Harvard REA – What should I focus on?

Congratulations on your hard work and accomplishments!

I would not spend much valuable space on shadowing. While it demonstrates your interest in surgery, it is, by its very term, passive. This is even more true if your parents are surgeons, because then it also removes the notion that you got the summer shadowing gig on your own. Anyone can observe stuff if given the opportunity. You want to spend your space talking about things that make you stand out.

If it were my kid, I would not suggest focusing on founding the nonprofit. Instead, I would focus on the activities involved in visiting the senior citizen homes and coordinating people to do so. When it comes to high school activities, founding of a nonprofit is most often unnecessary, and typically requires parental involvement creating the legal entity. So, it signals privilege and doing things for the resume more than for the underlying cause.

Hope you land somewhere where you are happy and will thrive!

Edited to add: Because it’s application season, my mind went straight to applications. The concepts are even more true for activities: focus on active things that ideally a) you really enjoy for their own sake and b) make you stand out or are just a little different.

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