<p>does it matter WHERE you volunteer ?
for example: is it better to volunteer in the emergency room rather than the children's hospital ?</p>
<p>thanks</p>
<p>Nope - what matters is that you enjoy what you're doing and that you get something meaningful out of it. If you're more interested in pediatrics, volunteer in the childrens hospital. If community or rural medicine is more your thing, find volunteer opportunities in those areas.</p>
<p>I was under the impression that everyone on these boards was adamant about doing something in a clinical setting.</p>
<p>We'll see if that hurts me when I apply. I'm doing community health education outreaching to ethnic minorities in the area. Definitely not in a clinic/hospital of some sort.</p>
<p>Along this same line - </p>
<p>Many people seem to do a health care volunteer trip to a country such as Ghana, Tanzania, China, etc. </p>
<p>Do you think there is any advantage to doing one of these sort of health care volunteer sort of trips over just volunteering in the health department in your town or at the children's hospital in your college town?</p>
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I was under the impression that everyone on these boards was adamant about doing something in a clinical setting.
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<p>Yes, you definitely need clinical experience to get into medical school. Thats non-negotiable. But this doesn't have to be a volunteer activity. You could get a job in a clinical setting (EMT, ER tech, medical assistant, etc). You're also going to need volunteerism, however, so if thats community health education, thats great. The idea is just that you need some type of clinical experience as well as volunteerism - obviously, everyone has different interests, so these experiences will be different for everyone.</p>
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Do you think there is any advantage to doing one of these sort of health care volunteer sort of trips over just volunteering in the health department in your town or at the children's hospital in your college town?
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<p>No, not really. Clinical experience is largely what you make of it. If international medicine is of particular interest to you, then one of these trips would probably be a great idea, as it would give you first hand experience, which would help you speak with authority and passion during interviews. But not having gone on such a trip is certainly no detriment to your application, as long as you have other meaningful clinical experience.</p>
<p>I think that the international experiences perhaps give applicants experiences about which they can more easily talk. People tend to be more enthusiastic about them and that enthusiasm will probably show in interviews and on applications. I don't think that medical schools weight international experiences any more than clinical experience in the US.</p>
<p>I've talked to some adcom members who weren't fans of the international trips. One basically said he wasn't impressed with volunteering with the poor abroad when there's so much to be done domestically. He echoes that sentiment when he promotes the free medical clinic he runs, as he talks about how doctors try to get him to go on overseas missions.</p>
<p>Of course, that's anecdotal and a generalization of these trips, but there is quite the variance in how impressive these trips are.</p>