Best Extracurriculars for Medical School: The Ultimate Guide (2024-2025)

Your GPA and MCAT will get you to the door but your extracurricular activities will set you apart in the medical school application process. As a prospective medical student, you also need to find ways of showcasing your passion through your scholarly pursuits, activities, and hobbies. While you don’t have to participate in every extracurricular to be successful in gaining entry to med school, the most competitive students choose their activities wisely. Additionally, they go out of their way to explain what they learned from their extracurriculars and how it will help them succeed in a medical career.

Types of Extracurricular Activities

Competitive programs look beyond grades and test scores when making admissions decisions. Recognizing that a career in medicine involves a great deal of hard work and stress, schools want to ensure that applicants are truly passionate about the field. To that end, students should take pains to develop a strong extracurricular profile before applying to schools. Below are some types of extracurricular activities that medical schools look for when selecting applicants:

Community Service

One of the best extracurriculars for aspiring physicians, community service is a way of showing schools you’re passionate about donating your time and giving back. It is also a way to showcase your cultural competence and ability to work with people from populations different from your own. The most competitive applicants will have completed more than 100 hours of service during the course of their undergraduate career. With the 2024 application cycle, a “social justice” category was added to AMCAS and this usually overlaps with community service initiatives.

Physician Shadowing

Medical schools want to be confident that students know what to expect from their chosen careers. With that in mind, physician shadowing is a key extracurricular activity for med school applications. You can opt to shadow the same doctor or spend time with different specialists in various settings, including clinics and hospitals. Strive to complete 25 – 50 hours of shadowing before applying to schools.

Patient Exposure

To be successful as a doctor, you need to be able to interact with patients with confidence, clarity, and compassion. To that end, schools look for applicants who have hands-on experience working with patients. Direct patient exposure can be tough to find as an undergraduate student and many applicants spend a gap year after college obtaining this experience. Possible roles through which you can gain hands-on patient care experience include:

• EMT (emergency medical technician)
• Scribe
• Medical assistant
• Phlebotomist
• Clinic volunteer
• Hospice care assistant

Competitive students typically have 50 or more hours working directly with patients.

Leadership and Research

Future doctors need to excel when it comes to leading others. Along with holding formal positions in clubs and student organizations, leaders should be able to take initiative and direct others in an array of settings. To be competitive as an applicant, try to show that you’ve been a leader in at least three different situations. Furthermore, research is a crucial aspect of the medical field. While many students complete hypothesis-based research as part of their education, competitive med schools are especially interested in applicants who participate in independent research efforts outside the classroom.

Recommended Activity Hours and Requirements

The following table summarizes the recommended benchmarks for a competitive medical school application:

Application Checklist

Before deciding to apply to medical school, it’s important to properly evaluate yourself to ensure you are ready. There are certain things you should have that will make you competitive:

• Completed Prerequisite courses: Biology, General Chemistry, Organic Chemistry, Biochemistry, Physics, Math (Calc or Stats), and Psychology.
• MCAT Score: Truly a beast of an exam, but necessary for admission into medical school.
• Letters of Recommendation: Usually 2-3 science professors and 1-2 people who know you outside of the classroom.
• Personal Statement: Don’t wait until May to start writing this.
• Extracurricular Activities: Up to 15 entries are allowed; any number below 9 activities can look a little light.

Keep in mind that leadership can come in different forms and “titles” are not necessary to demonstrate it.