(Note: This guide can also be found in our free, 102-page comprehensive guide to medical school applications, Get Into Medical School: 6 Practical Lessons to Stand Out and Earn Your White Coat, which includes additional Work and Activities examples that cannot be found anywhere else.)
Most applicants tend to give a ton of attention to their medical school personal statement but relax and cut corners on the all-important AMCAS Work and Activities section.
Many students are unaware that the Work and Activities section will actually show up ahead of the personal statement, and that most admissions committee members will get to know you through your extracurricular experiences before they even get to your main essay. As with anything else, first impressions are critical, so you’ll want to devote serious effort to your entries.
Whereas your personal statement allows you to describe the personal and professional experiences that led you to medicine at a high level, your Work and Activities section offers the opportunity to discuss your day-to-day work during undergrad and—if you took gap years before medical school—beyond.
The AMCAS Work and Activities section is where you’re supposed to describe all the details: whom you worked with, how many hours you dedicated, what you achieved, what you learned, and so on. And although some narrative-based writing and storytelling is helpful, you’ll have to write much more succinctly.
The reason is that AMCAS allows you to describe up to 15 experiences with only a 700-character limit for each (including spaces). That said, three of your experiences can be designated as “most meaningful” and further expanded on in a separate section with a 1,325-character limit.
We wrote this guide to cover every important aspect of the Work and Activities section, including a proven framework to write each entry and Most Meaningful experiences description, as well as to provide numerous examples.
Yes, and in many cases, you should. Otherwise, admissions committees may wonder why it was left out. In your Work and Activities section, you should write about that particular experience from a different angle than the one you took in your personal statement. That way, you'll demonstrate greater insight and flexible thinking to admissions committees.
There are 19 AMCAS Work and Activities categories from which to choose:
You only get to choose one category for each activity, so you’ll want to choose wisely and make sure that you’ve covered all of the main extracurriculars for medical school: physician shadowing, community service/volunteering (medical and not medical), research, and patient exposure.
Patient exposure is unique because it doesn’t have its own category. However, it can still be captured by (medical or not medical) “paid employment” or “community service/volunteer,” whichever is most appropriate.
The 2024 AMCAS Application Workbook discusses the addition of a new experience category, Social Justice/Advocacy.
Based on feedback from the admissions community and a study conducted by an AMCAS-formed working group, it was decided that a category around social justice and advocacy would be beneficial to the application process.
AMCAS notes that, “This question is intended to further support schools in identifying applicants whose experiences align with their school’s mission and goals and help signal to applicants the importance of participating in social justice and advocacy work.”
This new experience category covers a wide range of activities, so it’s helpful to narrow down exactly what it entails to ensure you’ve properly categorized your experiences.
Essentially, the social justice/advocacy experience category covers activities in which you work to enhance the rights of an underrepresented or marginalized group, support a cause, or work for the opportunities of others. Examples include addressing health inequities, advocating for an environmental cause, civil rights, or disadvantaged populations, or even registering people to vote. It does not, as AMCAS states, cover experiences campaigning for a political party or ideology.
Admissions committees will see your experiences listed in chronological order by default. However, they’ll be able to rearrange your experiences by category (e.g., shadowing, volunteering) and a number of other ways based on how they prefer to review applications.
Do admissions committees prefer to arrange experiences by most meaningful?
We’re occasionally asked this question by students keen to make a good first impression, but keep in mind that there’s no way to know exactly how adcoms at a particular school will choose to order your experiences. It is possible, however, they may prefer to put your most meaningful experiences at the top or arrange your list by another category. The most important thing you can do is make sure that all of your experiences are communicated effectively.
Below we will answer the questions we most commonly receive about how to categorize and organize various types of Work and Activities entries.
If you have several shadowing experiences, whether in the same hospital or across multiple hospitals, it would make sense to list all of them within the same entry. For example, your entry in the Experience Description section could be written like this:
Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, Emergency Department (Summer 2019)
Attended patients consultations with multiple physicians around the emergency room
Primary contact: Melissa Johnson, M.D.
