The OMSAS ABS: How to Write All 32 Entries So They Actually Get Read

The autobiographical sketch is the most underestimated part of the Ontario med school application. Applicants agonize over their essays for weeks and then fill in 32 ABS boxes over a weekend, even though at several OMSAS schools there are trained assessors literally assigning scores to those boxes.

What the ABS is

OMSAS gives you up to 32 entries spread across categories like employment, volunteering, extracurriculars, awards, and research. Each entry gets a character-limited description and a verifier who can confirm you actually did the thing. Some schools score the sketch directly, and others use it as the question bank for your interview, so either way every line you write is doing real work.

The formula: action, scope, impact

Compare two versions of the same activity. The weak one reads 'Volunteered at a food bank helping with various tasks.' The strong one reads 'Coordinated 12 weekly volunteers and redesigned the intake flow, cutting client wait times in half at a food bank serving over 300 families.' Nothing about the experience changed between those two sentences. The second one just leads with verbs, quantifies the scope, and names an outcome, which is what lets its significance survive a reviewer moving at skimming speed.

Five rules for surviving the skim

• •Open every description with an action verb rather than 'I was responsible for' or a summary of the organization's mission.
• •Quantify anything that can be counted, whether that's hours, people, dollars, or how long you stuck with it.
• •Spend your characters on what you did, not on what the organization does.
• •Show progression where it exists, because 'promoted to trainer after six months' is a whole story in six words.
• •Pick verifiers who will actually answer their email, and warn them it's coming.

Think about the sketch as a whole

Reviewers read your sketch as a portrait, not a list. Before polishing individual entries, decide what three themes the whole thing should communicate about you, whether that's sustained service, intellectual curiosity, or leadership under pressure, and check that your strongest entries are the ones carrying those themes. Depth beats breadth here. Four years of one real commitment outweighs eight three-month stints every time.

And get another set of eyes on it before you submit. You've lived these experiences, which ironically makes you the worst judge of whether their significance comes through on the page. A structured outside review catches both the entries you're underselling and the red flags you've long since stopped noticing.