What to write about for 'Most Meaningful Activities'

[dxu425]

Hi everyone,

Hoping to get your thoughts on this. I am trying to decide which of my W/A I am going to write about as my most meaningful. The possible issue is that my letters of recommendation are directly related to two of the activities I consider most meaningful (e.g. my supervisor is writing about my job experience after graduating college; a science professor is writing about me both as a student and as a teacher of the course in later years). Should I choose different activities on which to expound, or would it be fine to devote more space to these activities even with the LORs? The reason I ask is because I've seen a lot of advice about not making an activity a most meaningful activity if you've already talked about it at length in your PS.

Thank you very much for your help!

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[ericksonj15]

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[Lya]

In my opinion, your most meaningful activities should have nothing to do with your LORs. In other words, close your eyes and think about various hallmarks during the course of your college education. If you have to do it all over again, what are 1-3 activities that you absolutely know for sure from your heart that you will make the same decisions? Or, what are the activities that majorly shaped who you are today, as in you know for sure you will be a totally different person if you have not done those activities?

If you cannot talk for an hour (yes, for an hour) about each of those activities and how they influenced you over time, they aren't probably your most meaningful activity. For example, ask me about my experiences in my semester abroad in Ghana and I can talk for hours about how important that experience was, not just in terms of public health but also in terms of "myself" before and after the experience. But it was not necessarily my major topic in my PS. It was more about my past because I knew this is more relevant in where I am coming from.

I agree with the poster above as well. The key here is that you have to be brutally honest and genuine about yourself, instead of "marking this as the most meaningful because this is what adcoms want to see." You can still mark it as the most meaningful even when you talk in depth about that activity in your PS. Sometimes, your PS has an overall theme where there are other certain things you could not talk about for the same activity (because otherwise, your PS might not be cohesive overall), so just because you talked in length about it in PS, it doesn't mean you can't make it as meaningful. Just my opinion =)

 

[red7]

Choose whichever activities you feel have most influenced you, and expand on how your experiences are relevant to choosing medicine and/or how the skills you gained will help you to become a good medical student/physician. The other thing is that if an activity is really your most meaningful, it was probably complex, and you learned many things - so your reference letter might provide your supervisor's observations, and if you mention it in multiple parts of your application, make sure that each time, you are presenting something new which supports the argument that you will become a good medical student/physician.

Just as an aside, I DID include shadowing as one of my most meaningful experiences even though it's something almost everyone will have on their application, but that doesn't mean that you or anyone else should make it "most meaningful". It just shows that you need to make your own decisions on what really were your most meaningful activities in your pursuit of a medical career. As long as you can coherently talk about what you learned and why it's relevant/important, you should be fine.

 

[Elevencents]

I don't understand the notion that you shouldn't talk about something as a most meaningful activity if you talked about it elsewhere. Either it is or it isn't. If an experience really stood out to you in your life I don't see anything negative with bringing it up multiple times. That's what meaningful events are.