The AAMC core competencies are the 17 premed competencies medical schools use to describe what they look for in entering students: 11 professional, 4 thinking and reasoning and 2 science competencies. In 2026, the AAMC renamed two of them, so guides that still list 15 competencies or a single cultural competence item are out of date.
Each competency describes a behavior an admissions committee can look for in your application, letters and interviews. Knowing the current names helps you describe your experiences accurately, whether they come from coursework, work, research, service or clinical experience for medical school.
What Changed in the 2026 Update
The AAMC publishes the current list on its page for the premed competencies for entering medical students. That page explains that in 2026 the AAMC updated the titles and definitions of “cultural humility,” now called Self-Awareness, and “cultural awareness,” now called Understanding Others. The AAMC says the change better reflects the meaning of the competencies and the behaviors medical schools are looking for.
The same page notes that the competencies were originally created in 2011 and refreshed in 2022 and 2023 with admissions officers, student affairs staff, faculty, students and prehealth advisors from MD- and DO-granting schools. Medical schools evaluate the 17 competencies through a holistic review of each application, which means no single activity, grade or score stands in for all of them.
Why Do Older Guides List 15 Competencies?
Many guides, including an earlier version of this article, were written around the original 15 core competencies. That list grouped them as interpersonal, intrapersonal, thinking and reasoning, and science competencies, and it included items such as Social Skills, Cultural Competence and Capacity for Improvement. The current model reorganizes the personal qualities into one professional group of 11 and adds new names, so if you are reading an older resource, use the crosswalk below to translate its advice into the current language.
All 17 AAMC Core Competencies at a Glance
The table summarizes each current competency in plain language. Read the full definitions on the AAMC page before you write about any of them, because the exact wording describes what reviewers look for.
| Competency | Group | What it asks you to show |
|---|---|---|
| Commitment to Learning and Growth | Professional | You set goals, reflect on mistakes and use feedback |
| Empathy and Compassion | Professional | You recognize others’ experiences and want to relieve distress |
| Ethical Responsibility to Self and Others | Professional | You act with honesty and weigh conflicting values |
| Interpersonal Skills | Professional | You read social cues, manage emotions and treat people with dignity |
| Oral Communication | Professional | You speak clearly, listen actively and adjust when meaning is lost |
| Reliability and Dependability | Professional | You meet obligations and take responsibility for your performance |
| Resilience and Adaptability | Professional | You persevere, adjust to change, seek support and recover from setbacks |
| Self-Awareness | Professional | You examine your assumptions and revise your thinking |
| Service Orientation | Professional | You commit to something larger than yourself and to community needs |
| Teamwork and Collaboration | Professional | You share information, shift between leading and supporting, and use feedback |
| Understanding Others | Professional | You respect individual differences and stay curious about how others see the world |
| Critical Thinking | Thinking and reasoning | You weigh the strengths and weaknesses of alternatives |
| Quantitative Reasoning | Thinking and reasoning | You apply mathematics to explain natural phenomena |
| Scientific Inquiry | Thinking and reasoning | You use the scientific process and the language of science |
| Written Communication | Thinking and reasoning | You convey information clearly in writing |
| Human Behavior | Science | You apply knowledge of self, others and social systems to health problems |
| Living Systems | Science | You apply natural science to problems from molecules to organs |
Crosswalk: Older Names and Current Names
The AAMC page lists the current names. The middle column below is our comparison of the older and current definitions, offered to help you update notes or advice written for the 15-competency list.
| Older name | Closest current competency | What to change in your notes |
|---|---|---|
| Service Orientation | Service Orientation and Empathy and Compassion | Separate commitment to community needs from sensitivity to individual distress |
| Social Skills | Interpersonal Skills | Add how you managed your own emotions, not only how you read others |
| Cultural Competence | Self-Awareness and Understanding Others | Split reflection on your own assumptions from curiosity about other people’s views |
| Teamwork | Teamwork and Collaboration | Describe when you led, when you supported and why |
| Capacity for Improvement | Commitment to Learning and Growth | Show goals you set and feedback you used |
| Ethical, Reliability, Resilience, Oral Communication | Same names | Check the updated wording, especially seeking help when needed |
| Thinking, reasoning and science items | Same names | No renaming |
How Should You Use the Crosswalk?
Use it to reorganize evidence you already have, not to stretch a single experience across every competency. A strong application usually shows a few competencies clearly through specific actions, then lets letters, grades and interviews show the rest. If an experience supports only one competency well, describe that one honestly.
