The AAMC Premed Competencies (formerly AAMC Core Competencies) are a framework developed by the Association of American Medical Colleges to define the skills, behaviors, and attributes expected of entering medical students. Medical schools use these competencies as part of their holistic admissions process to evaluate whether applicants are prepared to succeed in medical training and practice. Understanding the AAMC Core Competencies helps you identify how admissions committees evaluate your experiences, essays, and medical school interview responses. Demonstrating these competencies effectively strengthens your medical school application. In this guide, we’ll explain what the AAMC Core Competencies are, why they matter for medical school admissions, and how you can demonstrate them effectively in your application.
>>Want us to help you get accepted? Schedule a free initial consultation here <<
Why the AAMC Core Competencies Matter for Medical School Admissions
Medical schools use the AAMC Core Competencies, now also called the Premed Competencies, to evaluate whether applicants possess the foundational skills and professional attributes needed for success in medicine. These competencies provide a standardized framework that admissions committees use during holistic review to assess your readiness beyond academic metrics.
Rather than evaluating applicants based only on GPA and MCAT scores, admissions committees also examine your experiences, personal qualities, and demonstrated behaviors. The AAMC Core Competencies help admissions committees determine whether you have developed the interpersonal, professional, and cognitive skills required to succeed as a medical student and future physician.
Every part of your application, including your personal statement, extracurricular activities, secondary essays, and interviews, provides opportunities to demonstrate these competencies. Understanding this framework allows you to present your experiences more effectively and show admissions committees that you are prepared for the challenges of medical training.
How Are the AAMC Core Competencies Relevant to Your Application?
The AAMC Core Competencies are applicable to the different parts of your med school application and can be used throughout the common medical school application components.
Primary Medical School Applications
As we’ve seen, it’s easiest and most obvious to demonstrate the core competencies in your primary application materials, such as your medical school personal statement.
However, there are other more subtle ways to include the core competencies in your application, too. For instance, achieving a high GPA, particularly in science coursework, or achieving a high MCAT score can demonstrate the critical thinking, quantitative reasoning, scientific inquiry and living systems competencies.
Your premed work experience, shadowing or clinical experience, and even your hobbies and side interests can be a goldmine for the professional and reasoning competencies.
Remember to use all your application materials to the fullest. They are all opportunities to demonstrate your skills, abilities and knowledge!
Secondary Medical School Applications
Medical school secondary essays are a key part of secondary applications and a great opportunity to demonstrate the core competencies. Secondary essay prompts often ask you to elaborate on certain aspects of your education, your personal experiences, and your reasons for applying to medical school.
While you shouldn’t repeat any information from your primary application, the secondary application is a chance to further emphasize how you demonstrate the core competencies and have the skills necessary to succeed in medical school. Depending on where you apply, read the secondary essay prompts carefully and reflect on whether you are missing any core competencies or if there is one you can discuss further. If you can choose from multiple prompts, pick the ones that spark an idea or particular experience that you can talk about in detail.
Medical School Interviews
The final way you can demonstrate the 17 premed competencies is in your medical school interview responses. You can also demonstrate oral competency in the delivery of your answers and professionalism in your interview comportment.
Making a strong impression in the interview room is the final “test” of your suitability for medical school. Medical school interview preparation can help get you polished and ready for this test. You need to be ready for everything from the most common med school interview questions to the hardest medical school interview questions you’ll be asked.
What Are the AAMC Core Competencies (Premed Competencies)?
The AAMC Core Competencies are a set of defined skills, behaviors, and attributes identified by the AAMC as essential for entering medical students. These competencies help medical schools evaluate whether applicants possess the professional, interpersonal, and academic qualities needed to succeed in medical training and patient care. Medical schools in the US use this framework to evaluate applicants holistically, meaning your personal experiences, behaviors, and professional development are assessed alongside academic performance.
In this way, medical school admissions committees can examine your skills, abilities and experiences even if they are not directly related to the field of medicine and determine whether you possess the right aptitudes to make a good future doctor.
Every medical school will use its own admissions process, but learning what the AAMC Core Competencies are and how to utilize them can help your medical school application stand out and improve your med school chances.
The AAMC Core Competencies are now commonly referred to as the AAMC Premed Competencies. The AAMC updated the terminology to more clearly reflect that these competencies apply to students preparing for medical school. While the name has evolved, the competencies themselves continue to serve the same purpose in helping admissions committees evaluate applicants’ readiness for medical training.
