<p>What are some competitive ECs for med school ? What are some general or common ones ? And if this even exists, some weak ones? Also how Important are letters of rec? One other thing, I know you can't use calculators on the MCATs and this could be very problematic for me since I use the calc in almost every problem. How much do calculations really matter?</p>
<p>Calculations on the MCAT are designed to be done by hand/in your head (i.e. they aren’t going to make you do something absurd like 203974X349587). Sometimes the answers are even far enough apart that you don’t have to actually do the math out and you can easily eyeball the answer (e.g. they might make you think you have to do the math above but the answer choices are like -1000, 0, 4, 1234, and 71306658738) and sometimes you just have to set up the equation. That being said, if a problem requires math, it requires math, and every point on the MCAT counts (the average medical student scores in roughly the 85th percentile on the MCAT). You can easily train yourself through practice to go from being unable to calculate the 15% tip on a restaurant bill to being able to do physics with a pencil/paper. I certainly was able to.</p>
<p>At the end of the day, medical schools want doctors, and there are no ECs that truly show whether or not you will be a good doctor (even the medically involved ones). Therefore, any EC can be competitive if you excel at it, it demonstrates some of the characteristics that people who are good doctors tend to have (compassion, social skills, leadership, intelligence, diligence, etc), and you can explain why you did it with something other than “I thought it would look good/make me competitive for medical school”</p>