It helps to think about what professional schools want to know about you based on your clinical experience. As they read your application, they will ask questions like:

• Does this applicant know what they’re getting into before committing to an expensive, time-intensive career path? Is their perspective sufficiently concrete and gained from personal experience?
• Has this applicant started to develop a good "bedside manner" and ability to care for people from diverse backgrounds who have medical needs?
• What is this applicant’s career vision? Where do they see themselves longterm?
• Is this applicant ready to navigate in hospital and clinical environments and work successfully as a team member within them?

No single experience is likely to cover all four of these aspects of clinical experience, so most students do some of each. Here are a few common ways that students gain clinical experience. 

• Shadowing: short-term, passive opportunity to get a glimpse into a certain specialty by following a doctor in their day to day work. You may have a chance to see how a physician interacts with their patients, discuss rewards and challenges of the profession, and gain insight on what you might want in your career.
• Hospital / Clinic / Hospice volunteering: longer-term, active opportunity in which you provide a service to the clinical setting. This can give you a sense of the culture within a unit of the hospital or other care facility over time, allow you to interact with the team within the unit (nurses, techs, physicians, etc.), and, in some units, you may have the opportunity to interact directly with patients and their families.
• Volunteering with patient populations: Opportunities outside of the hospital/clinic setting interacting with individuals with medical needs, such as working at a summer camp with kids with health issues; spending time with elderly individuals who are navigating dementia, Alzheimer's, and other conditions; assisting with health screenings for at-risk populations.
• Working / volunteering as an Emergency Medical Technician: after a course and certification test, Emergency Medical Technicians respond to emergency situations. Great opportunity to gain hands-on skills, but does not provide familiarity with the hospital setting or work of physicians. Some Princeton students train with Princeton First Aid and Rescue Squad.
• Working as a Certified Nurse Assistant (CNA): after a course and certification test, CNAs work alongside nurses to provide direct care to patients. Training is available through community colleges and through care facilities like nursing homes. Check your state's Department of Health for a list of training facilities.
• Scribing: paid position in which you follow doctors as they visit with patients and take notes for them, so that they can focus on the patient.
• Clinical research: students may be able to assist in enrolling patients or administering tests, which can help develop interpersonal skills and provide better understanding of the patient experience. Research also gives students access to mentors in the field and a sense of what it's like to work within an academic medical/research environment. 
• Volunteering through Hotline/Counseling opportunities: many students value the opportunity to develop active listening and counseling skills in these helping roles.

Don't limit yourself to one type of experience or one setting - the broader and more diverse the exposure to health and health care, the better. In addition to active experience, reading books about medicine, attending talks by medical professionals and med students, watching documentaries, keeping up with articles posted on our Facebook page about medicine, and taking health-related courses will further prepare students for medical school and their future careers.

A few medical schools will specify a minimum number of hours in patient-facing roles or shadowing. A few will require a letter of recommendation from a physician who can speak to your readiness for the profession. Most, if not all of them, are seeking to enroll students who show commitment to the investment required to become a physician. Medicine is an evidence-based profession, so it's unsurprising that admissions committees will seek evidence of your motivation that is grounded in experience, not in the abstract.

Every year, we have a few medical school applicants with very high GPAs and MCATs who have relatively weak/limited experience in and knowledge of health and healthcare settings. They often struggle to articulate their motivation for medicine in their application and interviews, and are unsuccessful in the admissions process. Most of them spend a year gaining additional experience and then gain admission in a future cycle, but they would have saved a lot of time and emotional stress gaining the clinical experience prior to their first application. 

Beyond medical school, there are some health professions programs that do have more specific, explicit requirements. Many Physician Assistant programs require a minimum number of hours spent directly caring for patients (often about 1,000 hours minimum with a recommendation for more). Many veterinary schools similarly seek minimum hours of animal care under the supervision of veterinarians. Explore the requirements for careers of interest in the Exploring the Health Professions section of our website.

Princeton students are resourceful and determined, and they explore various avenues to gain valuable clinical exposure, often maximizing clinical exposure during the long summer break and layering different experiences. Here are some common ways Princeton students gain familiarity with patient care, health professions, and the healthcare system.

1. Volunteer Work: Many students volunteer at local hospitals, hospices, clinics, or other healthcare organizations, around Princeton during the school year and near home during vacations. This could involve assisting with patient care, supporting healthcare professionals, or working in administrative roles.
2. Internships and Research Opportunities: Some students secure internships or research positions at medical facilities where they can observe clinical practices and interact with healthcare professionals. They often add shadowing or clinical volunteering hours to their experience if they aren’t already integrated into the opportunity. Many students find these opportunities through our website and newsletter.
3. Shadowing Physicians: Students arrange shadowing opportunities with alums and other healthcare professionals to observe their day-to-day activities, patient interactions, and medical procedures. This firsthand exposure helps students gain insights into different settings and specialties, and hear about the rewards and challenges of the career.
4. Health-Related Student Organizations: Students interested in healthcare often join clubs or organizations on campus related to health and medicine. These groups may organize events, workshops, or speaker sessions that provide valuable insights into the medical field.
5. Participation in health-related classes and programs: These programs may include workshops, seminars, or hands-on experiences that enhance their understanding of healthcare practices. Many student groups (and our HPA office!) host speakers.