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Neurosurgery Department (Summer 2018)
Observed neurosurgeries and attended patient pre-op and post-op consultations
Primary contact: Joseph Katzman, M.D.
And so on. On the other hand, if you've participated in fewer (i.e., 1–3) shadowing experiences, but for longer periods of time, you could write about each experience separately. In those cases, you should write about an interesting moment or what you learned from the experience.
If an honor or award resulted from an activity described elsewhere, mention it there (e.g., receiving the “Top Student Researcher” award could be included in your research experience entry). All other honors and awards should be combined within their own entry. If you reach the character limit, either shorten your descriptions or delete the least significant ones.
In extremely special cases, an honor or award can be “most meaningful” to you because it represents tremendous growth or overcoming a major obstacle. In that case, feel free to designate it as most meaningful and explain why.
A common follow-up question is: “How many hours should I enter for Honors/Awards/Recognitions, Presentations/Posters, Publications or Conferences Attended entries?”
In most, cases, enter “0.” However, the AAMC advises you to use your discretion if you spent a measurable amount of time on one of these activities, such as at a conference or event.
You should include as many publications as possible (including publications in press) using the AMA format. If there are 7+ authors, you will have to list the first three and then use “et al.” It’s not imperative that your name shows up in the list; you could also write “(8th author)” at the end of the listing. For more examples, see UC Berkeley’s AMA Style Guide for health-related research.
You might also wonder: “What if I can't fit all my publications in one entry?” In that case, use another entry, assuming you have the space. If you don't, make the space; it's unlikely that your 15th entry is more significant than more publications.
Finally, if you list a publication, make sure that you also discuss the associated research experience in a separate entry.
No. There’s no need to fill out all 15 activities on your AMCAS application. Strive for quality over quantity. Medical school admissions committees read thousands of applications annually and can easily tell if you're listing work and activities just to fill up the section. That said, most competitive applicants list 10+ activities. Our intention is not to suggest that you should aim for listing as many activities as possible, but rather to highlight how the best applicants have often done more.
The AMCAS site states that medical schools are more interested in quality rather than quantity in the Work and Activities section.
The AMCAS application will let you designate the experience type, position, organization, location, contact name, dates, completed hours spent, anticipated hours spent, and list your most meaningful experiences.
Before we get into the details of how to write a great entry, let’s take a look at an actual AMCAS Work and Activities example so you can get a sense of how adcoms will see your work.
About each of your AMCAS Work and Activities selections, admissions committees want to know:
For your “most meaningful” experiences—more on that in a moment—admissions committees additionally want to know:
Notice how none of these bullets say, “Simply state what you did”?
That’s because the AMCAS Work and Activities section presents an incredible opportunity beyond your personal statement to provide deep insights about yourself, however succinctly given the tight character limit.
Just like choosing which medical schools to apply to and choosing which of your great qualities to demonstrate in your personal statement, it’s up to you to decide which of your experiences to highlight in your Work and Activities section and how to discuss them.
Think about this carefully and list your most significant experiences only, prioritizing quality over quantity. Don’t list experiences just to fill up the section.
Your next step in writing your Work and Activities entries is to list every non-academic experience during your college and post-bacc years. Then, write very brief descriptions of each of the five areas listed above that medical schools want to know about. That way, you’ll ensure that your short paragraph will include each point.
Let’s take volunteering as an assistant cook at the Chicago Homeless Shelter as an example.
Now it’s time to write out your experience, making sure to describe your responsibilities and accomplishments; impact; and demonstrated qualities. Let’s continue with the homeless shelter example to demonstrate what a strong entry looks like:
I started out as a volunteer dishwasher and porter and occasionally helped with cooking meals when the cooks were out for any reason (responsibilities). After about a year, the head chef asked me to transition to cooking only (accomplishment and responsibility). I was excited about the opportunity because cooking is one of my greatest passions. Two nights per week, I cooked and served various meals for the local homeless community. As a cook, I initially ate with the other kitchen staff after everyone had been served. Over time, however, I ate with the people I served, and encouraged other staff members to join as well (impact, demonstration of kindness, encouragement, and interest in others).
