I just started volunteering during my gap year. Is this a red flag to my dental school application?

[helpingtiger]

I graduated in Summer 2021, started volunteering on September 2021 of my gap year, and managed to accumulate 200 hours of volunteering hours so far. I plan to volunteer until I apply in June, so I will have approximately 9 months of volunteering experiences in total.

This is not considered as a long-term volunteering right? I’m a transfer student, and COVID hit just 3 months after I transferred to a 4-year university. Because of this, I wasn’t able to do anything but to study at home during these time.. so no club activity as well besides the club I was involved in at my community college.

Honestly, my goal is to get into either UCLA and UCSF because I’m a California resident and it’s my dream school. I have 3.91 gpa, Asian applicant, 200 hours of volunteering (covid vaccination site, tutoring, meal preparing for seniors, dental organization), 150 hours of shadowing, short 1 week summer research experience (45ish hours), 2 years of working experience (restaruant server, cashier at a cafe), and 2 months of dental assistant experience so far as well (will have 8 months of DA experience by the time I apply). Also I just started studying for the DAT, and will be applying this cycle.

I feel like having only 9 months of volunteering experience during gap year will be a red flag to dental schools I want to apply to. I’m trying my best to boost my application right now, but the fact that I lack volunteering and club activities makes me feel pretty anxious and hopeless these days because other strong applicants would have 2-3 “years” of volunteering/club experiences in addition to their high stats. Would I be able to make it into these schools if I do well on my DAT and interviews? Do I have any hopes?

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[somefuturedoc]

You’re fine

 

[macsak]

I graduated in Summer 2021, started volunteering on September 2021 of my gap year, and managed to accumulate 200 hours of volunteering hours so far. I plan to volunteer until I apply in June, so I will have approximately 9 months of volunteering experiences in total.

This is not considered as a long-term volunteering right? I’m a transfer student, and COVID hit just 3 months after I transferred to a 4-year university. Because of this, I wasn’t able to do anything but to study at home during these time.. so no club activity as well besides the club I was involved in at my community college.

Honestly, my goal is to get into either UCLA and UCSF because I’m a California resident and it’s my dream school. I have 3.91 gpa, Asian applicant, 200 hours of volunteering (covid vaccination site, tutoring, meal preparing for seniors, dental organization), 150 hours of shadowing, short 1 week summer research experience (45ish hours), 2 years of working experience (restaruant server, cashier at a cafe), and 2 months of dental assistant experience so far as well (will have 8 months of DA experience by the time I apply). Also I just started studying for the DAT, and will be applying this cycle.

I feel like having only 9 months of volunteering experience during gap year will be a red flag to dental schools I want to apply to. I’m trying my best to boost my application right now, but the fact that I lack volunteering and club activities makes me feel pretty anxious and hopeless these days because other strong applicants would have 2-3 “years” of volunteering/club experiences in addition to their high stats. Would I be able to make it into these schools if I do well on my DAT and interviews? Do I have any hopes?

dontworryaboutit

 

[socat_predent]

Do well on the DAT (most important) and keep doing the volunteering as long as you can, long term volunteering (so over at least 6 months) for one cause> a variety of short and small unrelated volunteering experiences. I also think you already have enough general volunteering hours (if that 200 is all not dental related volunteering), if you try to get more then your app will be more suited for schools with a big community service focus, i.e. ASDOH/UDM.
Also if you are looking for more things to fit into schools like UCSF/UCLA that are trying to make specialists/leaders/researchers in the dental field, I'd say invest more time into doing things to improve your academic impression/research impression/leadership potential since they have a big focus on those aspects.
For example, UCLA has their Basic Dental Practices class in the winter and the spring that is great to learn in/put on an app as an academic experience, become a leader in your predent org if you don't have any other leadership examples, and for research (but only if you actually like research) getting involved in another project (does not even need to be dental related, just something of interest) would be a great EC as well.