volunteer/extracurricular activities???

[DAKAZA]

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Hello, I'm a 27 year old male nurse and I want to apply to med school in a year or so. I'm doing science pre-reqs so I can take the MCAT after completing my BSN. I've been a nurse for 6 years. I have 5 years psych experience and 1 year of ER experience. I'm working full time and taking classes full time. Do you think my clinical experience will waive the extracurricular/volunteer activities they generally look for? I'm not really involved in any organizations or anything and I feel like I'm way too busy to do anything else at this point just to fluff my application.

 

[DrMidlife]

From my perspective, your nursing experience is about 80% of what you need for a nice tasty EC profile. The missing 20% is a demonstration of leadership, scholarship, independence, and/or heavy science. If your numbers and the rest of your app are stellar, then maybe you don't need to fill out that 20%.

Best of luck to you.

 

[DAKAZA]

Thanks for the reply. As far as leadership....I've been the full time charge nurse on my unit for about 4 years now. I'm responsible for everything that happens on my shift. I feel I do a good job and function in a clinical leadership role everyday. Hopefully that's worth something.

 

[defboy]

I have been browsing this section for a few days and have wondered about the same thing! I work 60 hours a week and go FT to school. My wife stays home with our two girls. I want to do the Extra/volunteering but seems like time is not working for me but the other way around. I have shadowed podiatrist, orthos, fam. practioners and chiros but I can't keep the pace up from here on out. Will they look at 50 hours of shadow and no extracurrculors aas a poor effort?

As for DAKAZA I asked about the RN thing on another forum and they raved on it and said it would be a positive-you have actual medical experience, you'll have a degree and as long as you get the science gpa you should roll. only question would be "so did you want to be a nurse or a doctor?" and then some odd question from some gungho med student. best of luck.