Integrity, accountability, adaptability, empathy, and the ability to communicate and delegate effectively are all key qualities in effective leaders—and they’re also key qualities in successful physicians.
Our guide to extracurricular leadership will discuss how to find and create leadership opportunities, mistakes to avoid, and how to succeed as a student leader.
Why Admissions Committees Care About Leadership Experience
If you plan to go to medical school, it’s a guarantee you will be leading teams. By definition, a doctor is the person who has the answers. You are going to be the person people come to, whether they be patients, nurses, PAs, or medical students. Your career path is one of a leader.
Admissions committees pay close attention to the leadership experience of medical school applicants because these skills make for great doctors.
Additionally, leadership skills are a huge benefit to the school. By accepting leaders into the student body, the school fills itself with self-starters who can problem solve, work well with others, and bring innovation to the campus. Remember, each medical school has its own mission and goals, and admissions committees are looking for students who will help the institution achieve them.
How to Find and Create Leadership Opportunities
Leadership can take many forms. You might be the leader of a pre-health club, the founder of an organization, or an EMT lead. These are straightforward, traditional leadership experiences where you’re the clear person in charge of defining the vision, delegating, organizing, and leading the team.
But there are many other less traditional ways to gain leadership experience. You could be a leader in the research lab guiding other undergraduates on a project, become the lead TA of a class, or gain leadership in unrelated employment, such as being a restaurant or retail store manager.
Leadership opportunities aren’t as clear-cut as gaining research, volunteer, or clinical experience, and you may need to get creative in order to find a leadership opportunity that you’re passionate about. The good news is leadership experience comes in all shapes and sizes and can be found in many different places.
Look for leadership opportunities in the areas you’re passionate about, and if they don’t exist, create them. The more interested and invested you are in something, the more willing you will be to dedicate your time to it, and the more responsibility you’re likely to take on.
Finding your own opportunities means finding a need in your community—something that’s actually tougher to do at larger, more competitive premed colleges. Smaller schools have more gaps that you can fill yourself and less competition for these opportunities.
For example, if your school doesn’t have an emergency medical services organization or club, you, or even a group of your peers, can start one. Founding something like this, where there is a clear need, gets you involved with the people on campus, faculty, administration, and the community at large. It also requires an incredible amount of planning, problem-solving, and decision making. This type of experience is much more valuable and has more to teach you than simply inheriting the presidency of an existing society.
And remember, it doesn’t have to be something medically related either. You can leverage leadership experiences in your hobbies, including arts, music, sports, and other countless avenues. Each experience has its own pros and cons.
Look for where there is a need for something to be built and established. What are the pain points of other students? What are the pain points of your community? What can you do to help solve these pain points? You can even consider any issues you yourself are having. For example, if you’ve struggled to find mental health resources or don’t feel like there are enough research opportunities for students at your school, you can work to fill that need.
The Benefits of Leadership Experience
The benefits of leadership and the number of things you learn while becoming an effective leader are innumerable.
Invaluable Skill Building
Becoming an effective leader requires honing many critical skills that will aid you in medical school, residency, and as a fully-licensed doctor.
Students who gain leadership experiences early on are more confident at educating others and more likely to take on extra responsibility. You learn problem solving as you are often innovating and envisioning as the person in charge.
You also learn how to communicate effectively, as effective communication is essential to leadership. Whether you enjoy the podium or prefer to lead by example, getting involved in leadership early helps you identify your style, determine your weaknesses, improve your public speaking, and enhance your advocacy skills.
And it doesn’t end there. Being a great leader requires a multifaceted toolbox of skills, including effective decision making, delegation, reliability, active listening, innovation, creativity, empathy, integrity, and adaptability.
Increased Confidence
Leadership roles build your confidence, which transfers into other aspects of your life, including your studies, interview skills, teaching abilities, and interpersonal skills.
Putting in the work day in and day out and leading by example is a marvelous antidote to imposter syndrome. Being a leader pushes you outside of your comfort zone. It forces those who are quieter, more shy, or identify as introverts into the limelight and shows you what you’re truly capable of.
This does wonders for your confidence and will trickle down into all of your future endeavors.
Learn more about Why You Should Step Outside Your Comfort Zone—Student Guide.
Strong Relationships
While operating in a leadership role, depending on what the position entails, you can build strong relationships with your peers, the faculty, and the community. These clubs also often require a faculty sponsor, so if you put in the work long-term and consistently go the extra mile, they could potentially write you a glowing letter of recommendation when all is said and done.
Learn more with our comprehensive Medical School Letters of Recommendation Guide.
