<p>I'm interested in applying for a writing internship, as my fallback career plan is in that field, but it's a fairly large amount of work that would have to be done and I don't want to do it if it wouldn't be relevant to being admitted into medical school. Would it be considered volunteer work, work experience, etc? In general, would it look good?</p>
<p>Paid internship = work experience</p>
<p>unpaid internship = volunteer activity</p>
<p>If the only reason you’re engaged in an activity is that it “looks good” to med school adcomms, then you’re doing it for all the wrong reasons.</p>
<p>The general advice is to participate in activities that are meaningful to you.</p>
<p>Does not matter how it looks, if you are interested in it, go ahead. Do not skip Medically related ECs though.</p>
<p>I think what students, especially people on CC, fail to realize is that you’re going to have to discuss your extracurriculars in a lot more detail than people are used to seeing on CC. On this forum people usually give one line at most detailing what an experience is - but that’s not what’s going to happen between your AMCAS, secondary application, and interview. You will be discussing these things at length, and how you talk about them will be critical.</p>
<p>Let’s take a look at an example from when I was interviewing potential replacements for the job I worked before starting my MD/PhD. One applicant came in who was an undergrad at the time who was currently doing research in a lab at his school where he was discovering novel genes for something. I don’t really remember but the point is from the one liner it certainly sounded impressive. When we started talking about it, it became clear incredibly quickly that this kid was essentially a trained monkey. His role in the research was purely to do what he was told - nothing more. It didn’t matter how prestigious the position sounded from the title - when you actually spoke to him it was obvious that his involvement was meaningless.</p>
<p>An example of the opposite might be my clinical experience during my gap year. I volunteered at a free health clinic no one had ever heard of - I certainly wasn’t doing anything impressive sounding like volunteering at a top hospital or something - but because the free clinic was so small and poor and understaffed, I basically served the role of a receptionist, medical records coordinator and nurse. I would schedule appointments, greet people, take preliminary medical histories, vital signs including things like blood sugar and lipid panels and then if things were slow, I would sit in as the doctor examined them after I was done. I then often scheduled their follow-ups. In addition to the amazing procedural experiences was the fact that I was dealing head on with patients that had no insurance and who couldn’t usually afford medical care or drugs - it was very eye opening as essentially none of the patients were homeless or unemployed or people who thought health insurance was unnecessary. It was honestly the kind of situation I didn’t know existed at the time and while I still don’t plan on working with underserved populations, it made me much more knowledgable about a very serious issue in our health care system. </p>
<p>All of the above is what made it “look good” to medical schools, but what was probably most impressive to them wasn’t how physically involved I was but what I learned from all of it. Look at how many words it took for me to do that and also keep in mind that how impressive something sounds will be based on what you actually did and how you portray it - not what it’s called.</p>
<p>And honestly, what garnered the most attention in my interviews besides my research were my non medical extracurriculars.</p>
<p>EDIT: reading over this thread/my post again I feel like I sort of missed the point but whatever, what I wrote is still useful to hear.</p>
<p>you may have missed the point, but nevertheless it was a good post and I appreciate it. I apologize if I came off as superficial, it’s just that this particular internship, despite being something I’d enjoy and I do believe would help me out both as a person and a student, involves quite a hefty load of work and I don’t wish to detract from my studies if it won’t be beneficial to my primary goal of attending medical school.</p>
<p>But see that’s the thing, it could be extremely beneficial. “Writing for an environmental organization” is too vague to be meaningful to anyone. What exactly would your role be and what does the organization do? There are a lot of environmental factors that relate to medicine (<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_health[/url]”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_health</a>) so depending on what the organization does and your role within it it could easily be an amazing experience. </p>
<p>Even if it’s not directly tied to clinical medicine it still might be an amazing experience. Why are you interested in the environment and working for this organization in the first place? What lessons might you learn from being a part of this organization that could potentially impact your future career as a physician? What Miami was saying is that you can spin almost anything into a positive on your app and what I was saying is that is true because you won’t just put “unpaid internship writing for an environmental organization,” you’re going to have the space and be expected to explain why this (or any, even ones that might “appear obvious”) activity fits into the story of your development into a medical professional in training.</p>
<p>brown makes excellent points here. </p>
<p>No two people walk the same path to medicine and medical school. Every individual has different interests, different aptitudes, and different way of viewing the world. This is important and valuable because medicine is a broad field and and deals with so many issues. Medicine needs individuals with a variety of interests, backgrounds, approaches and aptitudes.</p>
<p>(There’s a phenomenon called “cookie cutter applicants”–individuals who have the stats and scores, but have absolutely nothing interesting or unique about their portfolios and nothing they appear to be passionate about. Med school adcomms want to understand what makes you tick and what your passions are. If you’re interchangeable with 30 other applicants–why should they choose you?)</p>
<p>Medicine is a very broad field. Nearly everything you run up against in daily life can somehow be construed to be part of some medical issue. It’s up to you to figure out how it all fits together.</p>
<p>How heavy is "a hefty load of work "? 20hrs, 40hrs, 10 hrs, 5hrs / week? What else do you have on your plate? Minor(s), Greek, Sport, job, volunteering,…all others combined…How many hours on average you are required to study to have an A in each class? How many hours do you require to sleep, eat, taking showers/grooming, social, gym,…You have to add ALL of these hours and see if it the sum is under or over 24x7=168 hrs. Very simple math that you will have to do a lot if your life plan includes Med. School. NOBODY can do for you. Everybody is very different, including the number of hours we sleep. I require only 4, I actually have to find activities that fill up my day after work. I believer that you will have an opposite problem as most young people require 8 - 10+ hours of sleep. And again, how sensitive your body to cofein? Some people cannot take it at all. Very personal questions that we do not have answers for.</p>