My thoughts on how to write the activity section to get the most bang for your experiences and writing

Hi all!

Arnold's back with more advice and The Arnold Guide^^TM that will focus on both how to write your activity section.

As always everything here is simply my opinion and should not be taken as law-- please seek out multiple resources to make a well-rounded and informed decision when you work on your own applications. Come see the rest of my advice here on extra curriculars, the personal statement, the application timeline, and interviewing.

Let's start.

What is the activity section?

The activity section is a part of your primary application where you list all your activities (commonly referred to here as ECs). You have up to 15 entries to fill out (not necessarily meaning you can only use 15 activities. More on this later). Your primary consists of your GPA and MCAT (intellectual aptitude for medical school), your personal statement (your personal reasons of why you're applying to medical school), and your activities (how you're qualified beyond your academics for a career in medicine and why your experiences are unique as compared to others). Now I've already written about the activities themselves-- this post is about how to WRITE about them.

What I will be doing is going through each entry of 1 AMCAS activity. The following is what the entries of an activity look like. In the next section I'll break it down.

Experience Type: You can only classify it as one

• Artistic Endeavor
• Community Service - Nonclinical
• Community service - Clinical
• Conferences Attended
• Extracurricular Activities
• Hobbies
• Honors Awards Recognition
• Intercollegiate Athletics
• Leadership - Not listed elsewhere
• Other
• Paid Employment - clinical
• Paid Employment - nonclinical
• Physician Shadowing
• Presentations/Posters
• Publications
• Research
• Teaching/ Tutor/ Teaching Assistant

Experience Name:

Start Date:

End Date:

Total Hours:

Repeated? this is for activities that you did multiple times but did not do the entire year. So, for an example, an activity you did all 4 years of college in the month of April can be "repeated" every April for 4 year"

Organization Name:

City:

Contact’s name:

Contact’s title:

Contact phone or email:

Experience Description (700 characters including spaces):

Most Meaningful: yes/no You can only designate 3 activities as most meaningful and you get an extra 1325 characters so discuss it. Choose wisely. You are quite literally telling schools what to focus on

Experience Summary (1325 characters including spaces):

Ok there are a lot of categories to pick from... how do I pick one?

Experience Type: You can only classify it as one

• Artistic Endeavor
• Community Service - Nonclinical
• Community service - Clinical
• Conferences Attended
• Extracurricular Activities
• Hobbies
• Honors Awards Recognition
• Intercollegiate Athletics
• Leadership - Not listed elsewhere
• Other
• Paid Employment - clinical
• Paid Employment - nonclinical
• Physician Shadowing
• Presentations/Posters
• Publications
• Research
• Teaching/ Tutor/ Teaching Assistant

Picking the category of of your activity is as important as what you write about them. This is one of your main ways of telling the Admissions Committee how you'd like your experience to be viewed as. Look at your application as a whole and try to fill in holes. For example-- if you're a leader of a volunteering club on campus, one of the heads of your schools peer-reviewed scientific journal, and leader of a random club (say a robotics club), how you'd categorize each is important. What I personally would do is list the leader of the volunteering club as non-clinical volunteering and the other two as leadership. Why? Because it is very easy in the description of the volunteering club to say you led it, but it's more important on a statistic basis to boost your non-volunteering hours. I know this is silly but there are legit schools that will break down your app into hours of each category and will go off what YOU say!

Another example is research versus clinical experience sometimes. Now if you have a ton of research and little clinical experience, it may be better to put that clinical research position you had working with patients as clinical experience. Alternatively, if you have a lot of clinical experience and little research experience, doing the opposite can help. Your goal is to be well-rounded and have as many categories hit as possible.

Experience Name:

This is the name of your experience. You want to be as specific as possible while giving the most important information. Let's take being an emergency department volunteer at Arnold's Hospital for the Swole. I would put the experience name as "Emergency Department Volunteer" and in the organization name put the hospital name. You have limited space (not sure how many characters but it's not a lot). It's more specific than "Volunteer." I know this seems obvious, but sometimes people view this as what your specific title is but it's not-- it's the name of the experience!

