Writing med school work & activities

Your Premed Priorities: Non-Clinical Experiences that Medical Schools Love

For a strong W&A section, you’ll want to highlight both clinical and non-clinical experiences. Your non-clinical experiences are an excellent way to demonstrate some of the traits and characteristics that will lead to your success in medical school, while also showing some personality. Here are a few of the non-clinical experiences that medical schools love to see.

Research and/or Lab Work: AMCAS matriculation data for the 2018 entering class at Johns Hopkins stated that 96% had research or lab experience. If you want to attend a school famous for its research, you need more than one of these gigs. Even schools that aren't explicitly known for research love seeing multiple research positions in your W&A.

There's so much critical thinking involved in research. And there's the opportunity to be published—a slam dunk. In research work, you will collaborate with a team to accomplish a measurable and valuable task. The cooperation and diligence you need to be a part of such projects are exactly the qualities you want to highlight in your W&A and Personal Statement. Even being a small part of something can make a huge impact. We had a client who essentially did data entry for a research project, but her careful work caught two mistakes that would have ruined the data set. Her team credited her on a scientific paper for her contributions, an unexpected peacock-sized feather in her cap.

Non-Clinical Volunteering: Service is a huge part of medicine—but not all your service has to be medical. Schools like Loyola University Stritch School of Medicine that emphasize caring for the whole person will especially value roles in which you interacted with your community. Volunteering shows compassion and often builds communication and collaboration skills. Share a story where you connected with another person or collaborated with a team of other volunteers.

Such a position can also prove ingenuity. One of our clients volunteered at a non-profit that helped families register for SNAP benefits. After a couple of weeks on the job, she suggested changes to the organization's method for approaching people at family court hearings. She was able to connect with more caregivers who needed help as a result.

Big Academic Wins: To include awards and accolades in the W&A, you must go beyond listing them. Give some background about what you had to achieve to be recognized. If you did a thesis as part of your school's Honors College program, share the process, skills you learned, and how you felt upon accomplishing this goal. If you had any help reaching your goal, say so. Did a mentor work with you during office hours? Did a librarian help you track down a rare manuscript? Medical schools love it when a candidate seeks, accepts, and appreciates help.

Science-Related Anything: A science-related club or volunteering experience will be attractive to schools because it shows a passion for scientific study. Tutoring and mentoring looks especially good because teaching is a big part of medicine. We had a client who spent a year's worth of Tuesday afternoons helping high school students learn about physiology. It improved his ability to break down information. You'll be teaching med students as a resident, residents as a fellow, fellows as an attending, and you'll be translating complexities for a layman patient daily. 

Conferences: Attending a conference is typically only a one-day time commitment, but it shows an interest in learning about the current state and future of medicine. Conferences can be very inspiring. These speakers were selected for a reason. Networking with doctors is great, and talking to any patients in attendance is even better. When you're writing this entry, don't just list what you did or heard at the conference, tell us how it affected you after that one day. 

Outside of the W&A, having attended a conference can come in handy during an interview. You might be asked if there are any new developments in healthcare that you find riveting. If you attended a conference and subsequently read more about the topics discussed, you're going to have a lot of thoughts to share.

Campus Organizations: If you've dedicated years to the same organization, highlight your biggest accomplishments. What did you change as part of this organization, or what important tradition did you carry on? Did you bring anything medical into the mix? For example, when your sorority did charity work, was it for a medicine-related cause? If you have some control over your organization's next event, see if you can swing things in that direction. Incidentally, if your school has a pre-med club and you're not in it, join it now.

Hobbies: Hobbies are not superficial. Yes, your medical experiences, volunteer work, noteworthy club positions, and academic accolades are going to outrank this in the W&A. But you have fifteen unique entries to fill, and you want to show different dimensions of yourself. We believe a hobby is a must in a W&A. Read our blog post dedicated to hobbies. 

Related: 

Your Pre-Med Priorities: Clinical Experiences that Medical Schools Love

Your Work & Activities Section Series

Your Work & Activities Section: Two Problems You Don't Really Have

"Help, I have too many experiences!" 

