Extracurricular activities can help to differentiate your application in the medical school admissions process and require thoughtful decision-making and careful planning.
Here’s some advice on choosing and prioritizing extracurriculars, plus some examples of activities that may impress med school admissions officers.
Identify and Understand Your Career Goals
The best extracurricular activities will be personally tailored to your specific goals in medicine and in your career. It is essential to align extracurriculars with your goals, so dedicate some time to reflecting on your personal interests, values and career aspirations. Work to identify areas of genuine passion. Try not to bend to outside pressures or negative comparisons with other premedical students, but instead pursue opportunities that excite you.
For example, if you have no interest in research but a proclivity for service and volunteering, pursue those activities at the expense of joining a laboratory. If you feel particularly excited by a medical or surgical subfield, it is never too early to get involved in specialty-specific interests, such as clinical volunteering in an emergency department or dialysis unit, as a sitter in a psychiatry department, etc.
A great way to gain exposure to a specific field, and validate your early interest, is by joining a clinical research laboratory. Many clinical labs and trials are run by practicing clinicians. Select ones in your area of interest and ask for opportunities to contribute.
You will likely dedicate significant time to two or three extracurricular activities as an undergraduate premed student, so be sure they align with your actual interests.
Carefully Select and Manage Commitments to Extracurricular Activities
Assess your personal time constraints and prior commitments. When you know you have available time, reach out to several possible opportunities, such as clinical work, service, basic or translational research projects, or leadership activities. Don’t be shy — cold email to get your foot in the door!
[Read: 4 Ways Premed Students Can Develop Strong Leadership Experience.]
Start a single extracurricular activity at first, and verify that you can balance your academics and personal life before you take on more responsibilities. It can reflect poorly if you back out of a commitment soon after it was made, so begin only activities you know you can commit to.
Admissions committees value significant, longitudinal time investments in a single activity more than brief involvement in many extracurriculars, and you will find sticking with activities more personally rewarding in the long term, as well.
Don’t underestimate the time required to meaningfully contribute to a research endeavor. Expect to commit significant time to lab work in order to gain meaningful skills or contribute to a project.
At the same time, if you enjoy the work, advocate for yourself to present an abstract, contribute to a publication or write an honors thesis. Purposeful involvement in any extracurricular activity will shine through in your application.
Describe Your Extracurriculars With Purpose in Your Application
When it comes time to apply to med school, spend significant time on the extracurricular activity descriptions. Describe explicitly and concisely what you did, but also craft a compelling narrative around your decision to pursue each activity. Highlight any personal growth that has come as a result, lessons you’ve learned and any impact you’ve been able to have on others.
Even if an activity is common, your experience is unique. Describe a unique clinical encounter you had, a memorable patient or mentee you helped or a service experience that changed the way you see your career.
[How to Document Premed Activities]
You did the legwork and spent many, many hours on a research project, volunteering in a free clinic or leading a tutoring program, so be sure to present these experiences thoughtfully. You want your application to read like a coherent and engaging story, and you want admissions committees to feel that they have gotten to know you through your decisions and experiences presented in your application.
What Are Meaningful Extracurricular Activities?
Many possible extracurricular activities can be meaningful on a medical school application.
If clinical work interests you, working in a free clinic, volunteering in an ER or other hospital department, “sitting” in a psychiatric department or shadowing physicians in any specialty can be significant experiences.
If you find yourself drawn to service, consider opportunities such as mentoring underprivileged youth, organizing preventative health care fairs in underserved communities and working in shelters or soup kitchens.
Leadership opportunities can be less easy to find, but serving as president of a student organization, leading an initiative to address a health disparity or coordinating a team of volunteers are realistic examples of meaningful leadership experiences that can be attained before medical school.
If you’re excited by the possibility of expanding your understanding of biology and medicine, then basic, clinical or translational research is a substantial activity readily available at most major academic centers and universities. The only limit is how much available time you have, as this is a significant investment.
Nonetheless, if research excites you, many faculty members are eager to have an enthusiastic undergraduate premed student join their laboratory. All you need to do is reach out.
Additional Tips for Success
Engage in a diverse range of activities, if possible. Exploring different interests is an essential aspect of the undergraduate premed experience, and you may not know what interests you until you try.
Avoid subconsciously boxing yourself into a career plan too early, and don’t be afraid to take the leap and explore a new extracurricular activity. It is never too late to gain experience and discover a passion.
[Read: How to Decide Where to Attend Medical School]
Within extracurricular activities, seek out opportunities to showcase initiative and demonstrate leadership potential. The more you show that you can do, the more responsibilities you are likely to be given, and the more meaningful the experience will be to you and your application.
Above all, pursue activities that align with your long-term career goals and personal values. While exploring new avenues is important and exciting, if you want to pursue a career centered on service, for example, try to build up significant experience in service-oriented extracurriculars so that you are prepared for such a career. The same goes for research, clinical subspecialty work, etc.
Don’t force yourself to continue in an extracurricular activity you don’t enjoy, just because “everyone is doing research” or because of an existential need to “check the box.” Your time is much too valuable to make decisions in this manner. Pursue opportunities that make you excited and will help prepare you for a career in medicine, and you will be well positioned to be a great medical school applicant.
Thoughtfully select extracurricular activities that reflect genuine passion and commitment to serving others, focus on quality over quantity and describe your activities with purpose and thoughtfulness throughout your application. With hard work and commitment, you should be able to leverage extracurricular experiences to learn, expand your skill set and stand out in the medical school admissions process.
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How to Choose and Prioritize Extracurricular Activities as a Premed Student originally appeared on usnews.com
