PDF Guide to your Work & Activities List and Personal Statement

Guide to your Work & Activities List and Personal Statement

This document is intended to help you in preparing your materials for AMCAS/AACOMAS as well as the HSA letter service.

WORK & ACTIVITIES

The details below will help you to prepare a Work & Activities list which meets the AMCAS guidelines. You will be asked to provide a resume-style list of activities and descriptions of the following:

? Healthcare-related experience (work, volunteering, and/or shadowing) ? Non-healthcare-related volunteering/community service ? Non-healthcare-related work experience ? Research experience ? Extracurricular & leadership activities (e.g. sing in a choir, play on a sports team, chemistry or

physics workshop leader, officer in student organization, team captain, etc.) ? Honors and scholarships received

You may list up to 15 activities. For each, provide a brief title and a description of no more than 700 characters (600 characters for AACOMAS) that is somewhat more detailed than what you would include in a resume, yet still succinct.

For example: ? Detail in concise language what you did (including skills and abilities developed), observed, and learned from the experience. ? For each of the up to 15 experiences, provide the name of your supervisory contact for the activity (if you had one). Provide start and end dates for the activity, hours invested, and frequency of participation in the activity (e.g. June 2008 - September 2009, 4 hours a week, for a total of 240 hours). ? When listing dates, be sure to include the month and the year (not just the year). Note that Capstones should only be listed if they held special significance to you, and you must reveal that it was for a Capstone class; it is misleading to represent a class as volunteer work.

In addition, identify your three most meaningful activities and write more on these three activities; you will have an additional 1325 characters to explain why these are the most meaningful. For these activities, please provide the 1325 character expansion directly after the 700 character description. This format reflects that of the AMCAS application. As AMCAS suggests, when providing the additional information on your top three activities, "you might want to consider the transformative nature of the experience, the impact you made while engaging in the activity, and the personal growth you experienced as a result of your participation."

You can group some items together under one activity heading as appropriate. For example, you would list "Dean's List" as one of your 15 activities and then include in the description the various terms you were named to the list. Similarly, you could list "Short-term Shadowing" as one activity and then include the various physicians and areas in the description. (Note: You would not want to try to group several long-term experiences under one heading.)

PERSONAL STATEMENT The details below are to help you prepare a personal statement for AMCAS or AACOMAS requirements.

Your personal statement should be no more than 5300 characters for AMCAS, including spaces. This is equivalent to about a page and a half single-spaced. For AACOMAS, the limit is 4500 characters.

The personal statement is your first opportunity to introduce yourself to the medical schools on a personal level. It is important that you illustrate clearly your motivation for and understanding of medicine as well as your personal characteristics. In doing so, focus on showing (illustrating) more than on telling the reader about your characteristics; being specific and using examples is an effective way of achieving this goal. For example, avoid statements such as, "I'm empathetic and caring," or "I'm good at multi-tasking." Instead discuss your experiences and motivations as a way of illustrating these qualities.

Be sure to avoid vague statements (e.g. "I am captivated by the many functions physicians serve") and instead provide specifics and examples (e.g. "I am drawn to medicine because physicians serve as A and B to patients, as C and D to colleagues, and as E and F to the community. I saw this illustrated vividly in my experience shadowing a family practice physician in _____. She did ___________. This inspired me because ___________.")

You may want to address the following: ? Why you want to become a physician. ? What is unique and interesting about you. ? What information about you indicates that you understand the field of medicine and are highly motivated to pursue a career as a physician. ? Future goals (e.g., what qualities do you want to demonstrate as a physician, what goals to you hope to achieve as a physician, etc.)

Discuss the meaning behind your experiences: ? What have you learned/realized from your relevant experiences? ? How have your experiences informed your perspective on life, medicine, and what it is means to be a physician? ? How do these "lessons" relate to your values, characteristics, and goals? How have they helped to drive your passion for serving in this profession?

You should have some key ideas in mind that you want to communicate in your personal statement and the discussion and examples within your statement should serve to support and illustrate these ideas. While it is common (and encouraged/expected) to reference experiences or lessons learned from work and volunteering activities in the personal statement, it is not necessary to list and provide descriptions of all relevant activities in the personal statement. There is a separate "work and activities" section of your HSA materials (as well as the medical school application) specifically designed to give you an opportunity to list and describe these activities.

In other words, avoid writing a personal statement that is essentially a prose version of your r?sum?. Remember, the focus is less on providing a list of accomplishments and more on your path to medicine ? who are you, what have you learned/realized through experiences on your journey and how/why did you learn it? How has this impacted your passion for the field and your related goals?

The tutorial linked below may assist you in the development of your personal statement:

Many resources are available to provide you with feedback on your personal statement. These include the Writing Center (188F Cramer Hall), the Career Center (402 University Service Building), and your pre-med adviser in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences Advising Center (M305 Smith Student Union).

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