Session 39 In this episode, Ryan tackles a concern raised by an aspiring medical student regarding how shadowing with immediate family or volunteering for a family nonprofit organization will affect your medical school application. Your questions, answered here on the OldPreMeds Podcast. Ryan dives into the forums over at OldPreMeds.org where he pulls a question to deliver the answers right on to you. OldPreMeds Question of the Week: Dave is a 30-year old software engineer looking to make a switch to a career in medicine; graduating with a degree in General Studies with GPA of 3.52. He decided 18 months ago to return to school to pursue his dream of providing care and service to the community as a physician. Dave has been taking as many courses at community colleges and almost done with base prerequisite coursework. Taking the MCAT in early 2017 and applying in June 2017 for the 2018 class. Dave is struggling to find time to take all the coursework, plan his study for the MCAT, find volunteering and shadowing opportunities, and fulfill his familial obligations (with his wife and a 5-year old). How are family connections to extracurriculars viewed? He has shadowing his brother who is a practicing DO. He has also volunteered hundreds of hours for a 501-C3 nonprofit organization made up entirely of family members where they help cancer patients and survivors. Is this considered valid volunteering? Will this be an issue? Here are the insights from Ryan: Shadowing family members is not a problem. The problem is in getting a letter of recommendation from the physician you're shadowing. A strong letter of recommendation comes from the physician you're shadowing whom you've built a relationship with over a prolonged period of time. Quality, not quantity. If you can shadow one physician for a long time, build an awesome relationship with that person then they can write you a killer letter of recommendation. A letter of recommendation from your brother probably will not be looked favorably upon because you just can't trust a letter of recommendation from a family member. It's perfectly fine to shadow a brother but if you really want a strong letter of recommendation from a physician, have your brother help you find somebody else to shadow. Your connection with your brother is still very helpful because he can help you find someone else to shadow. If you're volunteering with a nonprofit, it doesn't matter who else is volunteering or working there. The key thing here is the experiences that you talked about with interacting with cancer patients and survivors are what's going to be so powerful as you write about them on your application. Your experiences will be huge here regardless of family ties. Major takeaway from this episode: Find a physician to shadow who can make a strong letter of recommendation for you while volunteering for a nonprofit organization makes a great experience for you regardless of who else is working or volunteering for that organization. Links and Other Resources: www.cramfighter.com The Premed Years Podcast Session 195 features Cram Fighter, a software to help you plan your studies for the MCAT and create a custom schedule for you.