Extracurricular activities are necessary to get into medical school

You need to have extracurricular activities in order to get into medical school. Medical schools like seeing their applicants with such experiences because it shows that you know what you're getting yourself into.

There are four types of extracurricular activities: clinical experience, research experience, teaching experience, community service

Clinical Experience:These types of activities can range from volunteering in the ER to shadowing a physician. The important thing is that you have experiences that are medically related because you learn to have interaction with patients. If you want to be a doctor,you're going to have to deal with sick people on a daily basis. It would be a waste for you to get into medical school and realize midway through your education that you do not like sick people. So it's important for yourself and the admissions committee to get clinical experience.

Click here to shadow an osteopathic physician

Teaching experience:Teaching is important because doctors convey information to patients all the time. Likewise, if you know how to teach,that's a plus because it shows you know how to communicate and convey difficult information in a simple way to yourfuture patients.

Community Service:Some schools place a heavy emphasis on this. The UC's (University of California) are heavily interested in students with community service. Community service is important because it shows that you have a heart for others, especially thosewho are underprivileged.

Keep in mind quality over quantity. Medical schools like seeing students spend a lot of time on one activity rather thanspending only a few months on many activities. Also, of all the extracurricular activities, I would say that the clinicalexperience is the most important because medical schools will ask about them in interviews.

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