Volunteering Hours - how to list/ethical or not?

[whyx3]

---

Members do not see this ad.

I volunteered at a place for one year and accumulated roughly 150 hours. I went on a 3 week vacation with family, took 3 weeks off for X'mas, 2 weeks off for Spring break, another week off for finals, and probably another week off because I wasn't feel good. Given 52 weeks in a year minus the 10 weeks listed above, this puts me at 42 weeks of volunteering. Divide 150 by that gives me ~3.6 hours/week. I tried inputting 3.5 hours/week into amcas, it rounds it up to 4 because the system apparently doesn't take half hours.

Given the logic above, is it unethical for me to list 4 hours with 150 hours of actual logged hours throughout one year of volunteering?

Generally speaking, do med schools consider that people that breaks during their volunteering schedule especially during times of transition (from one semester to the next) and of course holidays? Because if you just multiply (hours/week) by the total length of time it's usually 20% to 25% more than my actual hours on file due to sick days/vacation/breaks. However, it would seem ridiculous for me to list "took 3 weeks off for vacation, 3 weeks off for x'mas, etc, etc" in the description section and takes away from space I have to describe my activities.

 

[anfleisch]

They won't be worrying about you being that specific. If you want, put the number of hours total in the paragraph.

 

[LizzyM]

Divide by 52 weeks and call it 3 hours per week. It is the *average* with the understanding that you had some weeks off and averaging over the entire time period you did about 3 hours per week.

 

[deleted202457]

Divide by 52 weeks and call it 3 hours per week. It is the *average* with the understanding that you had some weeks off and averaging over the entire time period you did about 3 hours per week.

👍

 

[Ischemic]

Why you so worried over this, it doesn't even make that big of a difference. Chances are that they won't bother checking the correctness of volunteer hours of 10000 applicants.

 

[whyx3]

I'm only worried because 1. I don't like lying. 2 I want to make sure that if they do in fact verify, I'm not pushing boundaries that may potentially get me kicked off of med school post admissions.

 

[Frogmanmike14]

you are not lying if you round up to the nearest whole number. dividing your total hours by 52 doesn't make any sense, they are asking how much time you spend there during your "working" week.

 

[LizzyM]

you are not lying if you round up to the nearest whole number. dividing your total hours by 52 doesn't make any sense, they are asking how much time you spend there during your "working" week.

but they don't ask about "working week" (although that would be true if you were listing a 40 hour week job for a year or more).

There is a start and end date and the hours per week.

 

[phatlineman]

but they don't ask about "working week" (although that would be true if you were listing a 40 hour week job for a year or more).

There is a start and end date and the hours per week.

ok, I'm completely confused now. Say I volunteer at a hospital for 8 hours per week for 3 years but I took some time off here and there..
why can't I put 8 hours in the box? because when I actually did it this is how many hours per week it was...plus if you divide actual hours by the amount of time you spent, its going to look like you did way less then you actually did.

For example, say I shadowed several doctors from freshman year until now and have 400 hours total. and when I shadowed them it was 20 hrs per week. since there have been lets say 150 weeks between then and now then that means that I only shadowed for 2.7 hours per week? that sounds like barely any work was done at all (less then half a day)...and this looks alot worse then even somebody who shadowed one dcotor for one week totally 40 hours, and thus would have 40 hrs per week on the application

 

[LizzyM]

This is the trouble with counting total hours.....

If you know your start date & your end date (or "to present") and average number of hours per week (maybe it was always 8 or maybe it was 6 sometimes and 10 some other weeks but it averages to 8), then it is easy.

What gets dicey is when you have a long period (e.g. 6/08 - 8/09) but it was actually just 20 weeks - 2 summers- with a long break for the academic year. I've seen people do that and claim 40 hours per week.... when I ask at interview -- how did you manage to work 40 hours per week during the academic year? then I get the truth which was not disclosed in the experience section.

Be careful with your start & end dates or slice the salami and list each bout of the activity separately (e.g. 6/08-8/08 and a separate entry for 6/09-8/09).

 

[Seven of Nine]

i think the confusion stems from the AMCAS definition of average hours per week: "Enter the number of hours each week that you devoted to this experience." -pg 56, 2011 AMCAS Instruction [PDF]

that may not sound like instructions to average the hours over the entire period of participation. it could be interpreted as 'list how many you typically worked each week.'

LizzyM: would you say that in your provided example, is it acceptable to enter in 40 hrs in the average hours box with the definite start/end dates, and then explicitly break the different periods worked in the description (rather than use up multiple work/activity spots?

 

[MediCynical]

This is the trouble with counting total hours.....

If you know your start date & your end date (or "to present") and average number of hours per week (maybe it was always 8 or maybe it was 6 sometimes and 10 some other weeks but it averages to 8), then it is easy.

What gets dicey is when you have a long period (e.g. 6/08 - 8/09) but it was actually just 20 weeks - 2 summers- with a long break for the academic year. I've seen people do that and claim 40 hours per week.... when I ask at interview -- how did you manage to work 40 hours per week during the academic year? then I get the truth which was not disclosed in the experience section.

Be careful with your start & end dates or slice the salami and list each bout of the activity separately (e.g. 6/08-8/08 and a separate entry for 6/09-8/09).

I submitted my AMCAS with a single activity description for a 10 month volunteer experience totaling 101.5 hours... however, I took about 3 months off due to incompatibility between my volunteer & work schedules, yet still listed the average hours/week as 4.

Should I include a brief explanation for this discrepancy on the first update letter I send out to schools? 😕

 

[LizzyM]

The confusion comes from the instructions on your end and what I see on my end. IIRC, the number I see is labeled "hours per week" or maybe Avg. hrs/wk. The trick here is that you don't want to have so many activities for the same time period that it appears to be impossible for mere humans. If you don't want to take up more than 1 spot (let's say for 2 summers of effort) then put a clear explanation in the description.

If you are having second thoughts after submitting the AMCAS... I'm not sure how to advise you.

 

[ThaliaNox]

This always ends up being funny looking, however applicants input the time. I often see people who put that they worked 10 hours a week for five or six activities over the same year period. If you look in their discription maybe they TAed three classes in that year, worked a part time job in the summer, volunteered over Christmas and tutored one semester as well. Often this is written out. Sometimes, though, it is really hard to figure out how much time people really spent on things and I end up taking oodles of notes during the interview so we can get things cleared up.

Honestly, issues like this are why sometimes we end up just looking and saying "Yep, they hospital volunteered."

 

[LizzyM]

This always ends up being funny looking, however applicants input the time. I often see people who put that they worked 10 hours a week for five or six activities over the same year period. If you look in their discription maybe they TAed three classes in that year, worked a part time job in the summer, volunteered over Christmas and tutored one semester as well. Often this is written out. Sometimes, though, it is really hard to figure out how much time people really spent on things and I end up taking oodles of notes during the interview so we can get things cleared up.

Honestly, issues like this are why sometimes we end up just looking and saying "Yep, they hospital volunteered."

Amen.

 

[chrisoc13]

Honestly on mine I just did my best to make it make sense and then tried to clarify in the explanation. Total hours etc. Some activities were only in the fall and I tried to simply put that in the explanation. I figure everyone has trouble filling out that part of the application since it is so ridiculously set up. If it is hugely important I hope it comes up in the interview. For instance I play intramural soccer every fall and it tends to take an hour or two a week, but I didn't want to put an entry for every year so I simply put my whole college time an hour a week. Close enough I figure. I didn't do the whole average per week thing for it because it would have been .45 or something ridiculous. I do wish they would make that section easier to fill out.