The 11 Professional Competencies
The professional group holds the personal qualities reviewers read for in your activities, essays, letters and interviews. Each competency below includes the AAMC’s focus and practical ways students commonly show it.
Commitment to Learning and Growth
The AAMC describes this as continuous personal and professional growth: setting goals, reflecting on successes, challenges and mistakes, and asking for and using feedback. Physicians keep learning throughout their careers, so schools look for applicants who already learn on purpose.
You can show it through a course you retook and improved, a research method you learned after an early failure, or a supervisor’s feedback that changed how you work. The strongest examples name the goal, the feedback and what you did differently afterward.
Empathy and Compassion
This competency asks you to recognize and acknowledge other people’s experiences, feelings and perspectives, to be sensitive to their needs and to want to relieve their distress. Part of what older guides placed under service orientation now sits here.
Look for moments where you noticed what someone needed before they said it, or where you stayed with a person through a hard conversation. Volunteering with hospice, crisis lines, tutoring or caregiving can all provide examples, as long as you describe what you noticed and how you responded.
Ethical Responsibility to Self and Others
The AAMC asks applicants to behave with honesty and integrity, consider multiple and sometimes conflicting principles when making decisions, resist pressure to act unethically and encourage others to behave ethically. Medicine depends on trust, confidentiality and accurate records.
Good evidence includes a time you reported an error, declined a shortcut or worked through a situation where two good values pulled in different directions. Ethics coursework helps, but a specific decision you made carries more weight than a course title.
Interpersonal Skills
Formerly called Social Skills, this competency covers reading social and behavioral cues, adjusting your behavior in response, recognizing and managing your own emotions, and treating others with dignity, courtesy and respect. Having interpersonal skills does not require being outgoing; it requires awareness and respect.
Customer-facing jobs, peer mentoring, leadership roles and work with people of different ages or abilities can all show it. Your interviews will test it directly, so practice listening fully before you answer.
Oral Communication
The AAMC focuses on conveying information with spoken words, actively listening to understand meaning and intent, and recognizing communication barriers so you can adjust or clarify. Doctors explain complex information to patients, families and colleagues every day.
Teaching, tutoring, debate, presenting research and explaining instructions to customers or patients’ families all build this skill. Exceptional examples involve communicating under pressure or with listeners who need a different approach, such as children, older adults or people speaking another language.
Reliability and Dependability
This competency asks you to be accountable for your performance, fulfill obligations on time and understand the consequences of falling short. Patients and teams need to know you will do what you said you would do.
Long-term commitments show it well: a job held through school, a lab role over several semesters or a volunteer shift you kept for years. Letters from supervisors who can describe your consistency are often the most convincing evidence.
Resilience and Adaptability
The AAMC describes persevering in challenging, stressful or ambiguous situations, adjusting to new information or obstacles, seeking help and support when needed, recovering from setbacks and balancing personal well-being with responsibilities. The updated wording makes clear that asking for help is part of resilience, not a failure of it.
Strong examples include balancing work and coursework, adapting to an unfamiliar setting or recovering from an academic setback. Describe what changed in your approach, who you turned to and what you would do differently next time.
Self-Awareness
Self-Awareness, formerly titled cultural humility, asks you to reflect on personal assumptions and how they may influence interactions, consider ideas from other viewpoints, revise your thinking when new information emerges and help create an environment where everyone feels respected and able to contribute.
This competency rewards honest reflection more than impressive settings. A good example names an assumption you held, the moment it was challenged and how your behavior changed. Writing about a clinical experience abroad works only when the focus stays on your own learning rather than on the people you observed.
Service Orientation
The current definition is a commitment to something larger than yourself, with dedication to service and to meaningful contributions that meet the needs of communities. The emphasis is on sustained commitment and on what the community actually needs.
Volunteer hours alone do not demonstrate it. Choose a cause you return to over time, learn about the problem it addresses and be ready to explain what your work contributed. Service does not need to be clinical; tutoring, food access work and community organizing all count.
Teamwork and Collaboration
This competency asks you to work toward shared goals, adjust your role between team member and leader based on expertise, share information and encourage others to do the same, and give and accept feedback. Clinical care depends on physicians, nurses, pharmacists, therapists and many others working together.
Sports, group research, student organizations and shift work can all show it. The most useful examples describe a time you stepped back so someone with more expertise could lead, or a time feedback from a teammate improved the result.