This cannot be overemphasized. Building strong relationships for letters of recommendation is essential to crafting a competitive application. Taking on long-term leadership roles that you are able to fully invest in with courage, innovation, organization, and empathy will earn the respect of the faculty and advisors around you.
The Challenges of Student Leadership
While student leadership is essential to a successful application, it certainly comes with its fair share of challenges.
Massive Time Investment
First, it takes an enormous investment of time to be a good leader.
To be an effective leader, you need to voluntarily put in more time and effort than anyone else on your team with passion and perseverance. This takes sacrifice, as saying yes to such a colossal time-suck means saying no to a number of other extracurricular opportunities.
And bear in mind that the time investment doesn’t start when you earn the position of leader or president. It takes years, as you’ll need to work your way from the ground up, building your leadership skills, taking the jobs no one else wants, and going the extra mile.
Although a difficult and lengthy process, this sacrifice and longitudinal commitment is what admissions committees are looking for.
An Ugly Side to Competition
Leadership can often bring out people’s competitive side, and that competition can sometimes be taken too far.
You could be competing to become an elected leader, or there may be conflict within a group if many members are vying to take on more leadership responsibility. And if you do become the leader, your position puts you in charge of handling interpersonal conflict and challenging group dynamics.
While a bit of competition is healthy, remember that the title isn’t everything. Losing your integrity, friendships, or the fun of the experience on your journey to the top isn’t helpful. You’re far better off letting someone else have the title so that you can focus on building other leadership opportunities you’re passionate about.
It’s Challenging to Be a Great Leader
Lastly, it’s quite challenging to be a great leader, and doing a poor job can backfire.
Everyone is looking at you since you’re the decision maker. You have a lot to lose.
If you take on too much, a position you’re not ready for, or don’t fully invest in your responsibilities, you’ll end up having a poor experience while losing the respect of those who were looking to you as their leader. Plus, the faculty sponsor of your group, or those who witnessed your downfall, won’t be able to write you a strong letter of recommendation.
Tips for Succeeding at Student Leadership
Now that you have a better understanding of what student leadership looks like and the challenges you may face, let’s cover how to become a successful leader. Here are 5 key strategies to get the most out of leadership opportunities.
1 | Find Your Passion
To get the most out of a leadership opportunity, you need to figure out what you’re passionate about.
You may not know what your passions are right away, which is why trial and error early on in college is so important. In the first 1-2 years of college, say yes to many different opportunities to narrow down what activity satisfies you most. Are you truly passionate about student government? Do you love the pressure and unpredictability of being an EMT? Does volunteering your time to help the less fortunate leave you feeling fulfilled?
Start pruning your interests during your sophomore year to determine what you’ll stick with. What can you see yourself committing to enthusiastically for the remainder of undergrad? You need to be sure about the club, organization, position, or job when you decide to dedicate your time to it. Otherwise, you could look back and regret your sacrifice.
Leadership roles take up a ton of time and are incredibly challenging, so you don’t want to be stuck working on something you’re not interested in. That lack of passion will seep through in how you approach the role, and you won’t be able to speak about the experience as enthusiastically in essays and during interviews.
If you’re not passionate about what you’re doing, you’ll end up doing the bare minimum. Do not define yourself by what “the president of the club” is supposed to do. Go outside of those bounds and go the extra mile to be the leader your team deserves and the leader admissions committees want to add to their student body.
2 | Leadership Isn’t a Destination
Understand that leadership isn’t a goal you’re trying to reach one day—leadership comes out in all of your decisions well before becoming the president of a club or founder of an organization. Leadership begins as soon as you start investing time into an experience.
True leaders act like it all the time, even when no one is looking. Volunteer for the jobs no one else wants to do. Wherever you see a need, fill it.
Lead by example in everything you do. You don’t have to have the title to inspire others to also do their best. Act like a leader from day one and it will come all the more naturally once you do gain the title.
3 | Prioritize the Experience, Not the Title
Prioritize the experience over a fancy title. To gain leadership, you have to be committed to these projects for many years. (This is why it’s so important to find these projects early!)
Don’t start your own club just for the title. You need a story to tell that fits your application narrative and, ideally, one that connects you with a good advisor or mentor that sets you up for a strong letter of recommendation.
At Med School Insiders, we can help you craft a compelling narrative that’s cohesively woven through every aspect of your application. Learn about our one-on-one advising services linked in the description.
Look for quality over quantity. Earning the role of president is not enough. Simply following the same process as the president who came before you is not nearly as meaningful as a lesser role that you amplified by innovating, collaborating, and inspiring those around you.
