The main purpose of pursuing extracurricular activities for your medical school application is to show that you have all the other skills and qualities required of a potential doctor (besides the academic ability).
You may consider yourself to be a caring and compassionate individual, but the thing with the medical school application is that you need to be able to prove it, and the way you’re going to be doing that is through the different extracurriculars you choose to take on. Here are a list of some of the main attributes you may want to think about:
- Teamwork
- Communication
- Leadership
- Empathy
- Compassionate nature
The Medical Schools Council has compiled a more comprehensive list of the qualities that medical schools look for in applicants, which would definitely be worth a look through.
Essentially, the extracurricular activities you do will be composed of some voluntary work, some work shadowing and also your own personal interests/hobbies. You don’t need to have a different activity to prove each and every quality, but instead you’ll find that one thing you do will indeed cover many components for you.
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