Understanding Others
Understanding Others, formerly titled cultural awareness, asks you to recognize that people’s experiences and backgrounds influence their behavior and interactions, to respect individual differences and to show curiosity about how others see and make sense of the world.
You can show it through work with communities different from your own, language study, coursework in sociology or anthropology, or conversations that changed how you understood someone’s choices. Describe what you learned by asking and listening, and avoid summarizing a whole community from a short experience.
The 4 Thinking and Reasoning Competencies
These competencies change little from the older list, and they appear mostly in your coursework, MCAT preparation, research and written materials.
Critical Thinking
Critical Thinking means using logic and reasoning to identify the strengths and weaknesses of alternative solutions, conclusions or approaches. Research, problem-based coursework and work that requires prioritizing under constraints can all demonstrate it.
Exceptional examples show you changing your mind for good reasons: a hypothesis you abandoned when the data disagreed, a project plan you revised after weighing two options, or a debate where you argued the side you did not start on. Describe the alternatives you compared and why you chose one.
Quantitative Reasoning
Quantitative Reasoning means applying mathematics to describe or explain phenomena in the natural world. Statistics, data analysis in a lab, coding and dosage or measurement work in a job all count. The difference from critical thinking is that the evidence rests on numbers and data.
Your transcript carries much of this evidence, so strong grades in mathematics, statistics and physics matter. Activities add depth when they show you using numbers to answer a real question, such as analyzing survey results for a community group or tracking outcomes in a lab project.
Scientific Inquiry
Scientific Inquiry asks you to apply the scientific process to synthesize information, solve problems and form research questions and hypotheses, and to use the language of science to discuss how knowledge is discovered and validated. Research experience, journal clubs, poster presentations and lab coursework are the usual evidence.
You do not need a publication. A research supervisor who can describe how you formed questions, handled unexpected results and explained your methods is often more convincing. If you have no research, a course-based project in which you designed and tested a question can still show the habit of inquiry.
Written Communication
Written Communication means conveying information clearly in writing. Your personal statement and secondary essays are the first and most direct test. Writing-intensive courses, lab reports, published work and grant or newsletter writing can add supporting evidence.
Reviewers judge this competency from every sentence you submit. Clear, specific activity descriptions, essays that answer the actual prompt and error-free writing all count. Ask someone who has not lived your experiences to read your drafts, because they will notice where a reader gets lost.
The 2 Science Competencies
Human Behavior
Human Behavior asks you to apply knowledge of the self, others and social systems to problems involving the psychological, sociocultural and biological factors that influence health and well-being. Psychology, sociology, public health and anthropology courses support it, as does the behavioral science content on the MCAT.
Outside the classroom, work that puts you close to how people make health decisions builds this competency: community health education, research on health behaviors, or volunteering with people managing a chronic condition. Describe a factor you saw shaping someone’s health, such as transportation, work schedules or family responsibilities, and what it taught you.
Living Systems
Living Systems asks you to apply the natural sciences to problems in molecular and macro systems, including biomolecules, molecules, cells and organs. Biology, biochemistry and physiology coursework and biological research are the main evidence.
This competency is assessed mostly through grades and the MCAT, so steady performance in science coursework matters more than any single activity. Lab research, teaching assistant roles and tutoring in biology or chemistry add evidence that you can apply the material, not just pass exams on it.
Where Each Competency Shows Up in Your Application
Admissions committees see the competencies in different parts of your application. Knowing where each one is read helps you decide what evidence to gather and where to present it.
| Part of the application | Competencies it shows most clearly | How to strengthen it |
|---|---|---|
| Transcript and MCAT | Living Systems, Human Behavior, Quantitative Reasoning, Scientific Inquiry, Critical Thinking | Steady science grades and focused MCAT preparation |
| Work and activities entries | Reliability and Dependability, Service Orientation, Teamwork and Collaboration, Commitment to Learning and Growth | Long-term roles described with specific actions and results |
| Letters of evaluation | Reliability and Dependability, Ethical Responsibility, Teamwork and Collaboration, Interpersonal Skills | Supervisors who saw your work over months, not days |
| Personal statement and secondaries | Written Communication, Self-Awareness, Empathy and Compassion, Understanding Others | Specific moments, honest reflection and a clear connection to medicine |
| Interviews | Oral Communication, Interpersonal Skills, Ethical Responsibility, Resilience and Adaptability | Practice with real questions and feedback |
A competency that appears in only one place is easy to overlook. One that appears in your activities, a letter and an interview answer becomes hard to miss.
