Volunteer / research hours during undergrad still “count”?

[yankees89]

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I completed my undergrad degree several years ago. During the time I did some non-clinical volunteering (tutoring) as well as some research (nothing remotely related to medicine).

1. Will schools expect me to complete additional non-clinical hours, since these are not at all recent?
2. Same question for research. Additionally, for research, does it matter that it’s not medical related (barely even science related to be honest)? Also, if the research was done for course credit (such as a thesis) is that different from what people here usually count as research hours?


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[stayathomemom]

As far as I know, everything "counts" in that you can include it in your work and activities section (as long as you started it after high school). But you may need to have more recent evidence of intention to go into medical school. What are these activities, and how many hours do you have?

As far as the research goes, I have no idea.

 

[yankees89]

As far as I know, everything "counts" in that you can include it in your work and activities section (as long as you started it after high school). But you may need to have more recent evidence of intention to go into medical school. What are these activities, and how many hours do you have?

As far as the research goes, I have no idea.

The activity was just tutoring other students, probably around 200 hours altogether. For recent activity I definitely plan on doing clinical volunteering, but mostly wanted to get a sense if I needed to do non-clinical now as well or if I could use what I did in the past to “fill the requirement” so to speak.


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[futuremdforme]

Look overall at your app and see if it shows your overall dedication to helping others. But really I would put effort on clinical things now. I did end up doing some extra non-clinical volunteer work but quite minor compared to my old undergrad stuff.

 

[Ad2b]

I'm 54. 10,000+ volunteering hours from age 18 on. Not sure what it would be if I included my high school years (11,000?) It all counts 🙂

My hours break up into the following:

1. Tutoring other students (D1 athletes)
2. Teaching ESL to inner city kids
3. Homeless shelters
4. Abandoned children in homes
5. MoW
6. Rescue / rehab animals (dogs, horses)
7. American Red Cross disaster services
8. cleft palate surgery board, plus hands on in Peru
9. Ronald McDonald houses
10. inner city kids with pack and snacks for weekends (pre-Target, et al doing it; circa 2004 - 6)
11. Huntington disease
12. American Cancer Society (fund raisers, walks, marathons - not the actual walking but time to organize, set up, manage the day's event, etc)

To me, and from what I've been told, it doesn't really matter where you help, just that you do. Just gave my breakout as an example that all didn't need to be in one area, they can be spread across different things