The Best and Worst Extracurriculars for Medical School
We’ve heard this a million times—getting into medical school is far from a walk in the park. As the admissions process gets even more competitive, applicants have to think about how they can stand out. If you’re preparing to apply soon, you have to consider how you’ve stood out outside the classroom. To help guide you through which activities are favorable over others, we’ve brought you the list of the best and worst activities for medical school. Admissions committees look for unique ways through which candidates have demonstrated their fit for the profession. Any activity that is common, and doesn’t highlight leadership, teamwork, and initiative counts in the worst category. Without further ado, let’s take a look.
The Best Extracurriculars for Medical School
Research
When it comes to the ideal of the best and worst extracurriculars for medical school, research is practically a given. Having research under your belt helps boost your application if done right. If done poorly, you’ll be just another one of the thousands of applicants with typical work experience on your file. Research can occur in different degrees depending on where your interests lie. Deliberately put some thought into the kind of clinical research or scientific lab work that is available and consider how it might demonstrate your dedication to medicine. You could be involved in bench research, clinical research, qualitative research, or quantitative research depending on your medical interests and the kinds of opportunities you can find for students at your level.
Shadowing A Doctor
Next on our list of the better half of best and worst extracurriculars for medical school, we have shadowing. Because shadowing is such a common pre-med activity, it’s important that you put careful thought into it. When looking for doctors to shadow, try to find one in your field of interest. For example, if you want to be a heart surgeon and have other activities that align with this interest, such as working in a cardiology lab, try finding a cardiologist to shadow. It wouldn’t make sense for you to shadow a pediatrician, after all. Admissions committees would be confused, as this experience wouldn’t align with the rest of your application.
One of the biggest benefits of shadowing a doctor is the one-on-one relationships you have the chance to build. This connection, if strong, could prove to be essential when the time comes to ask for letters of recommendation for your applications.
Volunteering with Patients
Volunteering can be tricky. If it’s a one-time opportunity, perhaps avoid it. However, you can seek out a longer-term active opportunity to work with a person or a group of people who are ill and need help can develop your clinical skills as you observe how they are treated, as well as understand their needs and support them. Some potential ways you can do so include:
- Work at a camp for children with medical needs, such as a camp for diabetic kids
- Volunteer at an assisted living facilities and work with elders who have Alzheimer’s
- Volunteer at a hospice; see how care providers interact with patients and their families
- Volunteer at a hospital or clinic abroad if you’re traveling during a gap year
- Volunteer at protests as an emergency medic
Working As An EMT
Becoming an EMT can be a long and labor-intensive process, but it can also be incredibly rewarding in terms of skills for those wondering how to get clinical experience. Requirements will vary from state to state. In general, you need to be 18 years old, pass an EMT course, and not have a criminal background. There are four recognized levels of training ranging from 58 hours of training as an Emergency Medical Responder to 1200 hours of training to become a paramedic. Once you’ve completed your training course you will need to take a certifying examination. Depending on your state you may take the National Registry exam or a state-specific exam to become certified (46 states use the NREMT certification which is a private certifying agency). The next step is to obtain and maintain a license through your state agency and find work as an EMT.
Teaching
Next on the good side of best and worst extracurriculars for medical school—teaching. Being a good physician requires excellent communication, listening, and leadership skills, all of which can be strengthened through teaching. As a doctor, you will essentially need to teach patients about their condition, symptoms, or treatment options in an understandable and easy-to-digest way. You can practice and prepare to do this through teaching. Whether it’s working as a teaching assistant during undergrad, taking a gap year to teach health in a foreign country, or coaching a sport, start learning how to teach.
Starting Your Own Medicine-Related Initiative
The point of making sure you’re on the positive end of the best and worst activities for medical school is so that you highlight your individuality and potential for the field. So, if you take your own initiative and start your own project, you can have a standout entry in your AMCAS activities list. Some ideas might include:
- Work with a STEM friend or if you yourself know how to code, build an app that helps with healthcare in your community
- Initiate a fundraiser to support a health organization whose work resonates with you
- Start a project that focuses on a specific goal, such as a collaborative documentary interviewing family members and friends on how COVID has impacted their lives
- Study how various cities around you have implemented medical care for patients
- Explore the role social media has played in spreading authentic news about diseases
While these are a few possible options, you can tailor your specific initiative or research question to fit other parts of your application and your particular goals within medicine.
