<p>After much inner debating, I have decided I want to go to med school (Hooray!!). But I am now a junior in my spring semester and will now have to apply after my senior year. So what can I do after my senior year to not look bad in the eyes of medical schools, when I don't have any classes going on? This is really worrying me so any advice will be helpful. Thanks!</p>
<p>Have you taken any of the premed prereqs?</p>
<p>How are your grades?</p>
<p>What med school want to see you doing during your glide is something productive. (i.e. not sitting around at your parent’s house doing nothing, or only volunteering a few hours per week and doing nothing the rest of the time.)</p>
<p>Med school want to see you working and/or volunteering at something close to full time. Think 30-40 hrs/week.</p>
<p>Some typical glide year activities include: medical scribing; research asst in a research lab; TFA (2 year commitment required); Americorp (2 year commitment required); or any job that pays the bills plus a continuing record of significant volunteerism at clinical and community sites.</p>
<p>Since you’re getting a late start on getting your pre-med EC together, use your glide year(s) to enhance areas that you lack, perhaps your clinical experience, physician shadowing, and clinical or bench research experience.</p>
<p>Close to full time? That’s crazy I thought that 20 hours a week was over the top</p>
<p>You’re misreading what I posted. Considering both work (i.e. paid employment) and volunteer hours together, you should be close to full time. </p>
<p>Med school want you to be doing SOMETHING other than sitting around doing nothing in your glide year. Or just studying for your MCAT. Or volunteering some and doing nothing with the rest of your time. Real life work experience is valued by adcomms for a number of reasons.</p>
<p>during a glide year you should definitely be doing more than 40 hours per week of work/volunteering. I don’t think my glide year would be considered heavy (at least it certainly didn’t feel heavy and it was nothing compared to the pre-clinical medical school years) and my job was usually ~45-50 hours per week and I was volunteering in a clinic once a week and teaching at kaplan once or twice thus putting it about 50-60 hours/week for the stuff counting on my app. During the first month after graduation I was not working at all so that was when I tried to bang out as much of the apps as possible.</p>
<p>Afujiwa,
I hope you thought we were talking about during the school year because if so, then yes, 20 hours/week is a lot. After graduation or during a summer, 20 hours/week is nothing.</p>
<p>Americorps has 1 yr programs, D1 worked with prescription drug programs for under- and uninsured people in NYC for one of her glide years. At the same time she volunteered and shadowed. The second year she worked for one of the many illness related non-profits in DC.</p>
<p>^^Thanks! I didn’t know that!</p>
<p>My bad I misread. I didn’t see glide year</p>