This example stayed well within the character limit (under 700 characters with spaces) and successfully discussed the three points mentioned above.
Medical schools rarely contact your listed supervisors. Some students are concerned about some activities not having a formal supervisor, or a supervisor who might not know them well. If this is the case for you, we encourage you to list someone who can simply confirm your participation in that activity and not worry about them serving as a reference or recommendation.
Does AMCAS verify volunteer hours?
We sometimes get this question, too. The short answer is no. With the thousands of applications they receive they’re not going digging into the finer points of every applicant's history. However, they expect you to be truthful in your application and if they have reason to suspect that you’re inflating hour hours to make yourself look better, there’s always a chance they’ll check on it.
Even though Work and Activities entries are relatively short, it’s still important to demonstrate strong writing throughout. One key concept to keep in mind is “showing vs. telling.”
A good rule of thumb is that “telling” involves describing what you did, whereas “showing” involves demonstrating what you achieved or learned from an experience. It’s important to include the latter because they allow admissions committees to understand the value you bring to your community and how insightful you are.
The following examples highlight the differences between telling and showing:
Telling: “I shadowed an emergency physician during rounds.”
Showing: “I supported emergency physicians during rounds by ensuring that patients were comfortable during their stays by offering adequate snacks, drinks, blankets, etc.”
Telling: “I observed neurosurgery consults.”
Showing: “I observed how physicians demonstrate good bedside manner by encouraging questions and providing reassurance to develop trust with their patients.”
However, some telling is not necessarily bad, given the need for concision here! We’ll discuss this further below.
No, you cannot add any information to AMCAS—in your Work and Activities section or anywhere else—once you submit. However, you can provide updates in your secondary essays, during interviews, or through letters of interest or intent.
The AMCAS Work and Activities section was updated during the 2022-2023 application cycle allowing students to differentiate between completed activities and anticipated activities. The 2023 Work and Activities guide states that this change “will allow applicants to distinguish previous, ongoing and planned new activities on their applications.”
Whereas past applicants could combine those hours into a single number, it’s now necessary to count the number of hours spent on an activity before and after submitting your application separately. While it may seem small, this can affect how you come across as a candidate. Not only will you be able to mention experiences you plan to engage in before matriculation, you’ll be able to show how some experiences that you’ve started will continue until you start medical school.
The addition of completed and anticipated experiences allows medical schools to get a fuller picture of you as an individual. By allowing you to categorize your activities in this way, they can better understand how you have grown during your time as a premed and where your interests are taking you.
Important things to note when completing this section
As in previous years, many of the practical considerations remain the same such as the limit of 15 experiences, each with a description of 700 characters. However, you will now see areas to enter data labeled “Completed Hours” and “Anticipated Hours.”
When entering this information, it’s important to ensure you’re inputting it correctly.
What is a completed experience versus an anticipated experience?
Understanding the way AMCAS defines these terms is critical to filling out the application. A completed activity is simply an activity that is finished and its end date is set in the past. AMCAS specifically says that its end date must be the “current month” or earlier, defining the “current month” as the month and year you submit your application.
An anticipated activity is something you plan to do after you have submitted your application. Its start date must be the current month or later and it must end by August of the matriculating year.
Anticipated activities can be totally new activities you haven’t engaged in before or continuations of completed activities, such as an associated shadowing or research opportunity. It’s important to note that anticipated activities cannot be a most meaningful experience and they cannot be any of the following categories:
How to denote completed and anticipated experiences on the application
Entering your completed experiences on the form is straightforward. You’ll just need to input the month and year you started and finished the activity along with the number of hours you spent participating in it. If you’ve done an activity more than once, for example spending your summers volunteering at a community clinic, you’ll need to note that as a repeated activity on the form.
Inputting anticipated activities is a little different. First, you must fill out the completed section in order to add an anticipated activity. This is required whether your anticipated activity is a continuation of a completed one or an entirely new activity. For example, if you anticipate that you will continue working on a research project after you have submitted your application, you would note the number of hours already completed and the number of hours you anticipate completing before you would matriculate or until the anticipated activity ends.
