Hi Everyone.
I am planning on applying to med school in 2007. I am concerned about whether or not I have enough “clinical/volunteer” experience. I am currently 27 and since I was pre-med in college (over five years ago), I had lots of clinical experience at that time (e.g. volunteering in an underprivileged/uninsured clinic over a summer, co-founded a microenterprise in Haiti in conjunction with a hospital in a rural area which produced and sold mosquito nets) and had lots of humanitarian projects under my belt (Habitat for Humanity, etc.) That was over four years ago, though. After that I went to grad school for my master’s degree in philosophy and did nothing volunteer related for three years.
Now I am back in a post-bac program at UPenn, and am trying to get some more recent clinical/ volunteer experience. I just completed over 70 hours over the summer (in addition to two classes), which includes basic volunteering in the MICU, helping with a research study in the MICU and helping with a research study the hematology/oncology unit of the same hospital.
Now that fall has arrived, though, I have a full schedule (3 upper-division classes, but no work) and I was planning on scaling my volunteer/clinical work down to a total of 2 hours of research-related work per week.
However, I am concerned that:
a) my fall semester schedule still won’t look full enough to adcoms (I have a 4.0 after 5 courses here and I really don’t want adcoms to attribute this to lots of “extra time,” an unfair advantage over other students) and
b) my 2 hrs/week research work is not enough to bolster my more recent clinical/volunteer record.
Do I need to do more? Is it negative that my only clinical experience this fall will be research related?
I would see what some of the veterans around here think but I don’t really see how you have any problem with volunteering…they mainly want to see a desire to help others and obviously you’ve demonstrated that through what you’ve done in the past. As far as the clinical experience goes, if you’ve done enough time in a hospital that you know what a doctor does, I don’t see why they would need or want more than that.
- Quote:
However, I am concerned that:
a) my fall semester schedule still won't look full enough to adcoms (I have a 4.0 after 5 courses here and I really don't want adcoms to attribute this to lots of "extra time," an unfair advantage over other students) and
b) my 2 hrs/week research work is not enough to bolster my more recent clinical/volunteer record.
Do I need to do more? Is it negative that my only clinical experience this fall will be research related?
a) my fall semester schedule still won't look full enough to adcoms (I have a 4.0 after 5 courses here and I really don't want adcoms to attribute this to lots of "extra time," an unfair advantage over other students) and
b) my 2 hrs/week research work is not enough to bolster my more recent clinical/volunteer record.
Do I need to do more? Is it negative that my only clinical experience this fall will be research related?
I think you will probably be okay. Three upper division science classes constitute a full load at most schools, so I don't think that will be a concern. If you get into the semester/quarter and find that you have more free time than anticipated, then add some more hours researching or volunteering.
There is no magic number that adcoms look for when they look at volunteering/clinical/research time. In theory, the more hours you have, the better it looks, but they don't have a minimum cut off where they say - gee, this person only volunteered for 2 hours a week and we really like to see 5 hours a week. Quality vs. quantity of experiences is often overlooked by pre-med students.