Episode 31: All About AMCAS Work and Activities
In this episode, Katie and Rebecca discuss the Work and Activities section of the AMCAS Application.
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Transcript for Hidden Curricula Episode 31
All About AMCAS Work and Activities
Rebecca: Welcome to Hidden Curricula, a podcast exploring aspects of preparation for professional schools that may not be obvious or common knowledge. We will delve into topics of concern for undergraduates and discuss questions that relate to professional school applications. My name is Rebecca Curtin.
Katie: And I'm Katie Wang.
Rebecca: We are two of four pre-professional advisors at Stanford University. Our group works with students who are interested in professional fields such as law, education, business, and medicine.
Katie: This podcast is not meant to be advice, like we might give to our students, but rather to shed some light on how an advisor might approach various situations and level the playing field for all applicants.
Rebecca: So, Katie and I have been having a lot of conversations recently with folks actively preparing their applications to health professional school, and we're noticing that a lot of people have questions about the work and activities section of the AMCAS application, which is the centralized application for the majority of allopathic medical schools in the United States. Lots of questions specifically about the experience description section that you must write for each activity.
Katie: Yes, definitely. So, in the work and activities section of the AMCAS you have up to 15 spaces to tell your readers about work experiences and activities you've been a part of since the time you graduated from high school. Examples of these experiences might be a volunteer role at a hospital, an award you received, a research experience you've had, your time as a varsity athlete, a hobby you are passionate about, and, of course, there are many other activities you might include in this section. In a sense, it is like a resume though all your experiences will be listed in one long series. This helps admissions reviewers get a sense of how you spent your time in college and after. It helps them learn about the experiences you gained and what skills you built that may be relevant to your application and potentially also to your career as a physician. This section gives schools a sense of how much investment an applicant has made in various activities, and it offers specific insights into the experiences that have led to an application to medical school. And, because these work and activities appear in the primary or a common application, all schools the applicant applies to with AMCAS get this information.
Rebecca: We view the work and activities section as one of the most important ways applicants can communicate their interests and motivation for pursuing a career in medicine. So, we are glad it's been getting a lot of attention from applicants. And it's worth noting that though we are focusing on the AMCAS application today, other applications like AACOMAS for DO, AADSAS for dental, TMDSAS, which is the centralized application for Texas medical schools, have similar though not identical sections. Though they differ slightly in format, number of activities you can include, et cetera, some of what we say here today will be relevant to those applications as well. So let's touch on all the components of this section. As I mentioned earlier, applicants can include up to 15 work and activity entries. These don't have to be ordered in any particular way.
AMCAS will do that for you, so no need to spend time thinking about which to list first. For each activity or experience that's included, applicants will need to enter the start and end dates of the activity, the number of hours completed and projected or anticipated, and a contact person who can confirm their involvement. Applicants are then allotted 700 characters, which also includes spaces to describe the experience. This is an opportunity to explain the details of the experience, why you chose to spend your time doing this particular endeavor, and what you learned from it. Possible points to include for each of the experiences in this section are the following: So first, the setting and the purpose of the organization or activity; why you chose to take part in this particular experience; what the role you played entailed; and what you learned from the experience or the impact that you made when you were there.
Rebecca: AMCAS also asks you to designate up to three experiences as having been the most meaningful to you, and we'd recommend you choose three. See our episode on “Is optional, really optional?” For these most meaningful experiences, you will have additional characters to go into detail as to why it has been a transformative experience for you. The most meaningful experience essay allows for 1,325 characters and spaces. That means a couple of short paragraphs or a nice long paragraph, and there's often even room for a short story. So, it's a nice space to elaborate. And these 1325 characters are separate from the 700 you will have to describe all of your experiences. The most meaningful activities will essentially then have two text boxes to complete.
Katie: Let's talk a bit about the choice of which activities should be your most meaningful experiences, since this is something that applicants have control over. Most meaningful experiences are typically activities that you have engaged with in depth, and in many cases a mentor may have observed your growth in this activity and could potentially provide a strong letter of recommendation on your behalf. Most meaningful experiences should include some element that relates to why you were interested in medicine. So, as one example, maybe I spent 10,000 hours playing a musical instrument, but if there is not a connection to how this relates to my interest in medicine, it could still be included in the application work and activity section, but it probably wouldn't make a good most meaningful choice. However, if I took on a leadership role with a student musical group, and I have a letter from a faculty director of that group that can include information on my contribution and leadership in that role, it might make it a stronger choice, because maybe this could be an opportunity for me to highlight competencies that are needed by physicians such as leadership and teamwork. Most meaningful activities should be activities where an applicant played an active role. So even if a clinical shadowing experience was transformative and motivating, it's typically seen as observation and thus a more passive experience. Experiences where the applicant was in the caregiving role tend to be much stronger.
