The best AMCAS work and activities descriptions. Hey BeMo Nation! Welcome to another episode of
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Now, let's get back to the video! Now, in case you've never watched one of these, the way it works is as
follows. We have a maximum of 10 minutes each week to tackle one topic in the world of admissions
and once the timer is up we have to stop and the episode ends so this is gonna force us to make
sure we use the time wisely to give you the most important content and no fluff. Now, importantly
note that we don't do anything fancy, these are completely unscripted, there's absolutely no fancy
videos, no fancy sound effects, no fancy music, just pure content.
So with that said maybe first I'll introduce myself and we'll get started.
My name is Behrouz Moemeni. I'm the CEO and founder here at BeMo. I'm joined with
two of our senior admission experts. One is Ronza Nisan and the other is
Meng Yang and today's topic as I mentioned to you is the best possible AMCAS working activities
descriptions and we're going to talk about that. So let me just start my timer and we'll get right
into it. So there we go 10 minutes counting down. All right so Meng and Ronza, let's first
think about the elements that are required for writing fantastic AMCAS work and activities
description sections. I think there's a couple of things that we need to consider here. One is what
is the activity itself that's been chosen. Two, how to describe it in the description section
with a limited amount of space. So maybe we'll start with the first element which is
what activities should we actually even include and how should we choose them to begin with? Meng?
Well I think a lot of people feel that in their AMCAS activities they should only include
activities that are clearly related to medicine . That is actually not true so we'll just dispel
that immediately. The basic requirements for the best activities are really just two things.
The first thing is commitment and the second thing is progression. So when I say commitment
I mean, I'm referring to the length of time that you were involved in the activity.
Activities that you're involved in for longer will allow you to demonstrate perseverance, lots
of qualities essentially that medical schools are looking for and also admissions committees are
very, very careful when they scrutinize your list to see if there's anything that you did just to
check off a box, right? That does not showcase great qualities for you as a future physician.
In terms of progression, this is your capacity to grow within the time that you are committed with
the activity of course the length of time will help with that, the longer you're with an activity
the more opportunities you have to progress. For example, you might start off as a volunteer, you
might move into a committee leadership position, and then maybe you're leading that organization in
the last year or two that you're involved. That's a really good demonstration of progression and
you can showcase a lot of different traits through that progression ending off with some really great
ones like leadership, communication, collaboration. Makes perfect sense. You know what while you were
describing this, I was actually thinking of how we select employees and evaluate them here at
BeMo which is exactly the same and I'll explain. We always say actions speak louder than words.
So if you've committed to something in the long term, I can feel a little bit more secure that
you're not faking it just so that I believe that, hey you're interested I just get you into
med school and then you're a totally different person because it's so much you could fake it.
You can't fake something for years. You could fake something for a few months.
Two, do you have patience? Do you understand your own limitations that you got to
start somewhere and progressively get better and getting better requires time
which obviously you could speed that up by working 24/7 or practicing whatever that
craft is 24/7. Just assuming at a normal of course you're moving forward things
are gonna take time and this is something that's absolutely required, patience as a future physician.
A. The training is very long, it's very tedious. it's very hard, and it gets progressively harder
before eventually becomes a little bit easier as the person becomes an expert
and not really "easy" I put that in quotation. It just becomes more like muscle memory. You know,
it's just a very long training so you have to be patient, that's the only way you could
show it. So now with that said, now that's clear this is the type of activities you're going
to choose not the ones you committed to for two weeks, now Ronza how do we make them stand out or
how do we perfect the description section? Once I know what are the activities, how do I write
those descriptions for each activity? Absolutely, so first and foremost we always emphasize here that
the opening statement is the most important one as it's the, you know, the first impression
you make so you want to make it captivating, you want to introduce but also be creative in the
way that you introduce the type of activity or the experience that you're referencing. That
usually takes about one or two sentences to do. You want to of course clearly dictate what your
responsibilities were in that experience and you don't have to go on a tangent if you did you
know several frivolous things just focus on like the main things that you were responsible for
and of course you want to do this by demonstrating through an example interaction
or an observation or whatever it was that, you know, that experience embodied. So this is where you
also can show and not just tell us what you did and then, more importantly, then you could
identify what you learned, you know, what qualities, what skills, what interpersonal skills
were refined or gained in that experience and then you want to end it with a conclusive but
also creative lasting impression that really brings in the experience altogether and you
really have to be concise when you do this because you can go on a tangent and talk about something
and you want to just make sure that you focus on briefly, you know, explaining the
experience, your responsibilities, if you have room to kind of go into sort of showing and not
just telling, highlighting what you learn, and then wrap up with why is this important moving forward
and I think I've seen students definitely do that in a very concise but creative way.
So it's definitely doable. Maybe we'll do one or two examples given our time limit. Meng can you
give us an example of like what's the activity and then what is the description? Sure I have
here an example of a description for a medical scribe activity which you know despite what we
said earlier is a clinical type of experience but I think what we can take away from this
is you know the kind of information that you will want to include. This one is a little shorter
than the allowed space in an AMCAS activity description but it it kind of goes through
all the - all the different components that you would want to include so I will go ahead and just
read this out. "I recorded patient histories and gained trust through attentive listening, organized
patient charts and updated data in electronic systems while maintaining confidentiality. I
liased between physician assistants, physicians, and other healthcare professionals in our
multi-disciplinary team. I learned the value of active listening and patient-centered care and
developed strong interpersonal and communication skills resulting in my promotion to lead scribe."
This, obviously, is an activity that this person engaged in for more than just a couple of
months as you can tell by their promotion that they described at the very end and I think, you
know, you could add more to this for sure but like Ronza described earlier and
outlined this particular example clearly outlines the person's roles and responsibilities and they
did a good job of prioritizing the discussion of those that are impactful rather than just talking
about like the random little responsibilities they might have also had in this role and I
think it's really great that they highlighted their collaboration with other healthcare
team members and they also of course demonstrated their leadership, commitment, progression,
in describing how they progressed through the role. Yeah and you know what I liked that it was concise
again if you're writing a any sort of you know AMCAS personal statement, work activites section, etc., etc.,
you need to understand that the person is probably going to have about 30 seconds to
read your application amongst tens of thousands of other applications. More concise the more likely
it actually gets read than if you're just trying to put a lot of fluff in it especially when it's
not a personal statement so you don't need to make it you know look any fancy even a personal
statement should not be fancy it should be just plain English that's easy to read but
I think that makes perfect sense that was a good example. Any final thoughts in our last 50 seconds?
Yes, to add to actually rolling off of what Meng said because you know you are limited in space, you
want to be concise, you do have the opportunity to identify up to three meaningful experiences
with these three meaningful experiences you definitely want to consider something that was
impactful, right, we talked about progression, we talked about commitment, but something that's
unique to you. I usually encourage students to diversify, don't just choose all research or
all, you know, particular shadowing experiences unless truly one or two of them really stood out
for one or two reasons but that's the opportunity for you to kind of expand on the showing and not
just telling and that's where you can kind of go into interactions and observations. Similar concept
to the descriptors but this is an opportunity for you to really dive deep into it. All right, that was time.
In the nick of time! Okay perfect. All right, thanks so much guys for those of you who
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