How Clinical Observation Supports Honest Reflection
Observation in a clinic or hospital gives you material for several professional competencies at once, because you watch teams communicate, adapt and make decisions with patients. Observation does not prove a competency by itself, and it does not guarantee an admissions outcome. What it can do is give you specific situations to reflect on.
What Can Observation Show, and What Can’t It?
| Competency | What observation can give you | What it cannot show on its own |
|---|---|---|
| Understanding Others | How patients’ circumstances shaped a care discussion | That you understand a whole community or culture |
| Self-Awareness | An assumption of yours that a real situation challenged | Clinical skill or judgment |
| Teamwork and Collaboration | How information passed between team members | That you were part of the care team |
| Oral Communication | How a clinician adjusted an explanation | That you communicated with patients clinically |
| Commitment to Learning and Growth | Questions you researched after a shift | Medical knowledge beyond your training |
Write about what you observed in your own role. If you shadowed, say you shadowed. Overstating your role undermines the Ethical Responsibility competency you are trying to show.
Turning the Competencies Into Strong Experiences
Simply saying you have a skill is not enough; reviewers look for experiences that show it. The table below pairs common pre-med experiences with the competencies they most often support. Use it to spot gaps in your record, not to fill every box.
| Experience | Competencies it often supports | What makes the evidence strong |
|---|---|---|
| Long-term clinical job or volunteer role | Reliability and Dependability, Empathy and Compassion, Teamwork and Collaboration | Months or years of consistent shifts and a supervisor who can describe you |
| Shadowing in several specialties | Commitment to Learning and Growth, Understanding Others | Notes on what you observed and questions you followed up on |
| Research | Scientific Inquiry, Critical Thinking, Quantitative Reasoning, Written Communication | Your role in forming questions and handling results |
| Tutoring or teaching | Oral Communication, Interpersonal Skills, Commitment to Learning and Growth | Adjusting your explanations to different learners |
| Sustained community service | Service Orientation, Understanding Others | Returning to the same need over time and learning why it exists |
| Clinical observation abroad | Self-Awareness, Understanding Others, Resilience and Adaptability | Honest reflection on assumptions, described from an observer’s role |
| Leadership in a student organization | Teamwork and Collaboration, Ethical Responsibility, Reliability and Dependability | Decisions you made, feedback you used and what the group achieved |
Experiences abroad deserve particular care. An internship in a hospital in another country can expose you to how teams work with limited resources and how patients’ circumstances shape care. It supports the competencies only when you describe it accurately: you observed under supervision, and your learning, not your impact, is the story.
Annotated Reflection Examples
The examples below are hypothetical and written to show the difference between a summary and a reflection. They are not quotes from real applicants.
Example 1, weaker: “During my internship abroad I saw many patients with limited resources. It made me realize how lucky I am and strengthened my passion for medicine.”
This describes the setting and a feeling but shows no specific competency. It also centers the writer’s gratitude rather than anything learned about patients or care.
Example 2, stronger: “On my third morning in the outpatient clinic, a nurse rephrased the same medication instructions three times, each time asking the patient to repeat them back. I had assumed the first explanation was enough. I now ask people to restate plans in my tutoring sessions, and I want to learn how clinicians check understanding without making patients feel tested.”
This example supports Oral Communication and Self-Awareness: it names an assumption, the observation that challenged it and a concrete change. It keeps the writer in an observer’s role and ends with a learning goal instead of a claim of impact.
Example 3, stronger: “A physician I shadowed changed her treatment plan after a patient explained he could not reach the pharmacy before it closed. I learned that a correct plan can still fail if it does not fit someone’s day, and I started asking about practical barriers when I volunteer at our food pantry.”
This example supports Understanding Others and Service Orientation. It shows curiosity about a patient’s circumstances and connects the lesson to sustained service at home.
Using the Competencies in Your Personal Statement and Interviews
Admissions committees read for the competencies across your whole application, so you do not need to name them. When you describe an experience, cover three things:
- Why you chose the experience and what you hoped to learn.
- What you actually did or observed, described accurately.
- What changed in your thinking or behavior, and how it connects to your path toward medicine.
Interviews test Interpersonal Skills, Oral Communication and Ethical Responsibility directly. Our guide to discussing clinical experience in a medical school interview and the traditional medical school interview guide show how to turn your reflections into clear spoken answers.
If you want feedback on how your activities, essays and interview answers reflect the competencies, IMA’s medical school admissions consulting team reviews applications and runs mock interviews.
