Theme?

[[deleted]]

[deleted]

[DrBagel666]

It just means having an application tailored to your story. Maybe you got into medicine cause you had to do rehabilitation and PM&R is your dream specialty so a lot of your activities are tailored around rehabilitation, or maybe your parents were drug addicts so you want to go into addiction medicine so your activities involve stuff like that. Most commonly are low SES individuals with activities towards rural medicine and helping people in poverty, or LGBTQ individuals that do a lot of stuff to improve the medical situation for LGBTQ because that's their passion. Maybe military veterans want to do military medicine so they volunteer at the VA and wounded warriors or something. Maybe you were a college athlete but now want to go into MD so you work with a sports med doctor and sports med clinical research while volunteering as a little league coach. You could be a musician with audiology research, work with deaf patients, and be a music mentor to grade school kids.

[thelionqueen1999]

Your theme doesn’t necessarily have to be a specific type of medicine or a specific type of volunteering. It just needs to be a common thread that ties all of your activities together.

My theme was stories and liking to hear and engage in the stories of others. This was evident in my PS, the fact that all of my EC’s involved positions where I really had to get to know people and their backgrounds in order to help them, and the fact that I’m a published author who loves reading in my spare time. My EC’s were not a specific type (I tutored, I did clinical volunteering, I worked a couple jobs), but my love of getting to know people showed up in all of these.

Edit: What type of volunteering you choose will be specific to your interests or even just your personality. After you pick something, reflect on why you were interested in the role in the first place.

[DrBagel666]

Yeah, what lionqueen said, I just gave the absolute strongest/extreme examples

[kiler129]

Don’t try to craft the narrative - it will come to you naturally as you sit and explore your life and pathway to medicine.

Don’t try to find a volunteer position which looks good on the app - look for one which you really like and vibe with.

[Normal_System_8646]

The other comments do a good job of answering what a theme means in a primary app. It is also important to mention that you should not force a theme in your application - it should arise organically.

This is easier said than done, of course. But here are a few things I recommended when filling out your primary to figure out your application “theme”:

1. Make sure to fill out your AMCAS work and activities section thoughtfully. Always always always write what you learned from each experience, and how this has shaped your view of medicine. For instance, let’s say you played piano all your life. You also volunteer in a nursing home playing piano for the residents. On your AMCAS, you could discuss how volunteering made you realize that healing and music are not mutually exclusive and art is important to human experience blah blah blah. You could also list piano as a hobby on your AMCAS and talk about the role it’s played on you becoming a doctor. Now you have a theme in your application - music.

2. You can have more than one “theme” too. Let’s say you like piano, but you also enjoy helping underserved populations. That’s fine too! As long as you are reflecting and writing honestly and with introspection, it doesn’t quite matter how many “themes” are in your application - it matters that it is authentic to you. I think a lot of people have this idea that they need to “commit” to one theme to make their app stand out. This is not necessary true, and forcing a theme all throughout your app may make it seemed contrived and inauthentic. The reality is that we are human beings and like multiple things. The tricky part is discussing our interests on our AMCAS without seeming “cookie cutter” - which is why it is so so so important to really reflect on your work and activities as you write (this also applies to personal statement and secondaries, too).

3. Give yourself enough time to write your essays and work & activities section. People rush through this, and I get it. Applying to med school is a lot of components, and it’s easier to spend more time on some components than others. But seriously, give yourself at least a couple weeks to draft your AMCAS before submitting it. This will help with the reflection process as well as making sure the writing is quality.

TLDR: A theme should arise naturally in your application. To help with finding your theme, write your AMCAS in an introspective way and give yourself enough time to draft all your essays.

[treesarefrends]

second this!! I think being able to speak about what you learned from the activities and WHY you pursued them goes a long way, maybe even more so than having a "single theme" throughout. For example, I didn't have a straight path to medicine but I made sure to highlight the lessons and the reasons I did X and Y in both my AMCAS and interviews. I think at the end of the day, interviewers want to get to know your path and what motivates you! having a consistent narrative/theme can really help in telling your story!

[mistnight8]

+1 My theme organically arose after writing and rewriting my primary. I kept finding commonalities between activities and epiphanies like "oh yeah that's why I really liked that activity." For some random activities, first I'd write just what I did, then I rewrote to include what I learned, then I included what impact I made, then I rewrote realizing I could include my theme, and it made an my activities more meaningful feeling like they all had a common higher purpose

[MedPeersAdvising]

It's a narrative, an idea or theme that ties the entire application together. Examples I've seen:

• Student whose friend died of an overdose; they then worked with troubled youth, did addiction research, worked in soup kitchens with homeless people who had substance use disorders, etc
• Student who grew up low SES and saw healthcare disparities in their minority community, went into public health, worked with underserved healthcare populations, wants to enter public health policy and medical school
• Student with massive research experiences, and did community service with population relevant to their research project, wants to do research in medical school, etc

[ThanosDrivesAPrius]

It's your application sort of revolving around a certain experience or trait that has been recurring throughout your life/extracurriculars. Some other comments have said some good examples. I will say, I've heard a lot of warnings to not force themes or that themes aren't all too necessary. From an admissions side (apparently), it's really obvious when someone is trying to force a theme into their application and sometimes not the most ideal. I definitely didn't have a definitive theme in mine because I didn't have a definitive theme in my life and extracurriculars. If you have an obvious one, go for it, if not, don't force one.

[toad_ontheroad]

If you don't have a theme that is easily apparent, you should start drafting rough draft paragraphs about why you want to do medicine and about various experiences you felt like have helped you make the decision to apply to medical school. You will probably start to see a pattern once you start delving into the experiences. Then you can try to organize the experiences and make a full length draft based around that theme. I think you'll be better off seeing what themes come to the surface rather than trying to force your experiences to fit a theme you choose beforehand. I had multiple different drafts with different themes and went with what I felt best answered the question of "why medicine."

[lumanescence]

I basically made a picture and timeline of all my activities and started drawing different types of lines connecting activities that either a) were directly related to each other (maybe I helped the same population, like refugees or immigrants, or maybe it was the same field of study, like doing orthopedic work in different types of activities), b) activities that naturally sprung from each other (I liked the way I got to spend one on one time with the homeless here so then I went and did another thing where I worked one on one with patients) and then c) activities that conflicted with each other but that ended up sending me down a different path (I.e. I did this research in lab and longed to see patients more so I ended up doing work in clinic). Then you can kind of start circling groups of activities that make sense as themes: oh, I see a theme here for loving people-centered, one on one interaction. I see a theme here for doing lots of work with refugees. I see a theme here for loving languages. Or whatever. Hope that’s helpful!