The Observer, March 3, 2006
Volume XXXVIII, Issue 19
Perfect résumé no substitute for great college experiences
On the AMCAS application (that's the primary application for medical schools, for all you non-premeds out there) you get space for your 15 most significant extracurricular activities. It then lets you subdivide them into such categories as "community service," "research," "leadership," and "other." All in all, it's a form designed to make you anxious not only about whether or not you're doing the stereotypically right things in college, but whether you're doing enough of them. And that's before you realize you have to write a paragraph about how each of these activities was somehow meaningful and deeply significant to your growth as a person. Not only do I not know anyone who was able to completely use the full 15 allotted spaces (I think I made it to ten, and even then I was scraping the bottom of the barrel...being on the mailing list for something means you're deeply devoted, right?) but I don't know anyone who was completely sure that he/she had done, without a doubt, all the things necessary to get in to schools. I thought I was doing pretty well, with some medical experience and some research, until I was one-upped by a paramedic with a publication. However, even though I was feeling a tad inferior, I noticed it contained a lot of activities that, while they may have fallen into the dreaded "other" category, and therefore not directly pertaining to my ambitions, had definitely been fun to do.
In my experiences (and I've been on a few interviews by this point, both for medical school and for jobs), I've noticed that people are infinitely more likely to talk about the things I did that actually interested me over the things I was obviously doing because I felt I had to. It must have shone through on my application that cleaning the fish tanks in the lab really wasn't what lit my fire, but I could talk someone into the ground about how much fun I had organizing bingo games at the dialysis center. In fact, I've found that sometimes, just sometimes, it's okay to pursue something just because it sounds fun – not everything has to lead to the ultimate zenith. I think maybe two people, maximum, have asked about my scintillating research experience doing molecular modeling of polystyrene-polybutadiene monomers in straight-chain alkanes, but I've fielded questions from everyone about running cross country, being a member of a professional chemistry fraternity, anything Jewish, and my Japanese skills. With the exception of one school that will remain nameless (but assume it's working its way up to being the "world's most powerful learning environment"), everyone else has told me that I am qualified. Apparently a bunch of paragraphs in living black and white were enough to sway the admissions committee of at least one school, even though those paragraphs were definitely not all concerned with the supposedly winning combination of research and volunteer work.
I know there's massive pressure to have a power resume, but power resumes come in all shapes and sizes, and they're not necessarily determined by the things everyone around me says they're determined by. I'm having a great time in college, playing squash on a weekly basis, writing editorials for a certain newspaper, going above and beyond the requirements necessary for a film concentration, and learning Spanish. I love Case because I've had the opportunity to pursue almost every quirky interest I've ever had, and I'm glad I took advantage of student organizations and the like. My application may not have been perfect, but it was filled with everything that makes me the dorky person I am, which, apparently appealed to people hopefully more than the perfectly sculpted person I briefly considered being.
