AMCAS Work and Activities Section

March 13, 2018 - EVQ

The work and activities section of AMCAS is, most basically, the CV portion of your application. It is your opportunity to showcase the activities you’ve been up to outside of school, and also to explain how these activities are pertinent to your career in medicine. In addition to listing activities, this section is your opportunity to list awards, presentations, and publications. Generally, this section should show that you’ve explored and are committed to a career as a physician, and that you are a well rounded person.

FORMAT

In this section, you are given a maximum of 15 experiences to list, but you are by no means expected to list all 15. I personally think that fewer meaningful experiences are far more valuable than 15 experiences that are less immersive and time consuming. For each experience, you are given 700 characters to write, except for three experiences, which you can designate as ‘most meaningful’ and write an additional 1325 characters. The description of your experience can be written in prose form or in bullets. I chose prose form, but I’ve seen this section done well both ways. For each experience, it is not only important to describe what you did, but also to describe what you learned and how that experience will be beneficial to you in your medical training. This all said, it’s also okay to list odd jobs and hobbies that don’t relate to medicine at all. These kinds of things make you human. For example, I listed my library job and my rock climbing hobby on my application even though they won’t directly translate to skills as a physician.

After deciding on your experiences, you have to categorize them into the following:

– Paid employment (not military)
– Paid employment (military)
– Community service / volunteer (not medical / clinical)
– Community service / volunteer (medical / clinical)
– Research / lab
– Teaching / tutoring
– Honors / awards / recognitions
– Conferences attended
– Presentations / posters
– Publications
– Extracurricular / hobbies / avocations
– Leadership (not listed elsewhere)
– Intercollegiate athletics
– Artistic endeavors
– Other

Try not to overthink categorizing these. Many of your activities will fit multiple categories, so just take your best guess – I believe the content of your writing is far more important.

MOST MEANINGFUL EXPERIENCES

Be sure to think very carefully about which experiences to designate as most meaningful. What you choose says a lot about what you value as a person, and what you think you bring to the table as a medical school applicant. Do not be afraid to choose experiences that are completely unrelated to medicine if they are meaningful to you. Just because an experience doesn’t directly relate to medicine, it doesn’t mean that the experience didn’t teach you something that will be invaluable in your career as a doctor. I personally listed my collegiate athletic experience, full-time clinical research position, and my volunteer HIV/Hep C test counselor position as my most meaningful experiences. I chose these experiences because they were personally very meaningful to me, but also because they have directly informed the kind of physician I want to become. You may often receive questions about your most meaningful experiences during interviews, so you want to pick things you are actually passionate about.

Once you’re done with the activities and work section of AMCAS, ask yourself two questions. (1) Does this section demonstrate my commitment to a career as a physician? (2) Do I seem ‘normal’ and well rounded (i.e. varied experiences)? If you can honestly answer yes to both of these questions, you’ve probably done a good job. Now it’s time to get as many eyes on your writing as possible, and adjust accordingly!