We've heard it before: "How am I going to keep this at 15 entries? I have 20 options." Here's the thing, you probably don't. You can and should bundle certain activities. Doing so reduces repetition and allows you to include a wider variety of experiences. Say, you were secretary of your student council for one year and vice president for two—that's material for one entry. Even if one of those roles produced one of your Most Meaningful experiences, you can likely cover both in one write-up.

"Help, I Don't Have Enough Experiences!" 

You may insist: "I have had three clinical experiences, two volunteer posts, and was in one club in college. I don't have 15 options!" 

Here's the thing, you probably do. Did you take a weekend long improv class with some friends? It might have teased out a braver you or helped you to think on your feet. Do or did you have a non-medical job? Obviously, you're going to include all medical work or volunteering experiences as well as impressive internships or jobs in any industry. But even working as an office temp, swiping cards at the college food court, and ringing up retail at the local bookstore exemplifies your work ethic and commitment. It also implies that you're not spoiled. Facts are facts: A lot of med school applicants are privileged. Earning your own money can set you apart because it shows personal responsibility and that you know how to balance work and studying. 

Hobbies count too. It is not a waste of space to share that you're an artist or love to garden. You can angle these activities to be more relevant to your application by explaining what transferable qualities—creativity, dedication, patience—you can apply to medicine. Your hobby write-ups also can highlight different strengths than your other entries, have a passionate delivery, and show some personality. 

"No, I really don't have enough experiences."

If you don't have enough experiences, now is the time to get them. Put together a group to clean up tree pits in your neighborhood to practice leadership. Take a hip-hop dance class to become less stiff and stern. If you're interested in mental health, volunteer for a crisis hotline. Exercising empathy and learning to talk to people on the worst days of their lives is useful for a future physician. Last-minute shadowing experiences are an option, too. They in no way should replace clinical experiences, but, if you are light on clinical experience or want to get some career goal-related shadowing experiences in, this is the ticket. Attending a conference or volunteering at a community health fair are one-day events that can lead to impactful encounters. Pursuing and sharing education is very valuable to medical schools.

Your Work & Activities Section: Where to Begin

To improve your W&A writing experience and the quality of your entries, try this: 

Raid your brainstorm. As we’ve frequently mentioned, your brainstorm serves every part of your application process. If you're having a hard time with W&A entries, copy and paste info directly from a brainstorm bucket or two and cut and sew together the first draft of an entry from that material.

One client began a W&A entry on her time as an EMT by briefly sharing salient details about things she did and skills she acquired while working on an ambulance. She then copied (literally control-C) a poignant story from her brainstorm's ah-ha bucket wherein she showed compassion for a patient who had miscarried. She pasted it directly into her W&A draft document. She proceeded to trim unnecessary parts of the story (what day it was, what her partner was doing), and add a takeaway about seeing the importance of caring for a patient's mental health.

Start with the easy ones. Do you know what your takeaway was from shadowing a pediatrician? Did working on a poster presentation with a group help you learn to manage conflict? Have you been swimming competitively since you were a guppy? Instead of writing W&A entries in the order of their occurrence or importance, start with whatever comes naturally.

Do a dirty draft—and re-read it later. You don't have to refine your first draft text right away. In fact, we’d recommend that you write all 15 first drafts (that doesn't have to happen in one sitting) and then go back to the entries with fresh eyes later. Sometimes when you're reading one entry repeatedly back-to-back, you see what's in your head and not what is on the page. So, you might think a description makes perfect sense. But later, you'll read it, discover issues, and revise it accordingly.

Craft your stories. You'll always share some basic duties and details; and they can be pretty cut and dry. For example, "At the free clinic, I checked in patients and learned how to take vitals. I interacted with approximately 20 patients during every four-hour shift." But you must also include what you got out of this experience, preferably using an engaging anecdote. "One patient, Linda…" If you don't think you have a specific story to tell, schedule time with an Apply Point consultant and we'll talk things over and find one. You'll be surprised at how much of a story you can fit into 700 characters. But don't worry about going over the word count in your first draft. We're here to help you pare down, if necessary.

Your Work & Activities Section: Before You Start

Before we make a case for the kinds of experiences you should include in your W&A and get into the deep details you should be sharing, we're going to give you three super-basic tips for writing these entries. Bookmark this page and keep it accessible because you are going to want to check that you're doing these three things in each entry that you write.

