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Omsas Sketch Has Very Limited Room


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There is such limited space in the sketch to write about your responsibilities. Do you just write a line summarizing everything? There is no room to say what you even gained from the experience. 

 

Also, how many sketches are appropriate? Should you just list your most meaningful experiences or pretty much everything you did even if you volunteered at an annual marathon for 3 hours every year? haha. 

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As to how many sketches are appropriate, it depends upon how many meaningful activities you have had which demonstrate altruism, active community service and CanMEDS competencies.

 

As for the extremely limited space, all applicants are in exactly the same boat and those who market themselves better by using wording effectively will have an advantage. This is a skill you learn b/c you have to.  

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  • 4 weeks later...

I would say not to write about what you learned. In a line or two, or several small sentences separataed by commas, you want to illustrate what you've done and you want to really highlight the CANMEDS in that description

 

What is CANMEDS? Can you please tell me? I didn't do my sketch with that. I did point forms and it was clean and good, according to a current first year med student.

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  • 8 months later...

This is just my personal advice, but try to tell a story with your sketch. You did your activities for a personal reason so describe the activities that highlight you as a person + future MD. My ABS can essentially be described as 4 themes: Technology, sports, teaching, and healthcare- with each experience highlighting a skill that I developed or a responsibility that I held. 

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  • 2 months later...
On 9/4/2016 at 4:44 PM, Premedstudent0307 said:

There is such limited space in the sketch to write about your responsibilities. Do you just write a line summarizing everything? There is no room to say what you even gained from the experience. 

 

Also, how many sketches are appropriate? Should you just list your most meaningful experiences or pretty much everything you did even if you volunteered at an annual marathon for 3 hours every year? haha. 

On limited space - I know especially compared to the space given for AMCAS entries! Some of my US friends couldn't believe it!

 

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On 9/4/2016 at 6:04 PM, Bambi PGY3 said:

As to how many sketches are appropriate, it depends upon how many meaningful activities you have had which demonstrate altruism, active community service and CanMEDS competencies.

 

As for the extremely limited space, all applicants are in exactly the same boat and those who market themselves better by using wording effectively will have an advantage. This is a skill you learn b/c you have to.  

Basically this.  Part of the reason members on here suggest to apply in 3rd year even an applicant may not have that great of a chance is because the application itself requires a lot of finesse.  It is very challenging to write about what you learned, what your role was, how it will make you a good physician, discuss CANMEDs roles, and on top of all that make it sound good! It can take a lot of practice and revision to master this part of the application, and because its so important it is definitely time well spent. Ask for help, not just from med students, but from others who have no involvement in the process. It is helpful to have outsiders advise on whether something is concise and coherent.

As others have suggested, you do not need to write in full sentences, but make sure whatever symbols/short forms you use are well understood and don't make reading your application too burdensome. There are a lot of applications that committees go through and a lot of times if a reviewer is confused they won't invest too much time to figure it out if it isn't clear.

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