Do dental schools go ahead and verify the legitimacy of the applicants' EC hours? I have a friend of mine who did the typical number of EC's hours and got accepted to a few schools, BUT I later learned that he/she "tweaked" the number of hours a bit, saying that he/she did 100 hours of volunteer work when in reality he/she only did 50 hours (I made those numbers of up, but what I'm trying to say is he/she listed way more number of hours than she actually did). I mean, he/she did participate in all those clubs/activities/volunteer work, but tweaked the hours on the application only. I'm kind of happy that he/she got accepted to DS, but at the same time, I feel kind of frustrated and jealous that he/she got in with those fabricated hours. Anyways, just curious, but will dental schools verify those hours and whether he/she actually DID participate in those clubs/volunteer work?
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EC/volunteer hours verification?
Started by plusalpha
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Temporally speaking, it's near impossible to verify every single activity every applicant has listed on their application. But in general, no. On the flip side though, they may ask questions during interviews to discern the validity of things an applicant has listed.
^+1.
The number one advice that I keep hearing from my friends is to "know your resume backwards and forwards."
With the increasing amount of applications every year, it is simply not economically efficient to verify the majority of activities. This is a gray area to say the least, but there is no way out around this. As mentioned above, anything written on your application is fair game for discussion at the interview. For example, if you put down 30 hours of experience at the endodontist while never having shadowed one, I would start learning the basics of a root canal procedure. This is unethical, at the least, and one of the parts of the application process that students will continue to game for their advantage. The most reliable thing applicants can do is to focus on other parts of the application that are verified: GPA/DAT. A million hours of shadowing or EC isn't going to get a 15 DAT/2.3 GPA applicant in, no matter how we twist it.
Sorry OP. They don't really check aside from asking you about it in the interview. However, if someone's fudging their hours by a lot, karma will probably bite them in the ass in due time. Honesty and hard work is the best policy 🙂
I just pray that your friend is completely honest when treating patients in the future. That level of trust is truly essential to being a great dentist but most importantly, a great individual of society.
D
deleted738762
Thats seems upsetting. However, if someone had 95 hours Im sure bumping it up to 100 is reasonable when taking into account all the other unethical applicants.
When you document your hours, do most people round up or write the exact number of hours (100 vs. 96 hours). I haven't documented all my hours to the dot, but seeing as most of my activities are pretty regular, I can figure out a rough estimate (i.e., 4 hours every week for the past 4 years = ~800).
