Am I at a disadvantage: I spend most of my time working a non-clinical job

[Happensinvegas]

I am afraid I am already falling behind my pre-med peers at my school. I am a rising sophomore at a top 30 university (top 5 public). All my pre-med peers have spent this summer doing medical trips to Africa or Latin America, spending time in an ER or shadowing doctors. In sum, getting medical experience. I unfortunately did none of that. My parent's cant afford those international programs to help in Africa.

This summer the only thing I've done was work my butt off waiting tables for 50+ hours a week. I need to do this job and this many hours to afford school (tuition, books, food, and spending money for weekends). As you can imagine, 50hrs a week spread over 6 days, I don't have a chance to set up shadowing experiences with doctors. People suggest I do jobs at a hospital, but those pay less than my current job at the restaurant.

I am afraid that on my med school app, the section for medical experience this summer and next (plan on doing the same thing) will be empty. The only thing I have time for is doing my job and running errands before work.

Am I at a huge disadvantage already? I really don't know what to do to get clinical experience or even non-clinical volunteer hours. I work 3pm-midnight 6 days a week

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[Bearimbolo]

I was in the same situation, and very nervous about it when I was filling out my applications. I think I had a total of 6 shadowing hours during undergrad.

I would have preferred to have had more clinical experience, and do think it strengthens an application, but only to an extent. I think that your application will show how your time was allocated and that med schools will respect that your putting yourself through school

 

[The Cheat]

If you can get volunteering during the school year, even if it isn't as many hours or as cool as what your peers are doing than you'll be perfectly fine. I can't imagine adcoms will penalize you for supporting yourself.