I’m working on finalizing my list of 15 activities for the upcoming cycle and would appreciate your feedback on a few questions:
1- I just learned about a mentoring group in my area. It is for everyone from middle school- attending physician who is interested in medicine. They meet once a month and it seems like a super great opportunity. However, by the time I apply I only will have attend a few meetings… is it worth listing something with only 8 hours of exposure? I don’t want to seem like I’m just “checking boxes” but I also just found out about the group.
2- Does anyone have good examples of how you described Scribing on your application? I feel like Ad Coms know what scribing is, so I probably don’t have to do a huge description… but I also don’t want it to sound lame.
Thanks for your input!
Ooh, I forgot one!
3- I am a home owner and am considering adding that to my list. On one hand I think it makes me stand out as different, shows responsibility, maturity etc. On the other, I wonder if out of state schools might consider it a drawback since it also shows I’m pretty rooted in my current location…and it doesn’t directly tie into medicine.
In my opinion, your activities should both describe what you did and preferably what you learned/accomplished. So for scribing, sure describe the duties, but what did you learn from the experience in terms of skills or what did you accomplish - maybe provided better patient care by XYZ.
For the new group, you can project your hours through the date of matriculation. So you’d have, let’s say, 60 hours by the August 2017. But I’d put in the description something like hours projected through July 2017 so you’re being upfront.
I don’t know that I’d put in being a homeowner. It’s not an activity or hobby. If you rehabbed homes, fine. I think it would look like you are grasping to fill 15 spots, which by the way, you don’t have to. But if you like to travel, cook or whatever, you could always make that an entry.
Slightly OT, but is it necessary to have 15 activities, or is it acceptable to have, say, only 5? What’s the “danger” number if any? 10? 5? 3?
15 is the max. I would say you need at LEAST 3 (if I remember correctly, you could select 3 “most meaningful”), but I’d be willing to bet that an admissions reviewer would love to see a few really good ones over 15 time wasters.
It’s like the optional essays. Do them if you want. Theoretically meeting the minimum is good enough. Concise/quality is better than junk/quantity.
Thank you KM. I think I’m going to have a difficult time coming up with more than 5, but the ones I have will hopefully be decent and sufficient.
Make sure you look at the instructions for it. You can put awards and other accolades in there too. Doesn’t have to necessarily be a “you doing something actively” kind of thing I don’t believe.