Hello! I know this is a stupid question but I just wanted to be absolutely sure before joining: will serving with the National Guard in undergrad help with admission to medical school? I read somewhere that it doesn’t help, so I just wanted to double check.
The training for the medical section of the guard says I will “receive critical training in triage, CPR, basic life support and emergency techniques. Learn to conduct clinical tests and prepare to become a laboratory specialist or dental assistant. Or on the technical side, learn to operate and maintain biomedical and radiology equipment.”
Thank you!!!
I would think being in the national guard would help with regards to demonstrating character, but those skills are easy to teach anyone and are not a particularly significant part of being an MD so in that way I don’t think it would help much at all.
Maybe I don’t fully understand what being in the National Guard entails, but it strikes me as absolutely not the type of activity I would do just to gain an advantage in med school admission. Doing things simply for med school is generally a bad strategy to begin with and National Guard duty is certainly much more demanding of you than the typical BS people do “just for med school.” Many National Guard members were sent to fight in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.