I am a Canadian student, so the application process may be slightly different. I am only applying to two schools this year (my in province schools which, for some reason, are not accepting the old MCAT once the new one is released so this may be my only chance to apply to these schooled unless I want to rewrite the MCAT which will still be valid everywhere except these schools). Anywho, I need three references for one of these schools and they are supposed to be able to talk about my leadership/management, my interpersonal skills/communication, and my advocacy/commitment to community, respectively. The options I have to pick from here are essentially tutoring, various research experience, and a job for occupational health and safety. The OHS job involved management roles in a few projects so I will likely use that for management/leadership. I worked for 8 months doing full time research and my supervisor was on the admission board for med, so I will likely use him for interpersonal skills. My problem is advocacy, I already know my score will be weak in this area but I don't want it to be a reason not to apply period. I signed up for big sisters mentoring program about 4 months ago and have been accepted but am still waiting on a match, so that seems like it would be inappropriate to use as a reference considering I would barely know my case supervisor by October (when the app is due). My other volunteer experience was in research, so that doesn't seem like a valid reference either. Tutoring is all for pay and there isn't a single student or parent who stands out as someone I would want to use as a reference anyways. I don't need an amazing reference for this, because like I said, I already know my advocacy score will be weak, I just need something that isn't laughably desperate. I considered instead using my supervisor from my research job as an advocacy reference, since interpersonal skills could really be anyone. Is research "advocacy" by any stretch? (it did involve direct patient interaction and publishing a paper, not that that makes it any more applicable...) I am going into my fourth year of a chemical/biomedical engineering degree, and my interests are more in the diagnostic and research side of medicine, which probably explains why my app is so weak in the advocacy area...
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