Choosing types of experiences for MME's?

[halmoni]

I've been working on writing my activities for AMCAS, and I'm having some trouble picking out my 3 MME's. My adviser wants me to pick one clinical experience, one non-clinical volunteering experience, and one research experience. He pretty much brushed off my suggestions for my MME's, since they either didn't have enough hours (~50 hours over the past year tutoring kids) or they weren't related to medicine/volunteering (4 years in a sports club).

My only significant clinical experience is being a scribe for a year, but I don't feel like it's something I'm passionate about. I realize the importance of having clinical experience and I definitely learned a lot on the job, but at the end of the day it's not an experience that had a profound effect on my personal growth or my decision to go into medicine. If an interviewer asked me about my time as a scribe, I think I'd honestly give a pretty superficial answer (i.e. "I helped docs write their charts and learned to work in a high stress environment").

Do adcoms specifically want those 3 types of experiences to be our most meaningful? Would it be a bad idea to substitute my scribe experience with intercollegiate sports or something? I wasn't super competitive, but it was a large part of my undergrad experience.

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[longhaul3]

None of mine were related to medicine or even science broadly. I don't even think any of them were related to college activities, actually.

Just choose the ones that are most meaningful to you—it's not a trick question, and would have been hard for me to spin some perfunctory ER volunteership into a compelling story (convincingly, anyway). I suspect the same is true for many people regarding volunteering, shadowing, scribing, etc.

We are all more interesting than our pre-med selves.

 

[PhilzCoffeeAddict]

This is what makes every applicant unique. I would go with your heart and write what you found was meaningful. For me, it was a research experience, a volunteer experience, and a medical job. I was able to write unique experiences about how they helped me become a better future physician, but more importantly a better person. I even brought them up during the interview and my interviewers all wanted to talk more about it and what I learned/got/will do from those experiences.

 

[The Unburnt]

I definitely wouldn't try to categorize your MME's or pick things just because they are related to medicine. Realistically, there are lots of things out there that could have shaped you as a person and taught you skills that will be valuable in medicine without being medical in nature. It sounds like you already know which experiences you want to pick, I wouldn't try to change that based on filling some arbitrary category determined by an outside person (especially because in my personal experience, premed advisors will tell you to do things they THINK will look good but it may just end up making you look like a vanilla applicant with no personality).

N=1 here obviously but one of my MME's was 4 years in a musical activity that had a huge impact on who I am as a person. I also didn't pick any of my research experiences to be my MME's. I ended up picking a clinical volunteering experience and a leadership experience along with the art one.

Also keep in mind that you will probably talk about some experiences in your personal statement, which can sometimes overlap with MME's. I had a tough time picking mine because the things that were really meaningful to me I had already touched on in my personal statement and didn't want to be redundant in my application.