Tracking Your Activities
BRANDEIS UNIVERSITY
PRE-HEALTH ADVISING
SPRING 2015
WHY?
 Tracking your activities and involvements now helps
you to maintain contact information, accurate hours,
and other pertinent information about your activities
in one place.
 You can begin to gather reflective information about
your experiences through summaries and/or
reflective writing on your experiences.
How?
 Believe it or not, this can be as simple as creating a
word document or excel file that add to over the
years.
You do not need to keep track of
your activities the old fashioned
way…
What to include?
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Academic Enrichment Program (SMDEP, for example)
Paid Employment – Not Military
Paid Employment – Military
Community Service/Volunteer – Not Medical/Clinical
Community Service/Volunteer – Medical/Clinical
Teaching/Tutoring
Honors/Awards/Recognition/Scholarships
Conferences Attended
Presentations/Posters
Your activities
Publications
should reflect your
Extracurricular/Hobbies/Avocations
collegiate or postcollegiate
Research/Lab
experiences.
Leadership – Not Listed Elsewhere
Medical/Dental/Health Professions Experience
Other
What information to keep track of?
 Description of the Activity
 name of the group or brief description
 For example: Pre-Med Society or Poster Presentation
What information to keep track of?
 Dates you participated
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For example
Jan – April 2015
 Sept 2012 – May 2015
 March 4, 2013
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 Hours of participation
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Exact or approximate
35 hrs/week (for a regular commitment over a course of time)
 50 hrs total (for a one-time commitment or one that is more sporadic
or spread out over a longer period of time like a semester or year)
 Spring 2015 – 10 hours (for a continuing activity, but which you may
want to record the hours each semester for record keeping purposes)
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What information to keep track of?
 Contact Information
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Name and Title
Email and/or phone number
 From the AMCAS Instruction Manual:
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Indicate a person who the medical schools can contact to verify that
this experience occurred. For example, you may enter your
supervisor or the individual in charge of a particular program. If the
experience was a student-organized group and there is no advisor,
you may list a staff member in the Student Affairs/Activities Office
who can verify your experience. If the contact name is not known,
you may enter the name of a person who can verify your
participation, including yourself. You are required to provide a
phone number and/or email address for this contact person.
What information to keep track of?
 Organization Name
 For student organizations – Brandeis University
 For a job – Name of the Job
 For a volunteer experience – Name of the organization
 City/State/Country
 Document the city/state/country the experience took place in
At Brandeis – Waltham, MA
 Global Brigades trip - Honduras
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What information to keep track of?
 Experience Description
 Keep track of what you did
Responsibilities
 Tasks
 Skills
 Goals
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What did you learn?
Transferable skills
 Personal insights
 “Take-Away” information
 What did you get out of the experience?
 A challenging or difficult moment or experience
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Example of the Format for
the Pre-Health Board Process
Description of Activity: Clinical Research Assistant
Contact Name & Title: Professor Dumbledore, PI
Contact Email: ddore@hogwarts.edu
Organization Name: Hogwarts Hospital
City/State/Country: Boston, MA
Dates: Jan 2014 – Dec 2015
Hours/Week: 35
Contact phone: 555-123-4567
Experience Description: Following my graduation from undergrad, I began working as a
clinical research assistant at Hogwarts Hospital. I am working on a large social policy study
investigating the effects of universal healthcare on the psychiatric population. I work on a
number of protocols looking at the efficacy of new adjunctive antidepressant drugs. Much of
my time is spent recruiting subjects for participating in the studies, performing EKGs, blood
draws, and rating subjects on study visits. Hogwarts offers a great deal of educational
opportunities including weekly grand rounds, case conferences, and seminars. I have
learned a great deal about the treatment of psychiatric disorders and the research being
done to deepen the medical community’s understanding of these conditions. Working at
Hogwarts has taught me much about the necessity of collaboration amongst physicians and
has shown me that medicine is a field that necessitates life-long learning.
Tracking Community Service Hours
 You can track Community Service Hours (volunteer
hours) through Sage and the Department of
Community Service.
 This allows you to be eligible for the Commitment to
Service Award.
 If you start early, you can track your experiences
over all four years.
Going Beyond the Basics
 Reflective Writing
 Engaging in reflective writing now while you are in the midst
of an experience can pay dividends down the road when you
are trying to write a personal statement medical/dental
schools or essays for graduate programs.
 It can also be helpful to you now to engage more meaningfully
in your current activities and experiences.
Questions?
Abby Voss, Assistant Director
Misty Huacuja-LaPointe, Director
Nicole Labrecque, Department Coordinator
PHA@brandeis.edu
For appointments, call Student Financial and
Academic Services at 781-736-3470
or book online here.
Thank you for attending!