For Non-traditional applications 5+ years out of school, do adcoms want to know what you did every year?

[Steve3824]

For Non-traditional applications 5+ years out of school, do adcoms want to know what you did every year? Do they want a very detailed breakdown of what you did before you apply to medical school, or can you be more vague?

Let's say you were not ready to commit to medical school until 5 years out of undergrad and then at 5 years out of undergrad started working in the hospital, doing research, etc. full time. Do they require you to talk about in detail what you did the 5 years in between in interviews, on the application, secondaries, etc.? I am just wondering because if they were not anywhere near medical school related jobs that you did during the 5 years, I would think it would be better not to talk or go into detail about them.

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[esob]

There's not really a lot of room to talk about anything other than the big picture.

 

[njtrimed]

You’re not submitting a CV, so no, you don’t have to get into the details of everything you’ve done. But you do need to tell your story and answer the “why medicine, and why now?” questions. Think of crafting your application to tell your story, and discuss whatever experiences you feel led to you where you are now. There are well over a dozen non-traditional students in my class alone who started in their late 20s, 30s, or 40s, with a really diverse range of experience before med school; most were not in healthcare. Draw upon whatever you have done that got you here- it really doesn’t matter what it is, as long as you tell your story well (and demonstrate that you are academically capable, obviously).

 

[Moko]

While you do not need to include every single job, you should still provide enough information so that people can piece together what you've been doing in the interim. Not all entries need to be medicine related (in fact it's preferable that there are non-medicine activities). If you have multiple jobs, you can also list them with approx hours all under one activity, e.g "post-graduate employment".