The 17 AAMC Premed Competencies
Why Develop the AAMC Core Competencies?
Why should premeds learn the AAMC Core Competencies and work towards developing these skills and attributes in themselves? For one, the core competencies are used as an evaluation tool by most schools, from the hardest medical schools to get into to the easiest medical schools to get into. Demonstrating these core competencies can boost your chances of getting accepted by creating a better, more complete medical school application.
Furthermore, demonstrating the core competencies is an easy way for non-traditional and mature candidates to improve their medical school applications by showing that they have experience and valuable skills. Or, if you’re applying to medical school without a science background, you can use the core competencies as a guide on how to demonstrate that you nonetheless are developing the skills of an ideal physician.
Finally, working to adopt these core competencies will be beneficial once you are accepted to medical school. The AAMC Core Competencies are specifically designed for entering medical students, not graduates, residents or practicing physicians, so these 17 skills are the beginning of your medical school journey and journey towards becoming a doctor.
Summary of the AAMC Core Competencies
The AAMC identifies 17 Premed Competencies grouped into professional, thinking and reasoning, and science competencies. Each competency represents a specific attribute that medical schools evaluate when reviewing your application.
Professional Competencies
1. Commitment to Learning and Growth
This is a competency that can often be demonstrated in your medical school personal statement, extracurriculars for medical school, and medical school recommendation letters. There are three dimensions to the capacity for improvement: setting goals for improvement, self-reflection, and responding to feedback.
It’s important to understand that the capacity for improvement is about more than “practice makes perfect”. It’s about being open to receiving feedback on your skills and behavior and taking feedback as an opportunity to self-reflect and analyze yourself. From there, it’s about creating a plan to implement feedback and realizing that self-improvement and growth is a lifelong journey.
2. Empathy and Compassion
Empathy, compassion, communication, problem-solving, and arbitration or conflict management are all good skills for a physician to have.
The AAMC defines this competency as being “sensitive to others’ needs and feelings”. This competency is most often demonstrated through your extracurriculars, hobbies, and personal experiences.
In other words, you’ll likely be exhibiting this one in your AMCAS work and activities (or your AACOMAS activities section and TMDSAS activities section, if you’re applying to DO schools or medical schools in Texas, respectively).
3. Ethical Responsibility to Self and Others
This competency may be one of the trickiest to develop, but it will come up very often during your CASPer questions and in ethical questions in a medical school interview. Being able to understand ethics in medicine, and ethical reasoning in general, is critical for physicians.
Here’s the full definition of ethical responsibility from the AAMC: “Behaves with honesty and integrity; considers multiple and/or conflicting principles and values to inform decisions; adheres to ethical principles when carrying out professional obligations; resists pressure to engage in unethical behavior; and encourages others to behave honestly and ethically.”
Note the key words used here. It’s important to demonstrate honest, ethical behavior in your personal, professional, and academic lives and to demonstrate personal integrity. You should behave ethically with yourself and towards others, treating everyone with honesty, respect and fairness.
When answering CASPer questions or interview questions, you will not necessarily be asked to explain your own personal code of ethics, but you may need to explain how you personally would respond to a hypothetical situation. Focus on acting in a way that does the least harm, protects all the parties involved and is fair and honest.
Here's a quick guide to answering ethical questions:
4. Interpersonal Skills
Interpersonal skills refer to your ability to communicate and work well with others. Strong interpersonal skills are essential for good patient interaction, and they can help you to effectively answer CASPer questions too.
Strengthen your interpersonal abilities through your clinical experiences, your extracurriculars, volunteer work, and employment experience. This skill is closely associated with other competencies such as empathy and compassion, teamwork, oral communication, and cultural competencies.
5. Oral Communication
Oral communication is about more than being able to speak eloquently. It’s also about listening and communicating effectively. It includes being able to surmount communication barriers, such as language or cultural barriers.
Strong oral communication can help you stand out in a medical school interview, but you can exhibit this skill in other ways, too. For instance, maybe you have experience giving research presentations or you won an award for public speaking. Your reference letter writers may be able to speak about your oral communication skills too.
Here's how to demonstrate strong oral communication skills during your med school interview:
6. Reliability and Dependability
This competency is about taking responsibility for personal actions and performance as well as fulfilling your obligations and tasks in a timely manner.
While it’s great if your supervisors from any shadowing programs or clinical experience you participate in can give you a glowing recommendation, think deeper.
As an example, if you want to get into med school with a low GPA and are worried how it will reflect on you, one of the best things you can do is demonstrate this competency by taking responsibility for your academic performance and acknowledging your mistakes.
