Excessive shadowing?

[entireparsley]

Hello all. Basically, I have 150 hours shadowing various ‘medical’ surgical specialties (general, trauma, orthopedics). At some point I switched over to pre-dental, and now have ~100 hours shadowing hospital OMFS and ~20 hours shadowing GP. I understand that with the exception of the GP hours, this is a LOT of hours. However it is not without reason. I did genuinely enjoy shadowing the ‘medical’ surgical specialties as well as OMFS and consciously chose to take on those hours because I truly liked it.
My question is, how will this look to ADCOMS? Do they stop caring after a certain number of hours? Or will it look good because I pursued something I liked? Or will it look bad because my time was better spent elsewhere?

thank you for any responses, it is greatly appreciated

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[PerioDont]

I would not classify 120 hours as a lot of hours.

If anything you need to increase your GP shadowing hours. I wouldn’t include your premed shadowing

 

[DMD12345]

I would not classify 120 hours as a lot of hours.

If anything you need to increase your GP shadowing hours. I wouldn’t include your premed shadowing

Yeah OP that’s not excessive hours; I had more than your med+dentistry hours just in dentistry alone, and that’s not uncommon. The first thing my open-file Penn interviewer brought up was how impressed they were with my shadowing and EC dedication/hours. Usually imo I think you should include your med hours, as I did, because it paints your story of how you turned to dentistry and how you liked it so much you switched from med. However, you have all surgical hours and then went on to shadow a lot of omfs and next to no gp. The story this paints? You love surgery and you’re only going into dentistry for omfs and threw some gp dentistry in there to check the box. No bueno in the eyes of adcoms

 

[doc toothache]

2017 Job Shadowing Requirements/Recommendations

There are some minor changes to the recommendations/requirements for job shadowing for the 2018 entering class. Arizona went from 20 to 100; Midwestern from 50 to 100; Minnesota from 30 to 50; Ohio from 20 to 40. Tufts dropped from 75 to 70. E Carolina, N Carolina and Roseman changed from...

forums.studentdoctor.net

 

[ESPN907]

A lot of schools want 100+ and if you can get more GP that would be ideal

 

[New_Vegas]

A lot of schools probably won't consider your specialty hours as shadowing. They are training you to be a dentist, not an oral surgeon. And surely don't mention the medical hours spent shadowing. As I see it right now (and as most schools would too) you have 20 hours shadowing. You will need more than that.

 

[gummybear0119sod]

I wouldn't include the medical shadowing hours. Also, schools prefer GP hours than any other dental specialties. I believe OP needs to boost a lot of the GP shadowing hours

 

[entireparsley]

Thank you all for the replies. I will surely try to get more GP hours, as I still have almost year left until applying. I think I will definitely include my premed shadowing because it played a huge role in my decision to pursue dentistry and leaving it out would be like skipping to the last chapter of a book without reading any of the rest of it.