The AMCAS work and activities section asks you to record the experiences you want medical schools to consider, identify the appropriate experience type and provide details about dates, hours, location, contacts and your role. It also separates completed and anticipated hours and gives you additional space for selected most meaningful experiences within the broader AMCAS application.
Because the section covers several kinds of experiences and applies different rules to certain fields, careful preparation matters. You need to understand the official entry limits, choose the closest experience type, distinguish completed work from future plans and check every field before your original submission.
AMCAS Work and Activities at a Glance
- You may enter up to 15 significant experiences, but AMCAS emphasizes quality rather than quantity.
- The 2027 application provides 19 self-selected experience types, including the renamed Community Health Advocacy category.
- Each standard description allows 700 characters including spaces, while a most meaningful designation adds 1,325 characters including spaces.
- Completed and anticipated hours appear separately, and anticipated-only experiences cannot be designated most meaningful.
What the AMCAS Work and Activities Section Includes
The 2027 AMCAS Applicant Guide chapter on Work and Activities describes this as the section where you highlight work experience, extracurricular activities, awards, honors and publications that you want medical schools to notice. You may enter a maximum of 15 experiences. An experience that occurred during separate periods can include as many as four date ranges in total.
The maximum is not a required target. AMCAS instructs applicants to enter only significant experiences because medical schools are interested in quality rather than quantity, according to its instructions for the Work and Activities section. The official rules do not prescribe a preferred number or mix of clinical, research, service, employment or other entries. If you need help deciding what belongs in your application, use IMA’s strategic guide to the Work and Activities section.
AMCAS places entries in chronological order, and you cannot rearrange them. Medical schools may sort and view those entries differently during their own review processes, so you should not rely on a particular entry appearing first for every reader.
Medical schools receive your descriptions as plain text. Bulleted lists, indented paragraphs and bold or italic fonts do not appear for reviewers. The entire Work and Activities section also becomes uneditable after your original application submission. These restrictions make it important to review both the substance and the plain-text appearance of every entry before submitting.
AMCAS Experience Types for the 2027 Cycle
You select the experience type that best represents each entry. The categories are self-identified, which means you decide which option on the drop-down list fits each experience best.
The 19 Experience Types
The 2027 AMCAS Application Workbook lists these 19 experience types: Artistic Endeavors; Community Health Advocacy; Community Service/Volunteer (Medical/Clinical); Community Service/Volunteer (Not Medical/Clinical); Conferences Attended; Extracurricular Activities; Hobbies; Honors/Awards/Recognition; Intercollegiate Athletics; Leadership (Not Listed Elsewhere); Military Service; Other; Paid Employment (Medical/Clinical); Paid Employment (Not Medical/Clinical); Physician Shadowing/Clinical Observation; Presentations/Posters; Publications; Research/Lab; and Teaching/Tutoring/Teaching Assistant.
Choose the type that most accurately represents the experience you are entering. The existence of 19 categories does not mean your application must cover each one or follow a prescribed distribution.
Community Health Advocacy and Community Service
For the 2027 cycle, AMCAS renamed Social Justice/Advocacy as Community Health Advocacy, as stated in the AMCAS guidance on Community Health Advocacy. Community Service generally represents direct service with an immediate effect at the individual level. Community Health Advocacy represents sustained efforts to influence systems, policies or conditions affecting community or population health.
AMCAS illustrates the distinction with a clinic. Volunteering at a clinic and providing direct patient care falls under Community Service, while organizing an effort to expand access to that clinic falls under Community Health Advocacy. If you are also deciding between medical and nonmedical service categories or documenting service time, review IMA’s guide to how many volunteer hours for medical school.
Fields in Each Work and Activities Entry
The AMCAS instructions for adding an experience specify the identifying information, dates, hours, contact details and description required for each entry. Some fields work differently for particular experience types, so check the category before assuming every entry follows the same pattern.
Experience Name and Organization
Experience Name is either the name of the experience or the title you held. If the role has no explicit name, choose a name that best describes it. You also enter the organization name, country, state or province and city. For the city, use the organization’s location or the place where you spent most of your time.
Completed Dates and Repeated Experiences
Completed experiences ordinarily require start and end dates. The start date must be the current month or earlier, and the end date cannot extend beyond the month when you enter the information. Awards, Presentations/Posters and Publications are examples of experience types that require only one date.
If you completed the same experience during separate periods, select Yes for Repeated. You can then enter as many as three additional date ranges beyond the first range, along with completed hours for each period. This produces the four possible date ranges available for a recurring experience.
Completed Hours
Enter the total number of hours completed during each applicable date range. If your schedule did not follow a conventional pattern, you can explain it in the Experience Description field. Publications and Honors/Awards/Recognitions entries may use zero completed hours. For an award, the description can explain the award or how many times you earned it.
Consistent records can make this field easier to complete. IMA has separate guidance on tracking clinical and volunteer hours while your experiences are in progress.
Contact Information
Each entry requests the contact’s title, first and last name and either a phone number or email address. Medical schools may contact this person to verify that the experience occurred. A supervisor or person responsible for the program can serve as the contact.
For a student-organized group without an advisor, you may list a staff member from the student affairs or activities office. If you do not have contact information, AMCAS allows you to enter another person who can verify your participation, including yourself. IMA’s discussion of whether medical schools verify your hours provides related context for organizing these records.
The Experience Description
Each description is limited to 700 characters including spaces, according to the 2027 AMCAS Applicant Guide. This is a character limit, not a stated word limit.
