- Developing a unique extracurricular profile
can be incredibly challenging.
In addition to obtaining a certain amount of hours
and important categories like clinical volunteering,
otherwise known as patient exposure,
research, community service and shadowing,
it's best to pursue activities that help tell
a story about your academic interests,
the populations you wanna serve
and the problems you wanna solve.
COVID-19 uprooted so much of what we consider
to be normal life, it's also probably disrupted
your ability to gain certain extracurricular experiences
which is why I want to answer the following question
for our "Ask Dr. S" series a question
that you probably share.
The COVID 19 pandemic delayed a lot
of our extracurricular activities
like clinical research, community volunteering
and other nonmedical related activities.
Would you advise that we take a, gap years
to gather those experiences or b,
do you think that medical schools in the future
will recognize that a whole cohort of traditional applicants
didn't have equal access to online and in-person activities?
What a terrific question, but one that's super tough
to answer because it's so person specific.
Before sharing my thoughts on the matter,
I wanna provide a reminder that medical school admissions
committees are composed of real people.
People with feelings, people who understand context,
not computer algorithms or bean counting machines.
Why do I even bring this up?
Sometimes these details get lost
in the competitive landscape of med school admissions.
We hear about holistic admissions,
how adcoms evaluate all aspects
of your background when making admissions decisions,
how it's not just about stats and hours.
Yet we often go back to hard numbers
because it's easier to wrap our heads around those.
If it were only so simple as getting X research hours
and Y patient exposure hours,
life would be far less complicated.
All right, back to the question at hand.
Adcoms will likely be very understanding
of the fact that many extracurricular experiences
were simply unavailable to you,
or at least to a great degree.
If you have slightly fewer hours in some areas
than you otherwise might have had,
it's unlikely that your application will be sunk.
However, being understanding of reduced hours
in an area or two is not the same
as excusing low or nonexistent hours.
For instance, if you have no shadowing hours at your time
of application, or no more than say 10, that's a problem,
but you might be thinking, well, what's the minimum number
of hours I'll need in each extracurricular category?
Again, it's normal to want to have specific thresholds
and turn the admissions process in to a numbers game.
But the answer is much more complex and highly situational.
I'll provide an oversimplified example to explain.
Let's put on our adcom hat for a moment
and suppose that we're evaluating to students,
student A and student B, both juniors at the same school
who aim to go to med school straight through.
Student A accumulated 60 hours of shattering experience
during their first year of college and then on service,
patient exposure and research, then the pandemic hit.
While they hope to gain more shadowing hours,
student A didn't need more.
Once opportunities opened up again,
they accumulated 10 additional hours, 70 total,
and we're all set heading into the application cycle.
Student B did not gain shadowing hours pre-pandemic.
They had plans to work on this in 2020 and early 2021,
but the pandemic didn't allow them to.
In spring of 2021, they accumulated 70 shadowing hours
to match student A's total.
Both students will have 70 shadowing hours
by the time they apply to medical school,
however student A will be the more attractive applicant
when it comes to shadowing because some adcoms
will view student B as someone who hopes
to gain a bunch of hours last minute
and check off the necessary boxes.
Is this fair?
That's not for me to decide,
but I hope this example shed some light
on the context of your extracurriculars.
This framework applies to research, patient exposure
and service experiences too.
I know many students who struggled to gain research
and clinical hours during the pandemic.
Some of these students struggled
because they gave up before even trying.
They say things like, "No one is hiring" and never applied.
Other students tried,
but couldn't secure the right experiences.
However, other students secured great experiences,
perhaps they help people through a Crisis Text Line,
pursued an EMT certification,
and became essential healthcare workers
or were able to land a clinical research position
and remotely perform data analysis.
The students who were able to boost
their extracurricular profile during the pandemic
will stand out even more.
So to directly answer the question about
whether or not to take a gap year,
it depends on the strength
and big picture of your specific profile.
Be honest with yourself about how competitive you are
and don't assume that adcoms will be lenient
about major weaknesses.
If you do have major weaknesses,
you might need to take an additional year to shore those up.
That said, if your profile is a touch weaker
in one or two areas due to the pandemic
but you have some major strengths to your application,
then adcoms will likely be understanding
and you might be ready to apply.
In closing, I just wanna say I fully recognize
how difficult the pandemic has been
for a whole host of reasons, including with respect
to your med school admissions journey.
I sincerely hope that you and your family
have enjoyed sound health throughout,
and that this video provides some direction
to help you make the right decision on when to apply.
All right, if you liked this video,
give it a thumbs up and subscribe to our channel
so you don't miss out on future videos
in our "Ask Dr. S" series.
And if you have a pressing question
about the med school admissions process or the MCAT,
make sure to submit it in the form I've linked to
in the description.
I'd also love to hear from you in the comment section,
what struggles have you experienced when it comes
to pursuing extracurriculars during the pandemic?
I'll read all the responses and respond to most.
Take care.
(upbeat music)