include travel time in volunteer hours?

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travisdotn

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I would say that including travel time is getting pretty desperate. I am not going to include driving time or anything like that in mine because you are not volunteering when you're driving (unless it is part of your volunteering lol). I doubt admissions people at schools are expecting huge hours like you and I have seen some people having. If your stats, like GPA and DAT scores, are good and you have some volunteering and some shadowing you should be good. Personally, I think if you have huge amounts of volunteering, research, or other experiences like that schools may think you are either over inflating your hours or that you have no social life which they don't want that either. Are you including volunteering you did in high school also or just in college?
 
I appreciate a sincere answer. Thank you.

As I mentioned before, I didn't include travel hours last cycle when I applied, and didn't really consider including these hours, but I am not really sure what the correct protocol is for this. So I thought I would ask to be 100% certain.

I am approaching 150 hours volunteering, about the same in shadowing hours. I think those numbers are respectable (maybe I'm wrong. I've been wrong before. Like expecting sincere consideration and mature answers to a posting here on SDN).
 
I would say I have like 90 to 100 hours volunteering and will have about 60 hours shadowing by the time I apply. I know they don't check you volunteering etc. though so it really is just on an honors system. So they probably don't fully believe when people have like 2,500 hours volunteering because that is just insane. Do those people not work, or have a girlfriend/boyfriend, or enjoy spending time with friends, or on their own? lol
 
Word on the streets is the ASDOH is spot-checking or verifying hours. Most applicants know they want significant and MEANINGFUL hours. (I'm surprised some apply without knowing this or the school's philosophies.) But it's easy to tack on a few (hundred) hours if you assume it's all honor system. Some clown got caught faking lots of hours at a clinic where the founding dentist has heavy ties to the school. They called him up and he had never heard of the kid. Waste of an interview.

I wrestled with the drive thing. I drive 4 hours (2 each way) each week. It's an undeserved area and they really need the help out there. That's why I go do it. But I still doubt I'll include drive. Stuff in town I definitely don't include.

Pretend there is no application involved. If someone were to casually ask you how many hours you volunteer at <name of place>, you would answer without including the driving/travel.
 
jeffity said:
Word on the streets is the ASDOH is spot-checking or verifying hours. Most applicants know they want significant and MEANINGFUL hours. (I'm surprised some apply without knowing this or the school's philosophies.) But it's easy to tack on a few (hundred) hours if you assume it's all honor system. Some clown got caught faking lots of hours at a clinic where the founding dentist has heavy ties to the school. They called him up and he had never heard of the kid. Waste of an interview.

I wrestled with the drive thing. I drive 4 hours (2 each way) each week. It's an undeserved area and they really need the help out there. That's why I go do it. But I still doubt I'll include drive. Stuff in town I definitely don't include.

Pretend there is no application involved. If someone were to casually ask you how many hours you volunteer at <name of place>, you would answer without including the driving/travel.
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Wow that is pretty crazy! I wasn't going to fake my hours anyways but that is probably how some people have so many volunteering hours. I'm sure some people have tons of legit hours but some probably add a few here and there like you said haha. It is good that they got caught though. They can kiss dentistry goodbye.
 
sometimes it's hard to konw exactly how many volunteer hrs you may have. At my current volunteer position it's easy because I log in and out and it's all updated on a computer system. On a past volunteer positions (I did it for two years) I would have weekend gigs, every week at least 4 hrs, during christmas a food drive with this group, and there was an intensive training phase. So I have to ball park it at about 4 hrs per week for two years, 40hrs for the extra stuff per year, and 80 as the initial training. This is pretty close I think but prob not exact.

Is anyone else doing this type of guess work?

OP> I dont think you should include your travel time. I think they're only interested in the time you spent there doing your volunteer position.
 
I would not include travel time. does seem a bit desperate… chalk up those hours to good karma 🙂
 
yappy said:
sometimes it's hard to konw exactly how many volunteer hrs you may have. At my current volunteer position it's easy because I log in and out and it's all updated on a computer system. On a past volunteer positions (I did it for two years) I would have weekend gigs, every week at least 4 hrs, during christmas a food drive with this group, and there was an intensive training phase. So I have to ball park it at about 4 hrs per week for two years, 40hrs for the extra stuff per year, and 80 as the initial training. This is pretty close I think but prob not exact.

Is anyone else doing this type of guess work?

OP> I dont think you should include your travel time. I think they're only interested in the time you spent there doing your volunteer position.
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Ya I'll be doing a little guess work with mine. I'm not going to have nearly as much as you but I will still have to estimate a bit.
 
Travel time is not active volunteering so I would not count that. Also, neither is letting somebody stay at your house 🙂
 
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I want 2 hours/day added to my shadowing hours :laugh:
 
7 Iron said:
Travel time is not active volunteering so I would not count that. Also, neither is letting somebody stay at your house 🙂
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The athlete didn't just "stay at my house". It is not like I invited my friends to stay over and want to call it volunteering. I was volunteering with the governing body of the race(an international company) to provide official homestay for international athletes. It was in a foreign country (that I lived and speak the language), so I provided transportation, housing, food, lead bike rides, runs, swims, and a lot of other activities that I could to help someone who did not speak the language and was a guest in a foreign country. So far I only calculated the time I was actively involved with helping out the athlete(s). But I thought that providing your home, isn't nothing. So I didn't know how to consider that time and wanted some honest thoughts.
 
travisdotn said:
Is it wrong to include your travel time in volunteer hours? For example if I take public transportation for the sole purpose of travelling to the volunteering location, is that considered volunteering time? Or is that just padding your hours? In the past I never did, but I am just curious if I am on the same page as everyone else. Sometimes I hear of people with huge numbers of hours and wonder how in the world they have accrued that many hours?

On a side note: what if I volunteered my apt for home-stay for traveling athletes. I know I wasn't actively volunteering with the athlete(s) 24hours a day, but in essence, my house was. So if there was a total of 8 days as a homestay, how would you calculate the hours?

I really appreciate any thoughts on this.

Thank you
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That is just pathetic. Do more shadowing/volunteering if you need to pad your application. How far can you stretch the truth before it becomes a lie? Might as well just say you did 10,000 hours volunteering for this old dude that just passed away, sorry but you cant reach him.
 
Haha I didnt think about that. It took me about an hour of traveling total each day to do shadowing.

I say this: put as many hours as your dentist would allow when he writes your recommendation letter. At least thats what mine told me 🙂
 
Do you count how long it took you to walk to class in your credit hours?
 
I would like to hopefully put this thread to rest.

Perhaps I was not precise with my language, which led my intentions to be misunderstood by so many here. As I originally stated, I have never included travel time nor any other time that I was not actively volunteering as volunteer time.

I am not trying to pad my application, nor stretch the truth. I could not in good conscious do it any other way. I was merely curious if SDN members have heard of applicants stretching their volunteer hours, and if it is commonplace?

Pardon my post and my poor choice of phrasing. Perhaps it is better suited for the stupid questions thread.
 
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