Rewriting an Overstated Example
Many applicants, and many older guides, describe experiences abroad in ways that overstate the student’s role. Here is a hypothetical example of the problem and a stronger version.
Overstated: “During my pre-med internship I worked alongside local physicians, assisting with patient intake and triaging cases in a community clinic. Seeing the stark contrast in resources strengthened my resolve to advocate for equitable access.”
Pre-medical students do not triage patients, and a reader who knows the AAMC guidelines for clinical experiences abroad will notice. The claim weakens Ethical Responsibility, the very competency an honest description would support, and the closing sentence states a conclusion without showing how the writer got there.
Stronger: “In the outpatient department, I watched a nurse decide which waiting patients needed to be seen first. I asked her afterward what she looked for, and she walked me through three warning signs she checks in every patient. I had assumed the order was first come, first served. I now understand that a fair process can look unfair from the waiting room, and I want to learn how clinicians explain those decisions to patients.”
This version stays within an observer’s role, shows a question the writer asked, names an assumption that changed and ends with a learning goal. It supports Commitment to Learning and Growth, Self-Awareness and Understanding Others without claiming anything the writer did not do.
How IMA’s Admissions Consulting Can Help
Translating experiences into strong application materials is where many students struggle. IMA’s admissions consulting team offers one-on-one advising, personal statement editing, revisions to AMCAS, AACOMAS and TMDSAS applications, and one-on-one mock interview preparation. IMA also offers tools, including the Pathfinder tool for evaluating your competitiveness and a database of secondary essay prompts. Advisors can help you see which competencies your record already shows and where your descriptions undersell or overstate your role.
How to Grow in the Competencies Over Time
Focusing on each competency separately is rarely the best approach. The competencies describe how a person behaves in real work with people, so sustained experiences build several at once. A few long-term commitments, reflected on carefully, usually show more than many short activities chosen to fill a list.
A practical approach works by stage:
| Stage | Focus | Competencies that grow most |
|---|---|---|
| First and second year | Strong science foundation, one sustained service or work role, early shadowing | Living Systems, Reliability and Dependability, Service Orientation |
| Second and third year | Research or a teaching role, clinical work with more responsibility, varied shadowing | Scientific Inquiry, Critical Thinking, Teamwork and Collaboration, Oral Communication |
| Year before applying | Leadership, reflection on your experiences, letters from long-term supervisors, MCAT | Commitment to Learning and Growth, Self-Awareness, Written Communication |
| Application year | Clear essays, accurate activity descriptions, interview practice | Oral Communication, Interpersonal Skills, Ethical Responsibility |
Keep a journal throughout. After each shift, class project or service day, write two or three sentences about what you saw, what surprised you and what you would do differently. When you sit down to write your application, those notes give you the specific moments reviewers look for.
Building Experience With IMA
The competencies come from real work with people, so the most useful experiences are ones that put you near patients and care teams while keeping your role appropriate for your training. IMA’s pre-med internships abroad place students in hospital departments where licensed clinicians supervise, usually six to eight hours a weekday, with stays from two weeks and staff on call 24/7.
To compare programs, destinations and how placements work, start with our overview of medical shadowing abroad. Whatever experience you choose, keep notes during it so your later reflection rests on specific moments rather than general impressions.
Frequently Asked Questions
How Many AAMC Core Competencies Are There?
There are 17: 11 professional competencies, 4 thinking and reasoning competencies and 2 science competencies. Older resources that list 15 competencies describe the original model.
What Changed in the AAMC Competencies in 2026?
The AAMC updated the titles and definitions of cultural humility, now called Self-Awareness, and cultural awareness, now called Understanding Others. The other competencies kept their names.
Do Medical Schools Score Each Competency Separately?
The AAMC says schools evaluate the competencies through a holistic review of each application. Individual schools decide how they weigh activities, essays, letters and interviews.
Should I Name the Competencies in My Personal Statement?
You usually do not need to. Describe specific actions and what you learned; reviewers can recognize the competency from the evidence.
Can Shadowing Abroad Demonstrate the AAMC Core Competencies?
Observation can give you specific situations to reflect on, especially for Understanding Others, Self-Awareness and Oral Communication. It supports a competency only when you describe your own role and learning accurately.
Do I Need Clinical Experience for Every Competency?
No. Thinking, reasoning and science competencies come mainly from coursework and research, and many professional competencies can come from jobs, service and student leadership.
