Which non-clinical work to include in AMCAS?

[agirlwithdrdreams]

I will be using one of my 15 experiences to describe my non-clinical work experience.

They include:

• Summer Camp Counselor: 1 summer (about 1200 hrs)
• Personal Care Assistant (PCA): 280 hrs (like a in-home CNA)
• Student Employee at University Dining Center: 400 hrs

All of these occurred during my college years, so I am just wondering if there would be any reason to not include any of these or if I can / should include all three...

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[LizzyM]

You'll have 15 spaces. Do you have 12 other experiences that would be more important than these three? One acccounts for an entire summer, one shows that you worked while in school, and the personal care assistant, while not clinical by my definition does show that you have provided bedside care to a person unable to care for themself which will be considered a valuable experience. Frankly, I'd collapse some of the other activities before I'd slash any of these.

 

[Moko]

And meanwhile, on other applications, Dean's list, distinctions, and honors each use up their own slot..

 

[deleted1040417]

And meanwhile, on other applications, Dean's list, distinctions, and honors each use up their own slot..

You should see OP's WAMC thread. Beast of an applicant as well as a student-athlete! No gap years too it's just wow!

EDIT: I aspire to be half of what OP is. Just wow.

 

[agirlwithdrdreams]

You should see OP's WAMC thread. Beast of an applicant as well as a student-athlete! No gap years too it's just wow!

EDIT: I aspire to be half of what OP is. Just wow.

Oh wow! Thanks so much for the kind words and support! This means so much and helps boost my confidence! @Amino Base You just made my day!

 

[Moko]

You should see OP's WAMC thread. Beast of an applicant as well as a student-athlete! No gap years too it's just wow!

EDIT: I aspire to be half of what OP is. Just wow.

You're right. I can certainly see the OP's conundrum. While not perfect, I would batch activities that share similar narratives together, even if the category may not fit perfectly for each item. In the OP's case, given their exceptional non-research ECs, I doubt most adcom members will fault the OP for categorizing their PCA experience as medical/clinical in this scenario, so long as the hours are broken down in the activity section. One aggressive way to categorize the OP's activities:

1) Shadowing: 120 hrs
2) Community service/volunteer - medical/clinical: hospital and nursing home volunteering 150 hrs
3) Community service/volunteer - not medical/clinical: boys and girls club, YMCA, high school tutoring (100+50+20 hrs). All youth volunteering together here
4) Community service/volunteer - not medical/clinical: red cross, food bank, free clinic fundraiser, animal humane society (140+90+75+65 hrs). All non-youth volunteering together here
5) Paid employment - medical/clinical: nursing assistant, personal care assistant (650 hrs).
6) Paid employment - not medical/clinical: summer camp counselor. Clarify in free text # hours as volunteer vs paid staff.
7) Paid employment - not medical/clinical: university dining hall employee (400 hrs)
8) Teaching/tutoring/teaching assistant: undergrad TAs, and chemistry and math tutor (190+195+175 hrs)
9) Research/lab: three research activities (140+120+120 hrs).
10) Leadership: campus ministry leader, youth group leader and Sunday school teacher (700+275 hrs). Clarify in free text # hours leadership vs non-leadership
11) Intercollegiate athletics: NCAA DII team, athletics in action ministry (2100+90 hrs). Can include the DII athletic award in free text under this activity or under honors/awards activity (#12).
12) Honors/awards/recognitions: scholarships/honors. This will be tight, but doable. E.g, I was awarded the following scholarships for academic and scholarly achievement: X, Y, Z scholarships. In addition, I was inducted into the UM Duluth honors program and the mortar board national college senior honors society, and received three additional awards for achievements in research and math. If additional space is needed, I would not mention the Dean's list.
13) Extracurricular activities: pre-med club and student conduct panel member (40+30 hrs)

The OP now has two unfilled activity slots. This can be used to expand back one of the groupings above, or you can use this opportunity to write about other things, such as your hobbies, etc.

Additional considerations:
- If the OP has a poster or oral presentation, I would include that as a separate entry under presentations/posters.
- For entries containing multiple activities, I would simply list the contact for the main activity, and state in the description that references for the other activities are available upon request.
- Being concise is key as you will be up against the character limit for some of the groupings.
- I would only include the future hospital internship as one of your activities if nothing else needs to be cut out. Otherwise, the hospital internship can be mentioned in secondaries, interviews, and updates.

Just my thoughts.

Oh wow! Thanks so much for the kind words and support! This means so much and helps boost my confidence! @Amino Base You just made my day!

To answer your WAMC question. Your application will be competitive for almost every medical school. The relative lack of research may hurt you at the research-heavy schools, but I think that the strength of your non-research ECs make up for this. Best of luck.

 

[agirlwithdrdreams]

To answer your WAMC question. Your application will be competitive for almost every medical school. The relative lack of research may hurt you at the research-heavy schools, but I think that the strength of your non-research ECs make up for this. Best of luck.

First of all thank you for taking the time to look at my other post and putting together this great advice! I love how you did your grouping, it is definitely helpful for putting together my application.

I'm not sure if you have this knowledge off the top of your head, but would you or anyone else mind sharing a list of some of the more research-heavy schools? I am curious and will be helpful if I need to pair down my list of schools to apply for....

 

[deleted1040417]

First of all thank you for taking the time to look at my other post and putting together this great advice! I love how you did your grouping, it is definitely helpful for putting together my application.

I'm not sure if you have this knowledge off the top of your head, but would you or anyone else mind sharing a list of some of the more research-heavy schools? I am curious and will be helpful if I need to pair down my list of schools to apply for....

https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-medical-schools/research-rankings

The top 20 are research-heavy, including your dream school of UCLA. As such an extraordinary student-athlete with all else, I wouldn't be surprised if adcoms took you regardless. I am an under-informed pre-med myself though so don't take my word.

EDIT: Reworded -- previous wording came off negatively.

 

[agirlwithdrdreams]

What is an ideal amount of research hours that the T20 / Research-Heavy schools are looking for?

 

[LizzyM]

What is an ideal amount of research hours that the T20 / Research-Heavy schools are looking for?

It's not the hours, it's the results. Best is having a publication or a presentation at a national meeting. Lower that that but still very good would be having a presentation at a student-focused event, next down would be having funding for your own little sub-project within the lab and at the bottom woudl be doing some repetitive work and/or housekeeping without actually getting into hypothesis generation and testing.

 

[agirlwithdrdreams]

It's not the hours, it's the results. Best is having a publication or a presentation at a national meeting. Lower that that but still very good would be having a presentation at a student-focused event, next down would be having funding for your own little sub-project within the lab and at the bottom woudl be doing some repetitive work and/or housekeeping without actually getting into hypothesis generation and testing.

Good to know. That makes me feel better because...

• 1 of my research experiences is my own funded sub-project that I will be presenting in the spring of 2021 at my university student poster presentations
• The second of my experiences is a 3-semester long honors research project which will be funded through my own grants after the first semester (which was this semester) and I am working on a thesis over the 1.5 years, which I hope to present at conferences on
• My last research experience is my own sub-project in my university's medical school, but not self-funded, but along with the others it's fine (I took on this experience because it was an opportunity to do research in the medical field which was very interesting to me even though its not my main research)