7. Resilience and Adaptability
You may have plenty of examples of how you are resilient and adaptable. These make for fantastic narratives in your personal statement or TMDSAS personal characteristics essay. You can even use medical school rejection and reapplication as inspiration in a medical school reapplicant personal statement.
If you’re worried that your personal experiences don’t show a great enough level of resilience and adaptability, don’t worry. Even if your personal journey doesn’t include overcoming impossible odds or slaying metaphorical dragons, you can still show that you have a resilience of spirit, perseverance, and the ability to handle stress and changing situations. Everyone has experienced and overcome some hardships in their lives. Think about your most difficult challenges and how you deal with them.
8. Self-Awareness
Self-awareness refers to an understanding of sociocultural influences on interpersonal interactions and an awareness of diversity of viewpoints and cultures. As a physician, you’ll work with and treat patients of diverse backgrounds and cultures. You’ll need to know how to navigate these interactions with sensitivity, compassion, and understanding.
9. Service Orientation
This competency is the desire to be of service to others. It is a much broader category than it seems because this competency does not explicitly relate to the healthcare profession, although it has obvious ties.
Many premeds exhibit this competency through premed jobs, but if you don’t have healthcare or clinical experience, you can still demonstrate it. Non-healthcare volunteer work is an excellent way to be of service to others, for instance.
Being of service to others can also be on many different scales, from the local to the national to the global. For example, you might have worked for a local food bank, won a national service award, or participated in a mission trip to another country. The possibilities are endless, especially when you consider this competency is about “being of service” and “helping others” on any scale.
10. Teamwork and Collaboration
This competency is quite self-explanatory, but it is another broad category. It focuses on collaboration with others and the ability to give and receive constructive feedback and share information with teammates. Your extracurriculars or research experiences are a great way to demonstrate this competency in your secondary essays.
For this competency, focus on more than just how you’re a good teammate or how you are a team player. Think of specific examples of when you worked as a team or a team leader. What challenges did you face? Did you ever have to give anyone feedback or a performance review? What do you think makes a good team?
11. Understanding Others
Understanding others refers to your ability to recognize that people’s experiences, perspectives, and backgrounds influence how they think, behave, and interact with the world. As a future physician, you will work with individuals whose life experiences may differ significantly from your own. Demonstrating this competency means showing respect for these differences and maintaining curiosity about how others interpret their experiences.
You can demonstrate this competency through your interactions in clinical experiences, volunteer work, research, employment, or extracurricular activities. For example, working with diverse populations, collaborating with peers from different backgrounds, or engaging in roles that require listening and responding thoughtfully to others’ perspectives can help illustrate your ability to understand and respect individual differences.
Thinking and Reasoning Competencies
12. Critical Thinking
The critical thinking competency boils down to problem-solving and the ability to analyze a situation, which is most likely already a prevalent skill you’ve been developing for years. It’s always possible to develop this skill through personal and professional experiences.
If you choose to take a gap year before medical school, for instance, you can take your critical thinking and problem-solving to the next level with premed gap year jobs. Then, in your medical school application gap year essay, you can share specific examples of how you demonstrated critical thinking and problem-solving in your job.
13. Quantitative Reasoning
This competency covers your mathematical ability and skill for quantitative reasoning. Most likely, these skills will be reflected in your GPA, medical school prerequisites, and MCAT score.
14. Scientific Inquiry
Research experience is important for medical school and not only because it demonstrates the scientific inquiry competency. Finding premed research opportunities is the most obvious way to gain this competency. However, you can show that you have scientific curiosity and a scientific method of thinking in other ways, too. In your personal statement, for example, you might share how a scientific question or interest in a particular area of science sparked your desire to become a doctor.
15. Written Communication
Your written communication will be on display when you submit your AMCAS personal statement, TMDSAS personal statement or AACOMAS personal statement, depending on which medical schools you apply to.
This competency isn’t so much about the content of your personal statement or medical school essays. It’s more about your skill and technique in using the written word. You want to be able to convey your ideas with clarity and thoroughness, using appropriate language and tone.
Science Competencies
16. Living Systems
The living systems competency refers to knowledge of medicine and the natural sciences. Most likely, you’ve gained some familiarity with this competency through your high school and undergraduate science coursework, healthcare or clinical experience, or a premed job.
If you don’t have a strong science background or are missing some medical school prerequisites, you can enroll in a postbacc premedical program or a special master’s program with linkage to a medical school to fill these knowledge gaps.
