Non traditional EC's

[dancerdoc]

Hello,

 

I'm just wondering if anyone knows how somewhat non-traditional EC's might be seen by US schools.

 

I am a competitive dancer, and thus usually spend 10+ hrs a week training/competing. The rest of my time is spent doing research (I'm a graduate student doing clinical research), taking courses and some other academic activities like presenting/going to conferences and mentoring younger students (and right now also studying for the MCAT )

 

Since dance takes up a lot of my time, I thus might not have the depth/breadth of ECs that some other applicants might seem to have.

I do have experience working in a clinical setting and interacting with patients, as I do that on a daily basis because of my research, but I don't have as many "volunteering" experiences under my belt as other applicants.

 

I am curious to know whether being involved in athletic activities would be given as much weight as some other EC's such as volunteering in a hospital/being part of student organizations etc...

 

Are there any fellow dancers or athletes who would be able to give me some advice/share personal experiences?

 

Thanks in advance for your input!

[token]

My sense is the adcoms just want to know how you spend your time.

 

You need to have adequate clinical hours, but if you're spending 15 hours a week practicing you won't be expected to be putting in the same number of hours as the typical over achieving pre-med.

 

E.g. If all you did was 2 hours per week on research, 2 hours volunteering, and 1 hour doing other flaky ECs it would raise eyebrows. If on top of that you have 2 hour practices 6 days a week, plus travelling to competitions etc. it's understandable.

 

Beyond the time suck I don't think they care much about athletics unfortunately. From what you've described though I don't think you have to worry about your involvement in other ECs.

 

Here here's a profile of another dancer http://www.mdapplicants.com/viewprofile.php?myid=10031 You can see she didn't have long term clinical exposure (and her research wasn't clinical) but still did extremely well.