  1. Use complete sentences. This is not a resume. You might have done an activity log when presenting your candidacy to your pre-med committee. That will be an excellent resource, but it's probably not polished, and these entries must be.

  2. Go beyond the "what." Don't just describe a job you did. Share details about how this experience challenged, changed, or motivated you. Through anecdotes, show the qualities that medical schools are looking for, which include leadership and critical thinking abilities, empathy, strong communication skills, resilience, intellectual curiosity, and maturity.

  3. Utilize your space well. For general entries, you'll have 700 characters with spaces to tell your story. Aim to max out that character count. Each experience should warrant it—700 is not that many characters. For the Most Meaningful entries, you'll have 700 characters with spaces, followed by an additional 1,325 with spaces. If you come up short on either section of the Most Meaningful entries, don't worry about it, so long as you have something compelling in each section.

Laying the Foundation for Your Med School Application: Build a Brainstorm Document

Before you begin work on your medical school application, we recommend that you create a brainstorm document where you will explore your formative experiences—what you thought, felt, said, and did. This brainstorm will be your touchstone for everything about this application process. It will help you discover what meaningful experiences and qualities you want to highlight in your Work and Activities, Personal Statement, and Secondary essays, and discuss during your interviews.

This brainstorm could end up being seven pages or 25—you want to be free and generous in your writing. While your brainstorm text does not need to be polished, your unfinished thoughts should be organized for greater ease when writing. Putting meaningful experiences into different "buckets" helps a lot. You might have some crossover with experiences technically fitting into two buckets or more—don't worry about that; put them in one bucket, for now, to keep things grouped. Maybe write: "This is also a leadership experience" or "Integrity/Critical Thinking" in your notes.

An important note: Eighty percent of these experiences should be from adulthood (college and beyond). Twenty percent can be from before then if they established foundational skills or led to evolutions in perspective. For example, if you taught wilderness first aid as an Eagle Scout. If your interest in medicine sprung from your prolonged childhood illness, that is relevant information.

Bucket 1: A-ha Moments: What meaningful experiences changed your mind about or expanded your perspective on something? Some could be spectacular successes, others, catastrophic failures. Have you learned from a mistake? What skills of yours did you discover in a challenging time? What did you think about these things at the time? How did you feel? (Prepare yourself, we're going to ask those last two repeatedly.) 

Bucket 2: Critical Thinking and Problem-Solving: In what meaningful experiences did you utilize critical thinking and problem-solving skills? How did you determine the best course of action? Did you approach something one way at first and then correct yourself? What did you think about these things at the time? How did you feel? 

Bucket 3: Leadership Abilities: In what meaningful experiences did you show your leadership abilities? Did leadership come naturally to you, or did you work to get to this place? (Both things are great!) How did you support your team? Did you encourage collaboration or independence? Did you feel supported by your team? Did you experience any pushback, and how did you handle that if you did? What did you think about these things at the time? How did you feel? 

Bucket 4: Teamwork and Collaboration: During what meaningful experiences did you work with a team or collaborate with others? Were you working with people unlike yourself? Was there a struggle for balance in the beginning? Any confusion? What did you appreciate about your team members? How did they influence and impact you and your actions? Did one or two team members step up in a way you admired? What did you think about these things at the time? How did you feel? 

Bucket 5: Empathy and Connection: Fill this bucket. You must have multiple experiences that touch on empathy and connection somewhere in your application. In what meaningful experiences did you empathize and connect with others? What effect did you have on others? What effect did they have on you? What did you think about these things at the time? How did you feel? 

Bucket 6: Experiences that Reinforced Your Commitment to Medicine: What meaningful experiences reinforced your commitment to studying medicine? You've probably known that you've wanted to be a doctor for some time—what let you know you were on the right track? Was it meeting a doctor you admired? Was it accomplishing something academically or in research work? While volunteering abroad? What did you think of these things at the time? How did you feel?

Bucket 7: Miscellaneous: What experiences have you had that you can't quite categorize? What else should we know about you? What do you think we don't necessarily have to know? Don’t be afraid to expose some vulnerability and use everything you’ve got. You should even include things about yourself and what you care about that you don't imagine will be a factor in an essay. You might be able to weave aspects of your personality or some fun facts into your Personal Statement, Work and Activities, or Secondaries to add some color—or something even better.

Related:

Your story set apart.