Our applicants tend to maintain some relevant experience during the academic year, and maximize vacation and glide year time. Admissions committees are looking at your collective experiences over many years to determine whether you have a realistic understanding of what you’re getting yourself into, and how you have developed the competencies that they seek in entering medical students. Think about both the activities you choose, and more importantly the lessons you can learn and articulate in your application materials about those activities. What will be most meaningful to you when it comes to learning about the profession, demonstrating your cultural competency, service orientation, and other competencies, and look for those experiences. No single experience is going to do everything for you—it’s about the big picture when you add all of the experiences together and tell the story in your application.

Pragmatically speaking, according to the latest survey of entering medical students, 94% have shadowed health professionals and 92% have volunteered in the healthcare field, and a survey of admissions officers shows that they place the highest importance on service in medical settings, service in non-medical settings, physician shadowing, and leadership, so those activities are worth targeting. Use small pockets of time during breaks to shadow (single days add up!), volunteer alongside classes and internships, and prioritize clinical opportunities post-grad if you haven’t accrued enough experience during your high school and college years to feel confident in your preparation.

For starters, we hope you’re planning on at least two glide years: one to accrue experience before applying and the other to keep building it after applying. Admissions committees value experiences you’ve already had more than anticipated experiences!

Our recent applicants have spoken highly about these opportunities:

• Fellowships that place you in a high-need community, like National Health Corps or MedServe.
• Serving as a patient navigator, where you have a caseload of patients and attend appointments and help them manage their care. This is part of the role in the UCSF Breast Care Center Internship, for example.
• Working as a Medical Scribe (through a hospital, clinic, or program like ScribeAmerica) or a Medical Assistant (a few practices hire recent college grads through word of mouth or places like our HPA job board).
• Gaining certification as a Certified Nurse Assistant. Being a CNA is a very hands-on, intimate patient care job.

Search our Glide Year Experiences spreadsheet (the middle link on this page) for job titles and locations that repeat.   

Starting from zero experience, it will also help to shadow, read healthcare news, watch documentaries, listen to podcasts and attend talks by health professionals, and otherwise find ways to immerse yourself in healthcare to complement the job. You will also want to do a lot of self-reflection, journaling, and otherwise thinking about how your narrative is taking shape so that by June when you submit your application, you have a personalized, evidence-based “why medicine” that convinces others that you know what you’re getting yourself into.

Quality is more important than quantity. A cohesive, authentic “why medicine” narrative grounded in experiences that helped you clarify your motivation and vision for your future will help you stand out, and it's hard to build a narrative around a single experience--it's usually layers of different activities, some clinical, some classroom, some other experiences, that help tell that story. 

As you build your portfolio of academic and experiential preparation, think about the kind of physician you want to be and refine the skills you’ll need to hit the ground running in medical school. We don’t mean that you need to narrow down your medical specialty (although it’s great to shadow physicians to learn about areas of interest). We mean that you should start to think about how and where you want to spend your time as a physician.

• Interested in urban medicine with diverse patient populations? Volunteer in areas that will help you better understand the needs of underserved and under-resourced individuals, take classes that delve into the social determinants of health, shadow physicians at low-cost clinics.
• Thinking about an academic medicine career? Look for research internships that will immerse you in that setting so that you see how it works, take a glide year position in an academic medical center.
• Hoping to pair work as a veterinarian with policy or administration work? Get involved in student groups or leadership opportunities where you help mobilize operations behind the scenes and can contibute to improving systems.
• Wondering how your passion for visual arts / engineering / whatever you love will make you a better dentist? Talk to some dentists who have similar passions and see if they’ve seen a connection.

As you think about these interests, talk with alumni health professionals and other mentors who have a similar background to yours or who are doing the kinds of things that you hope to do. The more that you hear from others about how and why they do what they do, and how they got there, the better you’ll be at telling your own story of where you’re coming from and where you want to go, which is the crux of the medical school application process. And no matter what, direct experience helping others who are navigating medical needs is critical, even if that’s virtual for the time being. Think about this in the context of other activities – once you know you like it, seek ways to get better at it – if you wanted to be a professional athlete, you wouldn’t rely on one summer of hard training to get you through. You would keep refining your training and preparation, from technical skill to mindset to learning from other professionals and coaches. The same is true of how to think about preparing for your medical career. If you need ideas on who to shadow or what kinds of experience to gain, we’re happy to help you brainstorm.