I’m a senior in my last semester of college and am going to apply this cycle. However, my non-clinical volunteering is not great. It is mainly because I spent freetime shadowing, doing research, and volunteering at clinics. I have about 26 hours of non-clinical volunteering for different events, and have signed up for different things so that I can get around 15 hours more. I volunteered at a summer camp for 50 hours but ended up getting compensated for that so I consider it employment now because I guess it would be a lie to call it volunteering?
Also, I volunteer as a note-taker for the disability clinic at my school and have 180 hours for 2 semesters of that - however, I’m not sure if these hours mean anything because I basically just sent my class notes online so that students with disabilities can use them, it was not a big devotion of time because I would have gone to class and taken notes anyway
I think you are ok with your ECs. Non-clinical volunteering is not critical in med school applications. Do not loose sleep with it.
If you received compensation–even if it was not monetary compensation–then it’s no longer volunteering. Don’t ie about that. Med schools do spot checks on ECs. I wouldn’t count note-taking as an EC either. (FWIW, D2 was a note-taker for 2 years and never even mentioned that on her application. As you said yourself, you were going to go to class and take notes anyway. The only actual time you devoted to this activity is the amount of time required to scan & upload your notes. Doubt that required 180 hours.)
Adcomms want to see some demonstration of altruism and service to others in med school applicants. In particular adcomms like to see long term on-going service involvement instead of a scattershot approach with lots and lots of one-time-only events. Instead of signing up for various event, consider finding one activity you wouldn’t mind doing–tutoring disadvantaged students, reading to or playing cards with the elderly in a nursing home, stocking shelves at food bank, dishing up meals at homeless shelter, mentoring thru Big Brother/Big Sister, coaching for Special Olympics, anything that will get you off campus and outside the college bubble --and volunteer an hour or two each week, or a few hours every month. You won’t rack huge numbers of hours but it will show a consistent pattern of volunteering.
I wouldn’t postpone your app cycle if you have everything else in place. Sometime you just have to play the hand you have… But still adding some service hours wouldn’t hurt.
BTW, the above is poster is wrong, community service is important to a med school application. Adcomms rank it as being of “highest importance” second only to clinical exposure/volunteering. Rresearch, OTOH, is consistently ranked as being only of “medium importance”.
See p. 5
https://www.aamc.org/download/462316/data/mcatguide.pdf
Community service is important. Non medical community service on top of medical community service is not really important. If the clinic you’re at is a clinic for the underserved then I wouldn’t worry about it.