<p>For my spring break, I am planning on taking a trip abroad with an organization at my school to work alongside doctors in this foreign country to take care & get hands on experience with patients and children.</p>
<p>Does this look good on a resume? My concerns are that, obviously, this trip won't be cheap & that it's during spring break which means we will only work at most, 6 days. Will this be an interesting thing to talk about during interviews or will the short duration make this trip barely worth mentioning?</p>
<p>My recommendation would be to save your money…I was told by a Med school admissions committee person that these trips look like resume building filler and are not given any weight…they’d rather see something that indicates a real commitment of time or passion than this. They tend to come off as reaching for things to pad a resume.</p>
<p>Depending on who organizes the trip, many will not let you do anything more more than observe (often in group settings) despite their claims beforehand. Many students come back very disappointed because they did not get the “hands on” experience that they were expecting.</p>
<p>My opinion? Six days is barely a blip and by itself doesn’t evidence a commitment to either medicine or service. </p>
<p>If the trip is part of a larger overall picture of volunteering and medical experiences, it’s fine; if that’s all you’re doing—uh, you have a problem.</p>
<p>My D1’s experience in her med school interviews has been that her 3 months of full time work as a EMT in South Africa has been that no one even brought it up. (Well, she did once when she talked about integrative medicine and how it’s important to to consider the cultural practices of her patients when treating them. She mostly used it as another data point in her discussions of how to best reach out to the underserved immigrant and Native American populations in her home state.)</p>
<p>I think if that is all you’re going to be doing, then it will be seen as a blip. </p>
<p>I don’t think it will be seen as “nothing” if it’s done along with other meaningful and longer ECs. Ten hour days for 6 days straight is hardly “nothing”. It may not be significant, but it’s not nothing.</p>
<p>Building in mom2, I think those six ten hour days can be pretty formative in terms of inspiring a sense of service to others in you (if you find meaning in your trip). That inspiration can lead many new directions, some of which may be incredibly meaningful to you. If you’re looking for an opportunity to explore service and happen to choose to do that medically (which makes sense if you want to go into medicine), I think this trip could be a good idea.</p>
<p>If you’re looking for a “hook” for your application or to get some really great hands on medical experience, you likely won’t find that with these sorts of trips. A good rule of thumb is if youre doing it for your resume only, don’t do it.</p>
<p>I think you should examine your motives for going on this trip and then decide if this trip is the best way to fulfill those goals. For me, I wanted to explore global service because I’m interested in service and in global medicine, so the trip was a natural fit and a very formative experience. I do not consider it a hallmark of my application though.</p>
<p>You know, the conventional wisdom on this board is as above. But I spent three weeks doing something like this and had a lot of fun doing it, and a couple of medical schools specifically mentioned it when they admitted me.</p>
<p>I think it can be a piece of the EC puzzle. My son is doing one in Nicaragua. He feels that not only will he have some neat experiences, but he’ll get to really use his Spanish. He’s had 5 college semesters of college Spanish…plus high school. So, he’s pretty fluent for a non-Hispanic. </p>
<p>Isn’t one of the points of medical ECs is to expose oneself to the “medical world” in a more real way to help determine if the path is right for you? Isn’t that what shadowing does? It certainly doesn’t help the MD at all…you’re not volunteering. You’re kind of spying (in an ethical way) on the profession. Kind of a “take your premed student to work day” ;)</p>
<p>At least with these overseas trips, I think the student gets their “hands dirty” and isn’t just an observer.</p>
<p>My D stayed in the US for her shadowing and pre-medical experiences. When she was far enough along in her medical education to be able to apply for grant money to cover her medical experience abroad she found funding. At that point she was better able to be of some real use to an organization overseas. </p>
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WOWM, Our D’s would have a lot to talk about - my D has a medical anthropology background as well.</p>
<p>Actually, Elleneast, D1 is a physics and math double major. No medical anthropology at all for her. Not even a single course. But integrative medicine is an interest of hers since she spent so much time working in SA’s townships and saw first hand how cultural beliefs and practices affect healthcare outcomes. (It’s also a hot button issue at our state med school since we live in minority majority state and our doctors need to deal with a variety of non-mainstream cultures.)</p>
<p>Thank you all so much for your input. My parents and I are still thinking about this trip, and we will definitely take all your responses into consideration! It definitely is not cheap, even with some fundraising!</p>