OMSAS Autobiographical Sketch (ABS): Top Tips & Examples

The OMSAS autobiographical sketch is one of the toughest components of applying to medical schools in Ontario. This section requires precision and clarity but offers enormous leeway for personal touches, which make your application stand out compared to thousands of other applicants. In this blog I'll walk you through tips and techniques for writing a strong OMSAS sketch that will increase your odds of getting an interview or a seat in your dream MD program. I'll share my tips on how you can turn your experience into a standout story that grabs the admission committee's attention.

>>Want us to help you get accepted? Schedule a free initial consultation here <<

Listen to the blog!

OMSAS Autobiographical Sketch Examples

OMSAS Autobiographical Sketch: The Basics

Medical schools in Ontario use the OMSAS application system, which includes the Autobiographical Sketch (ABS). The sketch summarizes your extracurriculars for medical school, accomplishments, employment, education and more. It provides a glimpse into your personality, allowing the medical school admissions committee to assess your strengths, qualities, and experiences beyond your grades and MCAT score.

Because the OMSAS ABS needs to be a very concise overview of your background, plenty of students struggle with which activities to include, how to write compelling descriptions and how to get started.

The OMSAS sketch provides a standardized outline of your academic and professional development since age 16. It’s structured as a list of up to 32 entries organized into 6 categories:

The Ontario Universities’ Application Center (OUAC) recommends initially approaching these categories and activities quite broadly—their advice is simply to “list all activities that will give the admission committees insight into who you are.”

Activities in your OMSAS sketch can be structured and non-structured—i.e., undertaken in a formal organization in a specific timeframe, or informal and even self-directed. Structured activities might include volunteering for specific organizations or events, while non-structured activities might include hobbies or recreational activities. For some programs, you will also be asked to identify the top 3 most meaningful entries, similar to the AMCAS Most Meaningful Experiences required by medical schools in the US.

The OMSAS ABS entry has a maximum 150-character limit. You are encouraged to write in point form and be brief in your descriptions. This can be extremely limiting, and it can be tricky to adequately express yourself in so few words.

The OMSAS autobiographical sketch is open-ended and requires a delicate balance between conciseness and depth. Many students are too vague or fail to link experiences with their motivation to study medicine. Others are unfocused, trying to ram too many experiences into this tiny space or give too much emphasis to academics and do not demonstrate personal growth. Poor organization and failure to reflect on the impact of their experiences further weaken their narrative. Avoid these common pitfalls and focus your writing on essential experiences with clear, reflective insights, and you will create a compelling sketch.

Check out the tips below to help you get started on your OMSAS sketch and make it stand out.

Would you like a quick recap of the OMSAS application system?

OMSAS ABS Tip #1: Quality Over Quantity

When you write your OMSAS ABS, you should focus on quality over quantity. Just because you have 32 entries does NOT mean you have to fill up all 32 entries. Remember, the point of the sketch is to demonstrate the essential qualities that medical schools value, not provide a comprehensive index of every waking moment of the last five to seven years. In preparation for drafting your sketch, however, you should begin with quantity and refine it into quality.

“Quality often supersedes … I know of candidates who only had 20 entries listed (out of max 32) who were successful in gaining admission. Although it is recommended to have entries in all of the categories (to demonstrate well-roundedness), it is completely fine to not have any activities in a category and compensate that by demonstrating exemplary skills in the other categories.” – Dr. Neel Mistry, MD.

As the OUAC recommends, a good first step is to create a spreadsheet or other organized document that you can populate with any and all activities you can think of that have occurred since age 16. If possible, start keeping a log or journal of your work and extracurricular activities to keep track of your hours, contacts, and details about your experiences.

Be comprehensive here—this is the raw lumber you’ll use to build your final autobiographical sketch. As you list these activities, organize them into their appropriate category using the list above, and provide ample details about them to access later when you begin editing your sketch entries. Once you have a list of at least 15 to 20 entries, begin focusing on the most impactful activities.

“What I think of as most meaningful are the things in my life that were the most formative of who I am today. What were the events/experiences that I still look back on today and that change how I react to things around me? In general, it is usually good to have meaningful experiences to draw on from each area of your life.” – Dr. Jaime Cazes, MD, former admissions officer at the University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine.

You should be able to explain why each entry is meaningful. Avoid including experiences like brief jobs that did not provide significant value, such as a paper route job that only lasted a week.

OMSAS ABS Tip #2: Be Clear and Concise

You need to be clear and concise in your OMSAS ABS to demonstrate your excellent communication skills. Using an entry to describe your hard-to-summarize activity within the limit is challenging, but if you take your time and refine your sketch, it can go a long way toward demonstrating your communication skills.