AMCAS recommends drafting in a plain-text program such as Notepad or TextEdit. Pasting formatted material can create problems, and those problems cannot be corrected after submission. Review the text as plain text and confirm its character count before transferring it to the application.
Completed and Anticipated Hours in the 2027 Cycle
The 2027 Work and Activities Guide for Applicants separates completed experiences and hours from anticipated experiences and hours. The way you complete these fields depends on whether an experience has ended, is still underway or has not yet begun.
Ongoing Experiences
For an ongoing experience, divide the hours within one entry. Hours already completed belong in Completed Hours, while hours you expect to complete belong in Anticipated Hours. Keeping the two values separate prevents future time from being presented as work you have already finished.
Experiences That Have Not Started
For a planned experience that has not begun, use the current month as both the completed start and end dates and enter zero completed hours. Select Yes when asked whether you anticipate future hours, then enter the anticipated dates and hours in the corresponding fields.
An anticipated experience must begin in the current month or later. For the 2027 cycle, its end date cannot be later than August 2027. Anticipated hours are unavailable for Honors/Awards, Conferences, Publications and Presentations. An anticipated experience also cannot receive a most meaningful designation.
Entries for Reapplicants
For reapplicants, Work and Activities entries from the previous cycle roll over into the Completed section. Entries that need correction display an orange icon so you can review and edit them. Check those flagged entries rather than assuming that rolled-over information is ready for submission without review.
Most Meaningful Experiences
You may designate up to three entries as most meaningful. If your Work and Activities section contains two or more entries, you must identify at least one as most meaningful. As noted in the hours section, anticipated experiences are not eligible.
Each most meaningful selection gives you an additional 1,325 characters including spaces to explain why the experience was particularly meaningful. AMCAS suggests considering how the experience changed you, the impact you made and the personal growth you experienced. These prompts define what AMCAS asks you to consider without requiring one particular kind of experience.
You can change your most meaningful designations until your initial submission. If you remove the designation from an experience, the summary text associated with that selection is lost. Preserve a separate draft before changing the designation if you may need that text again.
For model responses and approaches to this additional space, see IMA’s most meaningful experience examples. Keep this response distinct from your personal statement, which IMA covers in its AMCAS personal statement examples, while making sure the different parts of your application remain consistent.
Where to Find Examples and Writing Help
This page focuses on the official fields and limits rather than supplying sample entries. IMA’s article with AMCAS Work and Activities examples is the dedicated resource for complete examples across different experience categories.
When you are ready to revise your own descriptions, use IMA’s tips to strengthen your Work and Activities section. That resource concentrates on writing help instead of repeating the application rules covered here.
Use the examples to study possible structures and the writing guide to review your draft, while keeping every statement accurate to your own role, dates and hours. The character limits and plain-text rules described above still apply when you transfer your final material into AMCAS.
Pre-Submission Checklist for the Section
Use this checklist after you have entered every experience. Each item points back to the rule explained earlier on this page.
Entries and Types
Count your entries against the limit in the first section and remove any experience you do not consider significant. Recheck each experience type against the list and the Community Health Advocacy distinction above.
Dates and Hours
Review every date range, including repeated experiences and the types that use a single date. Confirm that completed and anticipated hours are split the way the hours section describes, especially for ongoing experiences.
Names and Contacts
Check each experience name, organization, location and contact against the entry fields section.
Descriptions and Most Meaningful Choices
Measure every description and most meaningful response against the character limits above, using a plain text copy. Confirm your most meaningful choices follow the rules in that section, and save copies of any summary text before you change a designation.
Final Read
Do a final read of the whole section before you submit, because it cannot be changed afterward.
IMA’s guide to common AMCAS application mistakes can support a broader application review.
Preparing Your Work and Activities Section
Start by organizing the experiences you intend to report, then complete each field according to its official rule. Work through the checklist above before you submit.
Use IMA’s related examples and writing resources when you move from entering information to shaping your descriptions. If you want individualized support across the wider application, you can also review IMA’s medical school admissions consulting.
Frequently Asked Questions
How Many Experiences Can You List in AMCAS Work and Activities?
You can list a maximum of 15 experiences. AMCAS advises you to enter only significant experiences because medical schools value quality rather than quantity, so the maximum is not a required target.
What Is the Character Limit for AMCAS Work and Activities Descriptions?
Each experience description is limited to 700 characters including spaces. A most meaningful designation provides a separate additional field with 1,325 characters including spaces.
How Many Most Meaningful Experiences Can You Choose on AMCAS?
You can choose up to three most meaningful experiences. If you enter two or more experiences, AMCAS requires you to designate at least one, and anticipated experiences are not eligible.
Can You Edit AMCAS Work and Activities After You Submit?
No. You cannot edit or update the Work and Activities section after your original application submission, so check every entry and its plain-text appearance before submitting.
What Experience Types Does AMCAS Use?
AMCAS uses 19 experience types for the 2027 cycle. You select the type that best represents each experience, with options covering employment, service, research, shadowing, leadership, teaching, awards, publications and other activities.
Can You List Anticipated Activities on AMCAS?
Yes. The 2027 section records anticipated dates and hours separately from completed work. A planned experience that has not started uses the current month for both completed dates, zero completed hours and separate anticipated fields, but it cannot be designated most meaningful.
Who Should Be the Contact for an AMCAS Activity?
Your contact should be someone medical schools may contact to verify that the experience occurred, such as a supervisor or program leader. For a student group without an advisor, you may use an appropriate student affairs or activities staff member. If no contact information is available, AMCAS permits another person who can verify your participation, including yourself.