This can also be used as an umbrella experience! So for example say you were really involved in a club on campus and held 4 different leadership rules throughout your time. Do NOT make 4 different activities -- it's silly. What I would do is have the experience name be "Leadership roles of X Club" and in the experience write the titles, duties, and hours of each position.

This is also a good place for athletics or hobbies. A good way is to simply have an activity devoted to one. So I had an activity titled "Powerlifting and other athletic endeavors" and I spoke about my competing in powerlifting, playing basketball recreationally with my friends, and how much I loved to hike with my dog. Yup, I really did write I liked hiking with my dog.

Start Date:

This is the date you started.

End Date:

This is the date you ended. Now this is important-- COUNT YOUR HOURS THAT YOU WILL COMPLETE OVER YOUR APPLICATION YEAR. Seriously. On SDN all the adcom's agree there are 3 legit ways to list your end date and your total hours. 1) simply put the end date as the day you submit your application and your hours up until that point. 2) put the end date as the day you submit your application and include current and future hours. 3) put the end date as when you envision stopping that activity (the latest you should do is the following summer when school starts) and just including all hours into your total hours. I am a fan of 3. The process is so unnecessarily wrong that I did not want to be punished for it. So I wasn't. So what I did was activities that were completed before and during my gap years I just estimated the hours that would be done, put it in the total hours section (see below), and then didn't mention hours again. People focus too much on hours and I never EVER mentioned hours outside of the total hours slot (unless it was multiple activities and I was specifying which hours went into what) because the more you mention it the more it comes across as box checking and not doing it for genuine purposes. This is NOT lying and this is NOT inflating your numbers-- you genuinely do plan to complete these hours, so list them. DO NOT LIE AND SAY YOU'LL DO 1000 HOURS in 1 MONTH.

Total Hours:

See above. List all hours completed and planning to complete. Moreover, if you have multiple experiences in one activity just add them all up and specify in the description.

Repeated?

This is for activities that you did multiple times but did not do the entire year. So, for an example, an activity you did all 4 years of college in the month of April can be "repeated" every April for 4 year"

Organization Name:

This is the name of whatever organization you had. IIRC activities like publications and hobbies do not have this.

City:

Wherever your experience was in!

Contact’s name:

Contact’s title:

Contact phone or email:

I'm just gonna group these all together. Your contact is someone that can verify what you wrote on your application is true. It is NOT a reference and they do NOT have to comment on anything you did-- simply that it was done. If in a club just list the highest leadership you can (or if you're president, list a vice president). If it's a personal activity, just list yourself. If it's a job, list a supervisor, boss, etc. What I recommend though, regardless of who you choose, TELL them you're choosing them and say how many hours you are putting down. The last thing you want is any miscommunication and on the off chance they do get contacted to not be on the same page as you. Ouch lol.

Experience Description (700 characters including spaces):

Alright this experience description is different depending if you choose it as a most meaningful experience or not.

If designated as a most meaningful experience:

Keep this strictly based on what you did. You only have 700 characters which is nothing. You're choosing this as most meaningful for a reason so I would assume what you did was very interesting/you have a lot of responsibility/ etc. Moreover (and this applies regardless of the designation) focus on the important aspect of your duties. They limit your space, so you need to limit what you tell them. For example if you have 15 duties as a clinical volunteer but only have room to list 7, choose the 7 that is most pertinent to patient care and is most clinical in nature even if they're not the 7 most high yield things you did. They're giving you 700 characters--use it wisely. No one cares if you changed the patients beds or helped stock IV carts if you also hung out with patients, transported them, helped place IVs, etc.

If NOT designated as a most meaningful experience:

You have the unfortunate duty, in 700 characters, to somehow write about what you did and why it's important. Defintely write about why it's important to you (whether you simply love it [i.e. sports], exposed you to different types of people, or your career in medicine). DO NOT FORCE MEDICINE. You did NOT play basketball with your friends because medicine requires teamwork lol. You also did not do research in your free time because you just love it so much. Don't bullshit the Adcom's. Small stuff like this pisses them off.

Most Meaningful: yes/no

You can only designate 3 activities as most meaningful and you get an extra 1325 characters so discuss it. Choose wisely. You are quite literally telling schools what to focus on*

How do I pick which 3 to choose?!