Remember, quality is more important than quantity. More words don't necessarily improve an entry; in fact, they can clutter it and leave less room for important details. Think of them a bit like poems—every word, every letter even, counts a great deal and carries a lot of weight. Begin drafting your OMSAS ABS early to prevent rushing through your sketch. This allows you to meticulously polish each phrase for maximum impact and clarity.

Maintain consistency in formatting and language throughout your sketch. Be mindful of unnatural conventions, like the year-month date format or using a forward slash instead of a comma for locations. Uniformity is key: demonstrating attention to detail and organization will significantly enhance your application.

Check out our video on the OMSAS Application for more tips and autobiographical sketch entries

OMSAS ABS Tip #3: Secure High-Impact Verifiers

On your OMSAS ABS, you must secure a verifier for any activity other than formal education and scholarships. Structured activities typically require a supervisor or coach, while for non-structured ones, verifiers can include friends, family members, neighbors, and even yourself. Reach out to potential verifiers as you draft your initial, unrefined entries to make sure these people are comfortable with you listing them for a specific activity or experience.

As you decide which entries to refine into your final sketch, be mindful not only of what a given verifier might say, but whether they can be relied upon to respond to a contact request from a medical school.

Select verifiers you are confident will provide additional detail. For instance, if you put down a store manager for an occupational entry but rarely interacted with that person directly, consider moving down the hierarchy to a department or team manager with whom you spent more time. The temptation to try to include high-ranking verifiers may be strong, but what matters most is their reliability and ability to attest to your involvement in the activity.

OMSAS ABS Tip #4: Be Honest

Always be honest and never embellish an entry. Admissions committees at Ontario medical schools read so many OMSAS ABS sketches during the application season that any whiff of insincerity or posturing will be detected. If a given volunteering experience was a trial or even a letdown, don’t embellish it into some kind of life-altering transformation. Not only will your verifier not back that up, but the stink of dishonesty will come through to the people reading your sketch.

“It can be easy for people to look through your application and spot the ‘CV stuffers’. And these things are activities that you don’t have a long commitment with, aren’t passionate about, or that seem like things you just do to pad your CV with.” – Dr. Jaime Cazes, MD.

One of the skills experienced admissions committee members develop is the ability to piece together an actual, working picture of the student whose sketch they’re reading. Entries that stick out from the tone and character of their surrounding entries will almost always read as ill-fitting or even hypocritical.

Don’t exaggerate your hobbies or other entries that will rely on self-verification. You may be tempted to list a marathon or two if you enjoy running, but admissions committees don’t care about your ultimate level of athleticism so much as the fact that you’re a disciplined person who’s mindful of their own health.

FAQs

1. How long can my OMSAS sketch entries be?

Every OMSAS ABS entry has a hard limit of 150 characters. Put into perspective, that is the exact number of characters in this response. Pretty small!

2. Should I tailor my sketch entries to address the CanMEDS framework?

To some extent, yes. Don’t just list CanMEDS roles in a job description, for example, but instead identify a skill you gained while performing the job’s duties that implicitly corresponds to some aspect of the framework.

3. Should I list solitary hobbies or activities in OMSAS?

If you absolutely can’t think of someone who can verify an activity, you can still put it down in “Other,” and simply list yourself as a verifier. Keep these to a minimum, but if it’s an especially meaningful activity or experience, and you can capture that meaning succinctly and engagingly, then include it.

4. How many entries am I allowed for my OMSAS Sketch?

OMSAS allows you to include up to 32 entries total, but you do not need to include the max. Focus on quality and quantity, and try to include an activity for each category.

5. What are some important details to include in Extracurricular Activities entries?

Describe the impact the extracurricular had on you or your academic performance. For instance, noting that your time coaching little league baseball helped you improve your communication skills with both children and parents.

6. Who should I use as OMSAS verifiers?

People who are notoriously hard to get a hold of should be substituted for someone more accessible, even if they held a position of higher stature in the given activity or experience. It’s much more important to have someone reliable act as your verifier.

7. Should I include whether or not an employment entry was part-time or full-time?

Yes! Again, committees aren’t going to hold it against you if you only worked 20 hours per week instead of 40—the point is what skills and insights a job afforded you, and whether you performed its duties well.

8. I participated in a research project that unfortunately wasn’t published. Should I still include it?

Absolutely, yes. The general format for research activities includes fields for duration—i.e., “from” and “to”—a description, location of research, title of project, type of publication, and your role. If it wasn’t ultimately published, simply don’t include that line, and use those extra characters to describe your role or the project itself.

To your success,

Your friends at BeMo