The Work and Activities section of the primary application highlights your extracurricular involvement — the chance to list and describe your roles, experiences, and accomplishments. AMCAS and AACOMAS have similar requirements. Here is the high-yield version of what makes an activities list successful, and the mistakes that hold one back.

Pearls

  • If possible, choose different experiences for your Most Meaningful entries than what you highlight in your personal statement.
  • Each activity should showcase at least one of the AAMC Core Competencies.
  • Aim for a ballpark baseline of ~250 hours in each: clinical experience (paid or unpaid), non-clinical volunteering, research, and a combination of leadership and teaching.
  • Have at least 13 of the 15 available spaces filled.
  • Activity Description answers WHAT: What is the experience or organization? What is your role? What insights or skills did you gain?
  • Most Meaningful Description answers WHY: Why was this experience meaningful for your growth?
  • Use action verbs.
  • Write succinctly.

Pitfalls

  • Listing multiple shadowing activities in separate slots. Instead, keep all shadowing in one slot — a bulleted list, a short narrative of what you learned, or a hybrid. For the contact, choose the physician you had the best rapport with or shadowed the most.
  • Writing your Most Meaningful Description like an extension of the Activity Description. Use it to bring in a vignette and dive into why this experience prepared you to become a great physician.
  • Not giving background information or your role and responsibilities for the organization.
  • Filling out fewer than 10 of the activity slots.
  • Not varying your Activity Types — if a non-clinical volunteering experience could also be classified as Social Justice, classify it that way.

Make every slot earn its place.

We’ll review and refine your full activities list — categories, descriptions, and Most Meaningful entries — so the section works as hard as you did.

See Activities List Editing

Want this as a printable reference? Download our free Activities List Writing Resource Guide.