Importance of Shadowing Experience

[otto2434]

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Currently going into my senior year of undergraduate and worried about amount of shadowing hours. I am going to be applying to the 2014 cycle. I am going to have 30-50 hours by the end of the summer just because I usually work two jobs during the summer to pay for everything. I am currently looking into schools and ones of interest so far include GRU (in-state), UOP, UCSF, UCLA, FLA, Nova, and MSC.

Major: Chemistry
GPA: 3.75
DAT (just took it today!)- AA:21 TS: 21 PAT: 21
3 full years of undergraduate research and presenting at conferences

 

[CedarZ4]

It's one of those things that is very useful at first (first 30 hours at most), then quickly becomes quite useless. But since everyone has it, if you don't have it, you'll be at a disadvantage. If you do have it, you're just the norm.

I would definitely recommend a bit more hours (maybe 20-30) and try to open up to other specialties (if you did GP, maybe try OMFS, or Endo or vice-versa). While I think people who have 3,000 hours are either lying, or just wasting their time as that many hours of shadowing becomes very counter-productive, you still need around 100 IMO to look like you care about the field, and frankly to meet minimum shadowing hours for some schools.