How Important Are Extracurricular Activities When You Apply For Medical School?

I’m a high school senior about to graduate and go onto college. I was researching all of the activities my college offers and I was wondering if playing a sport is important when one applies to medical school, similar to how colleges look for students with sports for undergraduate admissions. Although research and hospital work are important, is applying to med school the same as applying to a college in terms of ones extracurricular activities?

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This entry was posted on Saturday, January 23rd, 2010 at 9:00 am and is filed under Medical. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

3 Responses to “How Important Are Extracurricular Activities When You Apply For Medical School?”

  1. There are no right or wrong extracurricular activities. Certainly, volunteering in a health care environment is desirable, but even it isn’t an absolute necessity.
    Don’t do anything simply for the sake of fulfilling a perceived requirement. Admission committees are looking for ‘well-rounded’ applicants, meaning that they want relatively normal people versus the proverbial nerd who can’t relate to the real world.
    Another thing to bear in mind is that insincerity is very obvious in medical school applicants. You wouldn’t believe how many applicants state “I have X many hours volunteering in a…” The two purposes of volunteer experience are dispeling the myths of the Hollywood version of health care and to demonstrate a passion and compassion for working with people. Can you imagine a boyfriend or girlfriend claming “I have loved you for 280 hours?”
    A medical school admission committee isn’t going to care if you played Lacrosse or if you spent your leisure time hang gliding. Naturally, the emphasis is going to be on your academics and scores, but as long as you can demonstrate some depth to your character by having diverse interests, then you’ll be fine.

  2. Yes, but medical schools are more interested in volunteer work/community involvement rather than sports. True, that MCAT scores and G.P.A. are first and foremost, but medical school is extremely competitive and you do not have a chance without this aspect. It is very easy to earn a high G.P.A. when all you do is study – and medical schools know this. You can still do a sport, but still do some kind of volunteer work on a regular basis.

  3. Yes, but not as much as grades and standardized tests. It’s about 10% of your application evaluation.