Session 21

In this episode, Ryan pulls out a question directly from the OldPreMeds.org forums. It's all about working and volunteering and how to squeeze it all in. Ryan also covers a very important aspect of applying to medical school when it comes to updating your application.

OldPreMeds Question of the Week:

Poster is a student in a premed postbac program and will finish next year and applying for 2018 matriculation; with 30 hours of shadowing and three months of volunteering experience at a clinic; working at a radiology department for transport about 25 hours a week; and bartending 1-2 nights a week to pay the bills. Poster finds it difficult to volunteer with a year plus to work and volunteer after postbac before matriculation, but is it too late to add volunteer hours to the resume?

Here are the insights from Ryan: Updating your AMCAS application as your resume grows:

Once you submit your application for verification, there are only a few things that you can change in your AMCAS application and your extracurriculars are NOT one of them.

The only things you can update are:

• ID number, name, address, contact information, date of birth, sex
• Letters of recommendations
• MCAT test dates
• Schools you're applying to
• Release of application information to your prehealth advisor

What you can do, however, is send an individual letter to each of the application services (which means you have to add in some work sending individual letters or emails to each of the schools you applied to updating them about it)

Work versus volunteer:

Volunteer experience is very important while work is also very important in order to pay your bills so it's basically a personal decision. Everybody is different with the amount of work they have to do and the amount of bills they have to pay.

Major takeaway from this episode:

Choosing between work and volunteering is a personal decision but you have to keep in mind that lack of clinical experience is one of the biggest reasons students aren't getting into medical school.

Links and Other Resources:

The Premed Years Session 171