If you want to input an entirely new activity, you must enter the current month for both the start and end dates in the completed section and then put “0” for the number of hours completed. This will bring up the anticipated activities section.
Completed and Anticipated activities as a reapplicant
If you’re a reapplicant, you’ll be glad to know that completed experiences from your last application will carry over into this year. However, be sure to thoroughly review all the information to check for accuracy. This means checking the date ranges for your experiences are correct and whether there are any anticipated activities that you need to enter. If there are errors on the form, the system will flag them with an orange symbol, alerting you to have a second look.
For an example of how the completed and anticipated activities information will appear in your Work & Activities section, see the screenshot provided at the beginning of part 3.
How do you decide which of your experiences were most meaningful or significant? Choosing your meaningful awards, honors, and publications is usually more straightforward than your activities, so we’ll focus on choosing activities.
Many students over-strategize when it comes time to choose most meaningful experiences. They think they shouldn’t select experiences discussed in their personal statement (you’re welcome to) or that they must select experiences from their personal statement (you could, but you don’t have to).
Our advice is simple: Select the three experiences that were actually most meaningful to you!
The only “rule” here is that you should select at least one medicine-related activity (e.g., research) as one of your most meaningful experiences. Otherwise, adcoms will question your commitment to becoming a physician. Beyond that, all experiences should be considered fair game.
No, it’s not necessary to submit a medical school letter of recommendation from people who can speak to each of your Most Meaningful Experiences.
However, if one of your letters of recommendation aligns with one of your most meaningful experiences, it could add a bit of extra credibility to that activity. The most important factor here is for your letter of recommendation and experience to appear organically aligned, i.e. not forced. Your letters of recommendation should always come from someone who knows you well and can speak to your strengths effectively. If that happens to connect with one of your most meaningful experiences, it could support your application.
When you designate an experience as “most meaningful,” AMCAS will prompt you to complete the “Most Meaningful Experience Remarks” section, which has a 1,325-character limit.
This section provides the opportunity to write more in-depth about an experience and its impact, as well as discuss what you learned and how you grew from the experience (bonus points for linking the example to medicine, but no need to force this). We also advise you to use an anecdote when appropriate to really bring your experience to life.
Let’s continue with the homeless shelter example from above:
When I started volunteering at the homeless shelter, I was looking forward to accumulating volunteer hours doing something I enjoyed. However, serving some of our society’s most needy members and developing lasting relationships with them quickly trumped the pleasure of cooking. I recognized early on that my service could transcend spooning meals onto a plate. While our diners clearly needed nourishment, they were also looking for community. Simply asking many of them how their weeks were going, about their upbringing, and eventually, how they became homeless, got them to open up and share their stories. These stories stirred up feelings of gratitude and humility knowing that many of my blessings (e.g., growing up a in a nice neighborhood with an intact family) were unearned. In addition, I came to understand how resilient human beings are. Against great odds, many homeless individuals had developed and maintained a positive life outlook, and some were able to improve their housing and career situations. While I was always glad to learn about these developments, I was sad to lose touch with these friends. I suppose this experience parallels the goal of a medical doctor: to not be needed anymore.
This student's Most Meaningful Experience example builds on the description from the earlier section by getting more specific about their interactions with homeless individuals, what they learned and came to appreciate from the experience, and an insight they gained that applies to medicine.
Probably not. Your AMCAS Work and Activities section should focus on explicitly highlighting your accomplishments, impact, qualities, and growth.
Because you have a much shorter character limit for the Work and Activities section, it's OK to both "show" and "tell" to clearly make your points. If there's anything you'd like to expand on, you may have the opportunity to do so during your medical school interviews.
Take your Work and Activities section seriously. Beyond your demographic information and academic history, it is your first-impression opportunity. By getting a sense of how you spent your time outside the classroom, admissions committees will better understand what matters to you and how you will add to their student body.
Dr. Shirag Shemmassian is the Founder of Shemmassian Academic Consulting and one of the world's foremost experts on medical school admissions. For nearly 20 years, he and his team have helped thousands of students get into medical school using his exclusive approach.
