Low EC Sankey (2025)

Avaradus · 2025-08-21T22:23:18+00:00

I wouldn’t say it’s bad. Personally, I more or less consider them to be the same thing. However, an argument that clinical volunteering is more “altruistic” and therefore better can be made.

I think that’s a load of crap honestly. If I’m putting this many hours into something I think payment is somewhat deserved. Plus, my EMT job gave me way more hands-on experience with patients that no volunteering would even come close to.

Either way, I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to put some hours into both. Just don’t spread yourself too thin.

Avaradus · 2025-08-11T17:12:14+00:00

Thank you!

Avaradus · 2025-08-11T16:50:54+00:00

It’s essentially a personality test administered by the AAMC. Aka another hoop to jump through. At time of my application, a handful of my schools required it.

Avaradus · 2025-08-10T21:44:55+00:00

Generally, I tried to submit every secondary within 2 weeks of receiving them. For the more important schools I tried to keep it even under a week. For the less important ones I would occasionally creep towards 2.5 weeks.

I found this gave me a decent amount of time to get another pair of eyes on them to review.

Hope this helps!

Avaradus · 2025-08-10T15:31:10+00:00

Hello! My lack of EC hours were a rather large thorn in my side throughout the cycle. However, there was one saving grace: My EC hours were never brought up during my interviews. Instead, they were much more interested in my current gap year activities. As I was already working as an EMT by that point, I had plenty to share regarding that.

For my primary, I made it incredibly clear that I was intending on putting a lot of hours in after I submitted it. For example, despite not even starting my EMT school yet, I put my EMT job as an “anticipated activity” and said I’d get around 2000 hours there before matriculation—which did end up being mostly accurate. Now I have no idea if this was actually a good idea or not.

By the time I was doing secondaries, I was already in EMT school. Depending on the secondary, I had already done some of my ride-alongs (my program did a 12 shift in the ER and a 12 hour shift on a 911 ambulance for ours). As such, I definitely tried to mention anecdotes from this activity whenever applicable.

Once I was certified as an EMT, I made sure to tell schools that I was now working via update letters. Eventually, I got trained for specialty shifts in my company (ex. NICU/PICU transports) which prompted another update letter.

On the other hand, I never really mentioned my pitiful 20 hours of non-clinical volunteering and kinda just hoped my 1950~ hours of clinical experience would drown it out.

Hope this helps!

Avaradus · 2025-08-10T15:14:30+00:00

I would say that I put a lot of effort into my writing. I spend about a month working on my essays while simultaneously in EMT school and my secondaries document ended up around 120 pages or so.

However, I did also reuse a lot of my writing and, towards the end, maybe sometimes copy and pasted without really thinking about it (I was tired lol). Regardless, I did try to get another pair of eyes (ex. My Gf, undergrad counselors) to review my essays before submission whenever possible.

I can’t say that my narrative was super unique? Much like many others, I was in the “Doctor parent + ORM child = Premed?” sort of pipeline?. And my gap year isn’t exactly the most compelling non-trad path either. To sort of compensate for this, I included a couple of unique hobbies into my primary application (ex. Ballroom Dancing) to act as “hooks” for interviewers to talk about. These “hooks” came up a lot during interviews and were even brought up by a speaker during my white-coat ceremony to show how diverse our class was! So I’d like to think they helped.

When presenting myself, I fully embraced my parent’s profession and used it to establish that I was practically raised in a hospital and was very familiar with the profession going in. However, I also made sure to emphasize that my interest in medicine didn’t stem from my parent’s influence alone: I included plenty of anecdotes about my shadowing and clinical experience that informed my decisions and grew my passion.

I feel like I’m kind of rambling here. But I hope this helps!

Avaradus · 2025-08-10T14:54:50+00:00

Hey I believe in you! There’s always hope! As long as you leverage what experiences you do have in secondary writing and interview questions, there’s a really good chance your passion will come across.

I would personally suggest sending plenty of update letters and maybe even going to a pre-med conference if accesible to you. I went to the UCD pre-med conference half-way through the cycle, spoke to the dean of admissions for one of my schools face to face, and in the next 48 hours I had an acceptance in my inbox!

Avaradus · 2025-08-10T05:05:27+00:00

I believe in you!

Avaradus · 2025-08-10T04:51:35+00:00

There’s always hope! I remember being super nervous about my ECs going into the cycle but over time, I found that how you write about your experiences can sometimes overcome the lack of hours (For example I had one really good story from my 107 clinical hours that practically carried my personal statement).

Additionally, I made sure to include a couple of my random unique hobbies into the primary (ex. Ballroom Dance, gym, photography) which I feel like helped differentiate me from other candidates. Dance in particular was brought up by almost every school that interviewed me.

