21M here. Just got accepted to med school. I was talking with an older doctor, and he mentioned something about how my resume would have got me into top schools if I was applying 40 years ago.
But I don’t see my resume as particularly impressive. In fact, I got accepted off the waitlist at a very low ranked school my second time around because I was rejected the first time. I’ve seen a similar story in my engineering, CS and law friends. Pretty much everyone agrees that a degree without relevant experience through internships, volunteering and/or research is wasted, even with an excellent GPA. There’s a reason why entry level jobs require 2+ years of experience.
Did you guys really go to college and not have any obligations between going to class and homework? Did you not need gap years before applying to graduate programs, or unpaid internships after college to land jobs?
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21M here. Just got accepted to med school. I was talking with an older doctor, and he mentioned something about how my resume would have got me into top schools if I was applying 40 years ago.
But I don’t see my resume as particularly impressive. In fact, I got accepted off the waitlist at a very low ranked school my second time around because I was rejected the first time. I’ve seen a similar story in my engineering, CS and law friends. Pretty much everyone agrees that a degree without relevant experience through internships, volunteering and/or research is wasted, even with an excellent GPA. There’s a reason why entry level jobs require 2+ years of experience.
Did you guys really go to college and not have any obligations between going to class and homework? Did you not need gap years before applying to graduate programs, or unpaid internships after college to land jobs?
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I’ve been in the professional workforce for 20 years and literally no job has ever cared about my major, what clubs I was in, or asked to see my transcripts to see what my GPA was. My first job did care that I had an on-campus job doing tech support in the computer labs, since I was applying to an IT job.
It wasn’t until I was 30 and applying for a job at a very large company that they even asked to see my diploma to verify that I actually graduated and wasn’t lying on my resume.
Of course that’s the perspective of someone who went straight from college to working at a tech startup. Your mileage may vary when it comes to applying to grad school or trying to get a more prestigious internship.
I didn’t work while at university, and this caused me a lot of problems after I graduated (didn’t help that it was just after the Great Recession) because I was 21 years old and had no experience. Even back then, you were at quite a big disadvantage if you didn’t have any kind of work experience. I only got my first job because I had been volunteering there for a few years and eventually they offered me a paid position when it came up.
40 years is a long time and things change. I wouldn’t listen to that old doctor. I’m in my 40s and it was pretty much similar to right now. I wasn’t an amazing student, but I was specifically good at my major and so I had favor with my professor, who had a relationship with a big company, and that’s how I got my internship. My resume at the time would have been a blank page.
Lack of extra research in college definitely shut some doors for me applying to grad school, but outside of academics, no one gives a shit. People don’t even ask me where I went to school at conventions anymore, just where I work.
I did a co-op degree and graduated 30 years ago. The co op work experience helped me get a job no question.
Mid-40s lawyer here. I don’t think law schools cared all that much about work experience. It was GPA (while also considering the school) and LSAT scores. Resumes and experience were good for finding a job afterwards, but not getting admitted. I also don’t think that is any different today.
It could be that the doctor’s comments were about grade inflation. Over the last 40 years, average and median GPAs have risen dramatically (the exact amount varies by survey and report, but all show a dramatic increase).
So having a 3.2 would be below average today, but would have been impressive in 1985.
Resumes only matter to get past HR and quite frankly there were many jokes about HR having crazy requirements no one could meet like x years of programming experience in a programming language that wasn’t even x years old.
You’re going to medschool, so most of what anyone is going to tell you here is non-applicable to your situation. Your own situation is now dependent on which specialty you want to go into. If you want to go into derm or another highly desired specialty, you need to dominate USMLE Step 1 & 2 and try to get a couple research projects under your belt. Additionally, you mentioned not going to a very highly ranked school. This is going to make things very hard for you if you want to go in a popular field. The most desired specialties are stacked with people who have top scores, papers on their CV’s, and personnel connections. DO NOT TAKE A GAP YEAR. I’ve seen more people waste an entire year of their life on research and still not get in their desired specialty. No one will feel obligated to do anything for you because you made a big sacrifice. You’re almost better off getting a PhD then fucking around with a gap year.
No one in real life hiring you for a job cares about volunteering. It’s just fluff. The only people that have the luxury to care about that sort of thing are school admissions staff. The only thing volunteering might do is open up a conversation with a future interviewer. For example, if you volunteer at a dog shelter and I like dogs, we might talk about dogs for a few minutes and will have establish a personal connection that biases me towards you.
While some of this is similar in the other fields you mentioned, they do have significant differences. Law school is about two things. 1. How well known is your law school? 2. Where did you rank in your class? Clerkships help those that don’t make it to the top significantly. Computer science has a glut of graduates and a large labor pool right now. Contribute to open source projects is probably the most useful things to do, but you better be able to speak in detail about why your contributions were useful and not just padded github stats.
Engineering is the field I know the least about. Most of the people I know that went into it didn’t struggle to find employment. Interning is probably useful here, but I can’t imagine you would need to do much more then that.
Congrats on getting into med school, that’s quite the accomplishment and you should be proud. That’s the only thing that matters, you’re in, nobody is going to ask you how you got in. Once you’re a practicing physician, nobody is going to care where you went, people just want to know if you’re a good doctor.
No one has ever, in any job interview, college application, etc., ever commented about my resume. It might matter somewhere on the back end, but mostly they are just a holdover from before the internet took over.
For med school, grades and the MCAT are everything. Having volunteering experience can help with less competitive grades and scores, but better scores will still win out over volunteering.
But congratulations, you got in, and you’ve already passed the toughest, most competitive part of your educational experience. Grades and test scores are still important, especially if you want a competitive specialty like derm, ENT or radiology. But most important is how you do on clinical rotations, particularly your 4th year electives that are essentially your auditions for the residency program you want. Everything else, like med school extra-curriculars, volunteering, or student leadership positions counts for almost nothing if the residency directors don’t think they can work with you.
So, once again, congrats on passing the hardest step. You’ve still got years of hard work ahead of you, but as long as you don’t fail out, at the end of it all, you’ll still be called “doctor” and have the board certification you’ll need to pursue your career. When you graduate from residency (or fellowship) and apply for jobs, you don’t need to worry about how you stack up against other candidates, because now, with your degree and board certification, you have all the power. You decide where you want to work.
And when you stand in front of patients, they won’t care about anything in your background other than that you listen to them and you know your stuff.
Signed, someone who has been through all of the above.
First off, congrats for getting into med school. That’s no small accomplishment.
Secondly, welcome to the party pal. Getting in was the easy part.
To answer your question, people used to care less about grades and certificates and more about experience. A resume can still serve as a tie breaker, but it only serves as a “boost” in rare circumstances.
Saying that, I am one of those rare circumstances. I’m a pediatric ER nurse with military and fire/EMS experience. I originally applied to a different position, and my current unit created a position for me and poached me from that original unit.