17. Human Behavior
The AAMC defines this competency as being able to apply “knowledge of the self, others, and social systems to solve problems related to the psychological, sociocultural, and biological factors that influence health and well-being.”
To cultivate this competency, start by fostering a sense of curiosity. Research the recent news, trends and hot topics in medicine and adjacent fields. Get to know and understand the myriad different perspectives and issues in the medical community. Ask questions. Talk to people about their experiences. Get to know your future profession.
How Medical Schools Evaluate the AAMC Core Competencies
Admissions committees do not evaluate the AAMC Core Competencies through a single test or score. Instead, they assess these competencies across multiple components of your application.
Your personal statement allows you to demonstrate competencies such as commitment to learning, resilience, and service orientation through your experiences and motivations. Your extracurricular activities, clinical experiences, and volunteer work provide evidence of competencies such as teamwork, empathy, and cultural awareness.
Secondary essays allow admissions committees to evaluate your written communication, ethical reasoning, and self-reflection. Medical school interviews allow evaluators to assess competencies such as oral communication, professionalism, and interpersonal skills in real time.
Admissions committees review your entire application holistically to determine whether your experiences demonstrate readiness for medical training and the responsibilities of patient care.
Here are more tips for standing out in your med school applications!
Levels of Core Competency
The AAMC Core Competencies develop over time as you gain experience and training. Applicants may be at different stages of development for each competency. Medical schools do not expect applicants to have mastered every competency fully, but they do expect evidence that you are actively developing these essential skills.
The AAMC identifies three different levels:
- Planning – You’re at the stage of exploring how to gain a competency or preparing for an experience to gain greater competency.
- Progressing – You’re gaining experience in a core competency and have started to gain familiarity and proficiency.
- Demonstrating – You are experienced and proficient with a core competency.
The AAMC has a premed student self-assessment worksheet you can use to evaluate your competency levels. This exercise can also help you brainstorm how to demonstrate your core competencies in your med school application.You can start by asking yourself some key questions:
- How do I plan to develop X core competency?
- What core competency did I gain from X experience? How did I demonstrate this competency during X experience?
- What did I learn from X experience?
- What does this core competency say about me? Why does this make me a good med school applicant?
- How did X experience prepare me for medical school or influence my decision to go to medical school?
You can also talk with your medical school advisor or a medical school admissions consultant about how to develop the 17 core competencies and how to express them in your application.
FAQs
1. What are the AAMC Core Competencies?
The AAMC Core Competencies are a framework developed by the Association of American Medical Colleges to identify the skills, behaviors, and attributes expected of entering medical students.
2. Why do medical schools use the AAMC Core Competencies?
Medical schools use the AAMC Core Competencies to evaluate whether applicants possess the interpersonal, professional, and academic skills required for medical training. This framework helps admissions committees assess your readiness for medical school beyond GPA and MCAT scores.
3. How do I demonstrate the AAMC Core Competencies in my application?
You demonstrate the AAMC Core Competencies through your personal statement, extracurricular activities, clinical experiences, volunteer work, secondary essays, and interviews. Admissions committees evaluate how your experiences reflect the skills and attributes defined in the competency framework.
4. Do I need to demonstrate all 17 AAMC Core Competencies?
You are not expected to demonstrate every competency equally, but medical schools expect evidence of development across multiple competency areas. Your application should collectively demonstrate your readiness for medical training.
5. Are the AAMC Core Competencies required for medical school admission?
The competencies themselves are not formal requirements, but they are widely used by medical schools as part of holistic review. Demonstrating these competencies strengthens your application and helps admissions committees assess your readiness.
6. How do interviews evaluate the AAMC Core Competencies?
Medical school interviews allow admissions committees to evaluate competencies such as communication, professionalism, ethical reasoning, and interpersonal skills based on your responses and behavior during the interview.
7. Are the AAMC Core Competencies and Premed Competencies the same thing?
Yes. The AAMC Core Competencies are now commonly referred to as the Premed Competencies. The updated terminology reflects their role in preparing students for medical school, but the competencies themselves continue to serve the same purpose in admissions evaluation.
8. Why are the AAMC Core Competencies important for applicants?
Understanding the AAMC Core Competencies helps you present your experiences more effectively and demonstrate that you possess the qualities medical schools are looking for in future physicians.
Like our blog? Write for us! >>
Have a question? Ask our admissions experts below and we'll answer!
Comments