The Worst Extracurriculars for Medical School
Pre-med student groups
Our list of the negatives when it comes to the best and worst extracurriculars for medical school starts off with a baseline component that probably the vast majority of pre-med students participate in at some point. While membership in pre-med groups such as AMSA and MAPS can help you meet like-minded peers and talk about your passion for medicine, it won’t help differentiate your profile. Admissions committees don’t want students who are only interested in a medical career simply on paper. You have to take action to demonstrate your commitment to the field. Unless you start a chapter of a pre-med society at your school or find other ways to express your leadership abilities within these organizations, general membership in a common pre-med student group won’t help your resumé stand out at all.
One-time volunteering
Medical schools look for candidates who are empathic, altruistic, and willing to help their community. Volunteering is an effective method of communicating to adcoms that you possess these qualities. However, you shouldn’t just volunteer with the Red Cross once and add it to your AMCAS activities list, because this will not impress admissions officers. Instead, they will get the impression that you participated just for the sake of a resumé boost.
Don’t just think about volunteering because you want to be associated with a renowned organization. Wanting to help out with the Red Cross is great, but you have to think critically about what you care about so that you’re likely to volunteer for a sustained period of time. In fact, don’t name-drop any initiative that you’ve volunteered for in your activities list or resumé without elaborating on the impact it has had on you and vice versa. When talking about why it has been meaningful to you, your passion should shine throughout your application.
Service trips
Next, we come to another volunteering-related addition to the list of the worse side of the best and worst extracurriculars for medical schools, and one that is common among a huge number of students. In most cases, service trips do not blow adcom members’ minds, as these ventures tend to last only a couple of weeks. Volunteering abroad is great, but only if your heart is really in it. Unless you’ve committed for a long period of time (say a year or two), you won’t appear as a standout applicant when your application is read alongside students who have spent their entire gap years abroad helping out with patients.
Working in a lab as a technician
Students often turn to working in labs as a way of getting more directly involved in the field of medicine. While this will help you advance your skills, the role you have matters. If you’re a research assistant in a research lab that studies the human heart or mice brains, that’s great! It’s one thing to be a research assistant and get your name published in a journal, and another to be a lab technician. Working as a lab technician involves more passive work than that of a researcher or a researcher’s assistant—much of your duties would involve cleaning equipment, filling out forms, and re-shelving test tubes and beakers. You also have to think about the type of lab. Does it fit in with your interests and the rest of your application? If it’s a random lab that doesn’t really connect, it falls on the unfavorable side of the best and worst extracurriculars for medical school.
Medical scribe
A lot of pre-med advisors recommend that students consider finding work as a medical scribe over the summer or during a gap year. So, you might be wondering why it’s fallen among the wrong side of best and worst extracurriculars for medical school. Working as a scribe isn’t a bad thing. It is just far too common and will not help you get any kind of edge over the rest of the applicants. Your role would include taking notes during a patient interview, transferring the information to a medical chart, and assisting with the flow of patients. Medical scribes don’t have as much room to act as leaders—your time would be better spent in a pursuit where you played a more active role.
Positions in other health-related settings
You might think that working in an optician’s or dentist’s office can boost your chances of getting into medical school by still being somewhat related. I would not recommend such jobs, as they fall among the worst category in the best and worst extracurriculars for medical school if your main goal is to be a physician. You won’t gain a concrete idea of doctor-patient interactions in your intended profession and your experience would be subpar compared to students who have actually worked with doctors. Plus, admissions committee members might be confused as to why you’re applying for an MD or DO program if your primary extracurricular has been working as a dental assistant!
If your activities list includes one or more of the worst entries among the best and worst extracurriculars for medical school, you won’t appear as the most exceptional candidate. While there’s no bad activities per se, what matters is how you approach these worst activities. To make sure you bring your A-game, consider how you can build your profile in a unique way. Think about out-of-the-box ways to distinguish yourself from the very tough competition and you should be in a good position. Best of luck!
