How to Choose the Right Extracurricular Activities for Medical School

Learn what looks good on medical school applications, what counts as various extracurricular activities, and how many hours you need. This guide will help you learn everything you need to know about choosing the right extracurricular activities for medical school.

Understanding the Competitive Landscape

While browsing premed Reddit to better understand what medical school applicants are most concerned about, we came across the following question: “How can I stand out on my medical school application if I’m not one of those gunners?” We laughed, not at the student’s confusion about how to outshine the competition, but at their use of the word “gunner.”

We’ve all met students like that: the ones who are part of nearly every single premed club on campus and those who seem to be shadowing, volunteering, conducting research, or doing some other humanitarian work at all hours of the day. While their accomplishments are impressive, comparing yourself with them can make you feel average. Consequently, you feel stressed out and behind.

On the other hand, if you are a superstar premed student, you might be wondering whether you're optimizing your time by pursuing the “best” extracurricular activities for medical school. You're conducting research, shadowing a doctor, and volunteering, but are you getting enough hours of each? Are you missing anything critical? These are incredibly important questions to ask no matter which school tier you're primarily applying to, and even more so if you're aiming for a top-10 program.

Strategic Selection of Activities

What are some unique extracurriculars for medical school? Many students pose this question, though it's the wrong question to ask. When asking about “unique” extracurriculars, students are usually focused on how they can differentiate themselves and impress adcoms on paper with some experience that no one has pursued prior.

It's highly unlikely that you will be involved in an extracurricular activity that no med school applicant before you has pursued. Rather than focus on how different an activity is, you should ask yourself questions like:

• “What can I learn from this experience and how can I apply what I learn in medical school?”
• "How does this experience relate to the overall application theme I'm working to develop?"

In this guide, we’ll go over the extracurricular activities that you should participate in during your premed years, including how many hours of each you’ll want to rack up in order to be a competitive applicant. We’ll also help you understand how to strategically pick and choose your extracurricular activities so that you can stand out from the pack when applying to med school.

Core Activity Benefits

For instance, volunteering as an EMT would provide you with patient exposure experiences (i.e., clinical hours), a service learning opportunity in your community, and enable you to interact with others in the medical field. On top of that, it would highlight qualities including working well under pressure.

Developing Your Application Theme

Whether you are considering how to think about research as a premed or exploring the advent of digital extracurricular opportunities, you must consider the right way to pursue extracurriculars for medical school. This includes navigating extracurriculars as a non-traditional student or addressing considerations for international students. You must understand what looks good on medical school applications to be a competitive applicant.