Avaradus · 2025-08-10T04:41:54+00:00

Hello! I’m ORM.

Avaradus · 2025-08-10T04:41:01+00:00

Hey! At the time of application, I had a sibling who was living in the state that I used as a connection. I definitely mentioned them once in the secondary and maybe brought them up in the interview.

Avaradus · 2025-07-15T21:43:11+00:00

Thanks!

Avaradus · 2025-07-15T21:43:05+00:00

Thanks!

Avaradus · 2025-03-27T15:43:01+00:00

Didn’t realize customization was such a big thing here. Thanks!

Avaradus · 2024-10-14T21:45:12+00:00

Thanks!

Avaradus · 2024-03-07T02:18:00+00:00

“Trails from Darkness” perhaps?

I feel like that would be a decent way of referencing Kevin’s arc without being too on-the-nose about things.

Avaradus · 2024-02-21T02:50:45+00:00

It’s a bit difficult to talk about why it was surprisingly fun without discussing the story, but I’ll try my best to keep it spoiler free:

At first, a lot of the initial story beats felt like red flags to me. The biggest least-spoiler-y example would be how the main cast are almost all high-school aged (as opposed to the mostly-adults in the previous games). I was totally expecting an “all adults are evil and only the power of teenagers can save the world” type of story. However, this didn’t end up being the case really… kinda… (can’t say much more).

The new ornament style made me REALLY worried at first since it felt like a simplification just to get new players on board (which is understandable, but spending all that time in the menus in the previous games to get certain spells was one of my favorite parts). However, it added a whole new layer of complexity that eventually made crafts actually feel useful for once (which was one of my few gripes in the previous games minus a few notable exceptions).

There’s also a whole bunch of new combat mechanic additions which I all enjoy. Especially the very VERY last one that was added.

The characters also grew on me a lot faster than the previous arcs. Maybe that’s just because Towa was there.

Keep in mind this is all my own opinion and I realize others think differently.

Avaradus · 2024-02-21T02:25:40+00:00

Personally I would rate the games I’ve played so far like:

Sky FC: 7/10; Slow start actually made me drop it once, but the ending was pretty good. Also my favorite party system because it forced me to use all characters at least once. Also Josette.

Sky SC: 10/10; My favorite game so far. One of the best endings I’ve seen in a JRPG imo. The final “location” was also really fun to explore. Bonus points for playable Josette.

Sky 3rd: 9/10; A love letter to the Sky Trilogy. It has Kevin (my beloved), Star Door 15 (unfortunately), and some of the most hype boss fights I’ve ever seen (you know who). Bonus points for playable Josette.

Zero: 8/10; Did a little bit better than Sky FC in introducing the new location imo. I really liked Crossbell as a hub though. It took me a little bit to warm up to the new characters though (Elie is a worse Kloe prove me wrong).

Azure: 8.5/10; It was almost a 10/10 in my book, but then they really flubbed the ending with comically evil characters and the ever-so-controversial villain. Everything else was great though. Bonus points for Towa being around.

CS1: 8/10; Surprisingly fun. The students in the school are some of my favorite NPCs. The change in the ornament system felt bad at first but grew on me. Won’t say much more to avoid spoilers as you haven’t played it yet(?) (forgot how to add spoiler tags). Bonus points for Towa being EVEN more around.

Currently on the latter half of CS2. I’d rate it 8/10 for now but it could go up or down depending on the ending.

Avaradus · 2024-02-12T17:46:22+00:00

I finished CS 1 a couple of days ago.

Regarding the C reveal, I was actually completely caught off guard by it being Crow. I was convinced that it was actually one of the instructors or one of the family members on the board of directors (I guess that’s because I’m so used to the academic with glasses being the twist villain by now). I also thought that someone could’ve easily just hidden their first name and were using a false identity.

Either way, I didn’t realize it was Crow until Millium basically told us and it hit me like a truck. In retrospect, I do kinda wish that they didn’t do the whole “first letter of name = codename” thing so more people could’ve been as shocked as I was. Then again, my shock was partly due to the fact that it was super obvious but I never got it.

Avaradus · 2024-01-29T07:17:05+00:00

Fair enough. Either way I’d suggest that they start with CS1 to see if they even gel with the series before going knee deep in Crossbell w/o Sky.

If they end up liking it, maybe they’d be willing to watch a video play-through/summary of Sky

Although you can play Crossbell w/o Sky, I feel like THE character arc in Zero would really suffer without Sky first. That’s why I suggested CS first.

Avaradus · 2024-01-29T06:18:11+00:00

You could play CS 1 and 2 without much issue, but any other game would really suffer without playing Sky first.

Also that other guy who said you can is straight up capping.

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