How much volunteering did you do in med school?

[Guest2020_]

Can some residents chime in about their experiences if they felt their volunteering helped them?

I have taken on a few roles that interest me but I feel like i should be doing more. I am seeing med students getting involved in a LOT of initiatives during this time and wanted to ask how important volunteering is for Carms? At the same time, I fear that taking on too much will hinder my studying during the school year. 

If I want to match to a popular program/first choice program (medium specialty competitiveness) , how important would volunteering be for my application? 

[dooogs]

What kind of volunteering positions are generally available ? (Incoming MS1)

[Galaxsci]

1 hour ago, Guest2020_ said:

Can some residents chime in about their experiences if they felt their volunteering helped them?

I have taken on a few roles that interest me but I feel like i should be doing more. I am seeing med students getting involved in a LOT of initiatives during this time and wanted to ask how important volunteering is for Carms? At the same time, I fear that taking on too much will hinder my studying during the school year. 

If I want to match to a popular program/first choice program (medium specialty competitiveness) , how important would volunteering be for my 

The only things that really seem to matter for CaRMS are the following (in this order):

1. How you performed at that program if you did an elective there and the quality of the resulting reference letter. This includes your knowledge, work ethic, and most importantly, whether or not they liked you as a person/colleague.

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2. The quality of your other reference letters.

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3. Your research experience

4. The rest of your CV including leadership experience, volunteering, etc.

Of course, major leadership roles and life experiences such as being an Olympian, running a large non-profit or having a very successful career prior to medicine would be influential because it would make you more interesting as a person. But (and I welcome other people who have experience with the CaRMS process to chime in with other opinions), I highly doubt that volunteer experience or anything else from 95% of CVs would tip the scales much (or maybe at all). The only caveat would be if the person interviewing you happened to have a personal connection to something on your CV. Ex: Loves playing a sport that you also play a lot. 

I know everybody's getting stressed out about the fact that it seems like everyone else is volunteering, doing research, and starting initiatives during the pandemic. I wouldn't worry about that at all. No program is going to burn one of their precious interview questions to ask how you spent your time during COVID, nor will they go through your CV with a fine toothed comb looking for it. Anything that people did during covid will be treated exactly like anything they did outside of it. If people did something really helpful to the community and impressive, it will look just as impressive as if they had done something of similar magnitude during the regular school year. And if people volunteer to help with PPE delivery, calling elderly community members or anything else, it'll look just like it would if they volunteered to do something nice for the community at any other time. If you spent your time during COVID at home with your family, working on fitness/interests, or doing anything else, that's totally fine because that's how most of the world spent their time as well.

[1D7]

For CaRMS I largely agree with the above poster except that I would place a bit more emphasis on the CV. With the changes that are happening (fewer electives allowed in one particular specialty, potentially no outside electives with COVID), the CV may actually increase in importance, especially for sites where you don't get to do an elective at.

In terms of the CV itself, if it's mostly empty or comprised of primarily fluff, it will stand out negatively and impact your chances at receiving an interview. However, I would argue having a small amount of fluff is actually important... when reviewers scan CVs they spend most of their time at the top (scanning what should be your research experiences) and bottom (scanning your fluff like personal interests). That 'fluff' may come up in interviews when it's something interesting... like being a varsity athlete, strong performance at an instrument, or even having a similar interest as the reviewer. Mine was brought up in probably 15% of my interviews and definitely helped for those ones (gave me something easy to talk about, personalized me, etc.).

To answer your question, fear not, 90% of medical student volunteer initiatives are pointless because it translates into meaningless fluff if it's put down on a CV. As a M1-M2, mostly this means you should pursue any available research opportunities and maybe look for a leadership position. A COVID initiative could be interesting but unless you're involved on some sort of decision-making level, it won't bring much to the table.