Continuing on the thread of the components of the AMCAS application, let’s talk about the Work/Activities section. According to the AAMC, this section is designed to give you the opportunity to highlight work experiences, extracurricular activities, awards, honors, or publications that you would like to bring to the attention of the medical schools you are applying to. In short, this is an opportunity for you to sell yourself. I cannot overestimate the importance of paying careful attention to this section, it is JUST as important as your personal statement. In fact, this section shows up ahead of your personal statement. You are allowed to enter and describe in 700 characters up to 15 activities. You can then identify up to 3 of those activities that you consider most meaningful and elaborate on them in 1325 characters. Below are answers to some of the questions I had when I was applying:
How is this different from my personal statement?
The most important advice I can give you is to ensure that you do not waste this section on rehashing your personal statement. While activities that you wrote about on your personal statement should naturally get an entry here, ensure that you write about them from a different angle. For example, since my research experience contributed significantly to my “Why medicine?”, I wrote about it in my personal statement and also designated it as one of my most meaningful activities because I had interrupted my schooling to pursue this experience. In my personal statement, I focused on how the research I was doing reinforced my decision to pursue medical school. I also used that as an opportunity to talk about my interpersonal skills and how I use that in my daily work as a research technician. To avoid redundancy, in my work/activities section, I wrote about why I chose to take two years off to do this work, detailed my research project, and emphasized why I was applying MD only and not MD/Ph.D. despite my research experiences (see picture below).
What category should I select?
Another thing to carefully consider is which category to choose for each activity. You only get to designate one category for each activity. See here for all 18 categories. While some may be very clear cut, others are confusing. I for one struggled to choose between “research/lab” and “paid employment – not medical/clinical” for my paid research position. In the end, I settled on “Research/Lab” because I felt that it captured the experience more. I think that what is most important here is that you try to cover all the core extracurricular activities for medical school - physician shadowing/patient exposure, community service/volunteering, and research.
Which activities should I write about?
I had 5 years of activities between college and preparing my application. As such, I had more than 15 things to choose from so I really struggled to narrow my list. In the end, I decided that presenting myself as a well-rounded student was the most important. I was applying to very research-heavy medical schools, so I used 4 of the 15 entries on research projects/internships I had completed at 4 different institutions. This was very important for me to do because I graduated from a no-name, very small undergraduate, my internships at top and bigger institutions were my way to show that I can succeed in those environments. Also, my letters of recommendation were coming from mentors I met at these internships, it was very important that I help admission officers connect the dot.
Next, I wrote about my community service and clinical volunteer experiences (4 entries in total). A lot of my “why medicine?” centers around serving the community that I come from and providing service to underserved populations. So it was very important that I highlighted my commitment to service in my activities section. I also included my shadowing experiences here. I actually lumped them all in one entry and explained the component of each one in the 700 characters' space.
I used the remaining 6 entries to highlight some of my interests outside of medicine. For example, I love to teach and worked as a tutor throughout college. I elaborated on this interest. I am also very interested in policymaking and the justice system so I was on the student conduct committee in my college. I love trivia so I wrote about my experiences competing nationwide on the quiz bowl club In my college. There’s a category for honor/awards/recognition so I used this to talk about the merit scholarship that paid for my entire college tuition.
The bottom line here is that you should use this section to highlight core extracurricular activities that medical schools look for – shadowing, volunteering, and research and use the rest to talk about the things that you enjoy doing outside of medicine.
Which activities should I select as my Most Meaningful Experience?
In short, whichever one you believe is the most meaningful to YOU, not to anyone else. I spent a lot of time on this but I don’t think it matters much. What is most important is that you are able to show why these activities were important to you. Try to answer “what did you contribute to this experience?”, “What did you learn from it?”, “How did it help improve your character?”, and “how will I incorporate lessons from this experience to my medical education?”. Asking yourselves these questions also come in handy when describing each activity. See the link and picture below for an example.
There’s so much more I can talk about in this section but I think I’ve touched on some of the core components. See the AAMC guideline on approaching every section of your AMCAS application. Please share it with your colleagues. As always, we are here to answer any questions.
Yours in support,
Olamide O.
FYI AMCAS will begin sending applications to medical schools on July 10, 2020 (less than 2 weeks!), so really work on submitting your application ASAP to allow sufficient time for processing. Earlier (once near perfect) is really better.
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