I volunteer at the local hospital, but lately have taken initiative with speaking to doctors and surgeons. I have gotten in on some procedure s and surgeries as a result, like cath labs, C-sections, and ortho surgeries. Is there some way I can translate this so that it will boost my application or should i just somehow work it into an essay? I am currently planning on applying as biomedical engineering…
I would think you could address it in an essay but not list it as an EC.
Because you watched a highly skilled person do something, most of which you didn’t follow anyway??
Better be careful. In medical school the usual progression is;
See one;
Do one;
Teach one;
It isn’t really an EC, it is shadowing a doctor. If it can be worked into an essay you are writing though that is fine.
I agree with JustOneDad.
Unless you worked closely with the doctor on hands-on procedures, it’s really pointless. It’s like a potential film studies major putting that he/she goes to the movies.
I completely disagree with those that say it is pointless, and IMO the movie analogy is flawed. It takes no particular initiative and isn’t at all unusual to go to the movies. It takes a great deal of initiative and some guts to convince a doctor to let you observe surgeries (and presumably ask some questions) when you are a high school student. I do agree it isn’t an EC, but instead should be shaped into an essay of some kind. After all, the alternative was to do nothing, and you did much more than nothing. I think to dismiss so easily a high school student being allowed to observe these surgeries is trivializing something that is not all that common.
Hardly. I see a steady stream of kids asking to shadow surgeons. Very few of them are viable candidates for Medicine. Some of them might be nurses or PAs.
Shadowing fills a place somewhere in between complete cluelessness and actually doing something that would give you an idea what the practice of Medicine is about.
It takes nearly no initiative and guts to convince anyone. Physicians either do it or they don’t. Some of the students don’t show and you hear later it was their parents idea. Or, they can’t come to rounds because it’s “too early” for them. They have to start at clinic a couple hours later.
They get alarmed when the day doesn’t end at 3:30.
Then, they want a letter of recommendation like you don’t know they’re 27th in a rural class of 278, or that they’d rather ski than do their English comp assignment.
I agree with JustOneDad. I hardly think it’s unique. But you’re gaining valuable insight that will be helpful for you when you face challenges in your studies/future endeavors. You’re seeing and learning things that can guide you on your career path and how you’d like to conduct yourself once you begin. Congrats on that.
Don’t do stuff because you think it’ll improve your resume. Do stuff that you find interesting, and that will naturally improve your resume.
My daughter is a nursing major and at several schools with excellent nursing programs including Michigan Pitt and Iowa they made clear that volunteering at a hospital gives you NO help with admissions. One stunned parent asked why not, at Michigan they said it was because they were well aware that in many parts of the country most of the people who get those volunteer positions do so only through connections ( a friend or family member who is a doctor or big donor) And said they are “unimpressed”
I’ve never seen that it takes connections to get a hospital volunteer position.
The designated trauma center hospital in our community takes high school student volunteers strictly based on who you know. Students have better luck at the Catholic hospital, where my daughter volunteered one summer and also was allowed to shadow the PA in the emergency department.
I don’t see where I used the word unique. I said it wasn’t all that common, and it isn’t. Obviously there are no numbers on something like this, but I think it is safe to say that out of the 2.5 million or so high school graduates every year, the percentage that actually go into surgeries and, as someone pointed out, stick with it and show responsibility to follow through on the favor they asked is very very small. And if that surgeon can write a good letter that actually speaks to the student’s sense of responsibility and intelligence, I am having a hard time seeing how that is not a positive thing.
I’m certainly not going to argue the point to death. One can choose to be negative about things like this or be positive. I think it is a positive as described by the OP.