Great leaders are the people on the ground working side by side with their team. Any leadership position can give you this experience—just so long as long as you don’t take the title just for the title. In fact, taking on a big title and failing to fully commit to it can backfire and turn into a negative experience.
Adcoms can see this in your application. They know how to sniff out a meaningless title that lacks depth and a genuine narrative.
4 | Commit, but Don’t Overcommit
The longer you commit to the experience, the more likely it is that a leadership position will present itself. And who better to take it than you—someone who has proven their dedication through steadfast commitment, enthusiasm, and consistently going the extra mile.
But committing to something means saying no to something else. You can’t do everything, and a leadership role requires much more of your time than other commitments. You’ll need to narrow down your options and ensure you only commit to what you can handle.
Don’t overcommit and underperform.
Examine your schedule closely to figure out how much time you realistically can give. Determine one or two opportunities you’re most passionate about, and commit fully. This is much more impressive on an application than filling your activities section with hollow, short-lived activities.
5 | Lead with Empathy and Understanding
Being an effective leader also requires empathy; you must know your group. You have to read a room literally and figuratively and understand each team member’s strengths, weaknesses, goals, and preferences. Take the time to learn how to communicate with everyone on your team so that you know how to delegate effectively.
You won’t earn true loyalty and dedication by acting like a dictator or by disregarding the wants and needs of your team. Be proactive, be communicative, and lead by example. If you complete tasks early, not on time, even if it’s the loneliest administrative thing, you will inspire others to do the same, making the entire team that much more effective. Treat others the way you want to be treated in every respect.
Collaboration is much more effective than competition, and as the leader, it’s up to you to inspire it. You need to make allies with any potential enemies by recognizing they are not your enemies. Great leaders understand that everyone has something valuable to contribute, and they are able to get it out of them, to help others be their best selves.
Figure out how to buttress everyone’s strengths and help people improve on their weaknesses. Invest in the people around you. It’s not just what you did, it’s how you worked with others. Celebrate your team, pick them up, and help wherever you can. And when you leave, put in the effort to transition out of your role to set the ones who follow you up for success as well.
The Purpose of Extracurriculars—What Schools Look For
Your extracurricular experience (the Work and Activities section of the AMCAS application) is the first place admissions committees look to learn more about your interests, skills, and whether or not you fit the mold of the kind of student they’re looking for.
On an AMCAS application, which is used for the vast majority of MD schools in the US, you are able to include as many as 15 premed experiences in the Work and Activities section. These experiences range from awards, volunteering, clinical experience, research, work placements, hobbies, and leadership roles.
Below each activity, you have the chance to briefly explain the impact of the experience, including your role, what you learned, and why it had an impact on you.
Admissions committees are looking for a number of things from this section of your application, but they especially want to see that you are ready to commit long-term to medicine. Therefore, some of your entries must show longitudinal commitment.
Did you figure out what your interests were and then commit to those experiences for many months or even years? Or did you continue to jump around from one experience to the next to check the boxes you thought admissions committees might look for?
While it’s true that it helps to show variety across research experience, clinical exposure, and community involvement, it’s more important to show you are able to commit to what you started and that you took the time to find experiences you were passionate about.
Admissions committees also want to see your passion come through as you speak about these activities in your primary application, secondaries, and during interviews. Choosing a variety of experiences you are genuinely excited by gives admissions committees a fulsome picture of who you are, what your values are, and how you will enrich their campus.
For more information, read our AMCAS Work and Activities Section Guide. For osteopathic applicants, read our AACOMAS Experiences and Achievements Guide, and for Texas medical school applicants, we have a TMDSAS Activities Section Guide.
Become a Leading Applicant
Schools don’t just want students who know how to achieve good grades; they also want strong leaders who will help the school achieve its mission.
Many applicants make the mistake of believing the Work and Activities section isn’t as important as the other sections of their application, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. Admissions committees want to learn all they can about who you are and if you will make meaningful contributions to their student body.
Gaining impactful leadership experience as a student isn’t easy, and it often requires putting yourself out there and finding ways to create your own opportunities. And that’s just the sort of thing Med School Insiders can assist you with as we help you navigate the ideal path toward your medical school acceptance.
If your dream is to become a doctor, you’ll love the Med School Insiders Premed Roadmap to Medical School Acceptance course. We cover the nuances and details of how to be a leading premed, including course scheduling, extracurricular leadership, common mistakes and pitfalls to avoid, and our tactics for securing full scholarships to top medical schools. It’s the guide we wish we had when we were premeds ourselves.
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