up with about 50 EC hours/week. I was thinking about 35 hours for research and watering my ECs down to about 35 hours total. My LORs will back me on these commitments, but from what I read anything over 25 hours/week sounds like bull**** to adcoms.

 

[Aerus]

Give the best estimation you can give. Don't go under or over. They don't want you to treat this as a psychology game. They want to see how dedicated you are to taking care of patients.

 

[NickNaylor]

Give the best estimation you can give. Don't go under or over. They don't want you to treat this as a psychology game. They want to see how dedicated you are to taking care of patients.

Exactly - I can't believe this is some kind of controversy.

(sent from my phone - please forgive typos and brevity)

 

[BABSstudent]

For many things, I already had the numbers recorded on an excel sheet. I just used those. Other times I used how many hours a week a put in and then found out how many weeks I worked.

Besides, I emailed every person I listed as a contact and said, "I am applying... I have in my files I volunteered X hours... if schools contact can you verify I did what I listed here or do you have a discrepancy that we can address?"

There should be no issues with my application.

 

[mohad]

Do they even check? I get the feeling it would be unreasonable to check each and every applicant's activities. And I have a question. If I did an activity like volunteering in say november, stopped doing it during winter break, and came back in january and started up again, what should I write for the "hours a week" portion for the app?

 

[ccrone]

I've noticed that you aren't *required* to list a number of hours for an activity. Personally, I'm leaning strongly towards not including a firm estimate. I just cannot see how it would go well. For example, one of my activities is coaching kids soccer. During soccer season, it takes a huge amount of time. On the other hand, it's not all year, so trying to peg a precise number of hours is a losing proposition. Likewise, I do a lot of 24 hours crisis hotline work. Technically, I take 64 hours of call time per month. But not all of it is active. Here again, trying to state a specific number of hours weekly is about as helpful as trying to nail Jello to a wall. It just cannot be done well.

I'd like to see AMCAS broaden that field a bit. Instead of "weekly hours," I'd like to have a dialog box that prompts applicants to describe the time commitment involved (perhaps 150 characters max). This would provide much more helpful information to adcoms, and make life a lot easier for applicants.