I wanted to give a well-rounded view of what I personally thought was most meaningful in my own personal journey to medicine. I chose one clinical experience, one research experience, and one non-clinical volunteering/leadership experience. To me those were my most meaningful as it fostered many attributes and motivations for seeking out this career. Be well-rounded but stay true to yourself-- if basketball truly was one of your most meaningful experiences, list it. If you're forcing something it'll be quite obvious it was forced.

Experience Summary (1325 characters including spaces):

Arguably the most important part of the activity section is this. Not only have you specifically told the admissions committee WHAT to focus on, now you're telling them WHY to. I treated this part much like my personal statement-- I made it VERY personal with stories of why this is important to me and why (for the activities that it works for) why this helps me for medicine. For my nonprofit I told the story of how I even made it in the first place as the description took care of everything logistical and what it is. Showing the motivation behind it was important for me-- and it was received very well. For my clinical experience I focused on 2 things. 1) exposure to patients and patient care. I told a story of one of my favorite patients and going above and beyond for that specific patient. and 2) exposure to being a physician and exposure to medicine. For research I spoke about WHY I thought the specific clinical research was important and how it affected me on a personal level as I saw it in practice affecting patient care in front of my eyes. These were the easiest for me to write-- I thought to myself "Why is this important?" and wrote that. If you're struggling a lot to write this section you need to evaluate why you think it's so meaningful to you.

Ok now that I've gone through each section, now some FAQs I see a lot

Do I list my fraternity or sorority?!

Here's the rule of thumb on Greek life-- if you had leadership roles, especially President, VP (or any executive member), risk reduction, or ESPECIALLY philanthropy, definitely list it. It's a super valuable experience and it shows you as both a social person and someone who can lead your peers (A VERY VALUABLE TRAIT IN MEDICINE). But if you were simply a brother or sister for all 4 years and didn't do anything, don't list it. Unfortunately people still view Greek life as alcohol filled sex clubs.

How constitutes a publication and how do I list it? How do I list co-author number?

Publications as AMCAS and medical schools are concerned about is the publications that are in peer-reviewed professional scientific journals (not your local student run one). Do NOT put your pubs in your research activity-- make an extra activity with the tab "publications" and put in the citation as is appeared in pubmed. I never specified what number co-author I was (cause I was never first or second lol if you are then specify it). In my research section I wrote I was a co-author and in the publication tabs I copy and pasted exactly how it appeared-- and it's 100% obvious which number co-author I am, but there's no need to specify it unless it helps you.

What about my quirky ECs?!

Ask yourself how you want an adcom to view you. This is important. Really important. Adcom's are mostly older physicians from a different time. I will leave it at that.

Should I include that I worked for LGBT organizations? Should I include that I'm gay/lesbian?

As with the personal statement only write about things that you are ok with discussing. If you're not openly out and want to stay in, then don't write about it. If it's a major part of who you are and you can discuss it, then definitely list it.

How do I list shadowing?

I simply listed each doctors name, specialty, hours shadowed, hospital or clinic name, and contact information. Doing this for 5 physicians was essentially exactly 700 characters. It's not as important to mention what you saw or what it meant for you-- that's good secondary and/or interview material.

How do I classify research?

There are 2 major types of research: basic science research and clinical research.

Basic science research: A general rule of thumb is if you're working in a lab and doing typical lab work (fume hood work, PCR, splitting cells, etc. actually working with specimens and samples) it's basic science research and can simply be listed as research. You'll list yourself as either of 2 things: if you're involved ONLY in the lab and have absolutely no say in the research aspect, research design, statistically analysis, etc then you're a laboratory assistant. If you're involved with any part of the actual research, statistical analysis, etc then you're a research assistant.

Clinical research: If you're working with data, retrospective chart data, interviewing patients, etc then it's clinical research.

Did you really put your fantasy football and basketball championships in your award section?!

Yes lol it's important to me!

I think that's it for now. As always any and all questions please ask :). If anyone with more experience has better/ more correct information, please let me know and I will update as needed. I will try and add commonly asked questions to this OP eventually.

Thanks all! Good vibes to everyone. Stay classy r/premed

Arnold