Rebecca: Katie, let's return to the comment you made about recommenders. The most meaningful activities you designate should be three of the most meaningful experiences you've had on your pre-med journey. This is a medical school application, after all. If it is a substantial experience, it may seem strange to a reader to not have someone write a letter to provide reflections on your contributions in this experience. Yes, sometimes this is a tough situation where there isn't a logical choice of recommenders for a meaningful activity. Maybe you've had several different supervisors, or maybe it's a student organization you've led without a faculty advisor. Again, a great topic to bring to your pre-med advisor for a conversation, but also one worth considering for yourself: Do you know someone in the organization or who is familiar with your work in the organization who can offer some insights? If not, then you might try to cultivate a relationship if you're well in advance of the application process. If you're facing the application right now, as many listeners may be, perhaps it's worth considering whether this is the best choice for a most meaningful activity.
Katie: Mm-hmm. Definitely. One question I get asked about a lot related to work and activities is connected to the format of the experience description section. AMCAS gives you 700 characters and spaces to describe each experience. So should this description take the form of a bulleted list like a resume might have, or should it include short stories or perhaps one longer story, or should it have a description that includes certain pieces of information?
Rebecca: I get this question a lot, especially right now as folks are actively writing their application materials. And it makes sense why they ask. There isn't a ton of information in the AMCAS guide about how you should compose an experience description, and you'll find so much advice out there on the interwebs about strategies for approaching these writeups. But my answer when applicants ask this question is often that what format your experience description takes depends on the category of the experience. Categories AMCAS gives you to choose from are things like extracurricular or research or leadership or shadowing. And there are so many more. All entries then ask for a short paragraph that describes the setting and the purpose of the organization, why you chose to take part in this particular experience, what your role entailed and what you learned from the experience. So answering all these questions in the experience description may make sense for an entry where you are describing a paid work experience or a clinical volunteering opportunity. But for some other category types like publications or conferences attended or awards, using a list for the experience description might work fine.
Katie: And what about stories, Rebecca? Is this a good place to include those?
Rebecca: Sometimes stories can offer wonderful and interesting illustrations in the work and activities section, but we have found that in order to adequately describe many work and activities, telling an intricate story isn't always possible or advisable. The reason why really has to do with that 700 character limit. It just isn't a lot of space. A few sentences really. And it is more important that your reader finishes reading your entry understanding what an experience is and what you did than that they get a nice story that does not have those details. But I'd like to remind our listeners of an episode we did a few months ago about personal statement writing and the idea of showing and not telling. I like to tell applicants that just because you don't have space to tell a longer story doesn't mean you can't infuse an experience description with examples that really bring it to life and give your reader a picture of what is happening. Saying “I volunteered at the food bank for two hours a week,” is obviously not as descriptive as saying “as a volunteer at the food bank. I handed out meals to families in need and sorted cans and packages of food in the pantry.” The second example gives specific details and paints a picture of what that experience looked like. It's just more vivid.
Katie: Yes, just because we would recommend you not always take up the experience description section with a story, doesn't mean there shouldn't be details. Wherever you can speak in specifics rather than generalities, try to do so. It may be as simple as getting as precise as possible with your words, or including a couple of very short examples of what something looked like just as Rebecca demonstrated.
Rebecca: Now before we wrap up this short episode, I wanted to bring in one last question that I get asked a lot. How do work and activities work in conjunction with the personal statement? Can experiences be repeated or be talked about extensively in both places?
Katie: Ah, yes. That does come up, and I think it's a great thing for applicants to think about. That is, how do all these pieces of your application fit together as a whole? But I hope it's reassuring to hear that it's completely okay to make an experience a most meaningful one and also talk about it in your personal statement. In fact, that makes sense in a lot of ways. Just don't cut and paste, think of something different, maybe different outcomes or different impacts of these various experiences. If you spend a lot of time thinking about it, you'll likely come up with plenty to say, especially if it was something that was very meaningful to you.
Rebecca: Absolutely. So true. All right, Katie, I think I want to bust a myth today. So here is the myth. You should only include experiences in your work and activities section that are related to medicine.
Katie: Hmm. You know, I think this is becoming more and more well known, thankfully, but we do still get asked this question and you should absolutely include work in activities that you do not think immediately as being relevant or related to medicine. And there's a few reasons for this. One reason is that medical schools want to know how you spend your time across all of your responsibilities. It's very important for them to know if you've had a part-time job while in school or if you were a student athlete, among other things. And the second reason would be that medical schools are interested in what we tend to think of as being transferable skills. That is your job waiting tables might have built a lot of skills like reliability and hard work, maybe working as part of a team. And these skills are valuable for future physicians to have. So as I'd like to tell my students: It's almost all relevant.
Rebecca: Amazing. Thank you so much for that, Katie. And thank you for tuning in. We are keeping this short today. As we know this is a hot topic on the mind of many applicants right now, and we wanna get it out there, and hope that it's helpful to you. Until next time on Hidden Curricula.