Minimum amount of shadowing?

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Are you applying this cycle? If so, try to get it a bit higher, some schools require 100. The issue with shadowing in my mind is that even if you've shadowed enough to know you want to enter the profession, you need to keep up with other applicants. In the end, GPA and DAT probably reign supreme, but if two similar applicants apply and one has 20 hrs, the other 100, adcoms may favor the latter. Also, the more shadowing you do, the more coherently you can speak about dentistry when interviews roll in.
 
free99 said:
Are you applying this cycle? If so, try to get it a bit higher, some schools require 100. The issue with shadowing in my mind is that even if you've shadowed enough to know you want to enter the profession, you need to keep up with other applicants. In the end, GPA and DAT probably reign supreme, but if two similar applicants apply and one has 20 hrs, the other 100, adcoms may favor the latter. Also, the more shadowing you do, the more coherently you can speak about dentistry when interviews roll in.
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I agree. I had 60 shadowing hours and not one, but two schools explicitly asked me in the interview why I had a "low" amount of hours. Going into applying last cycle, I had no idea that it was considered low, but I guess the other applicants must have had well over 100.
And this was unrelated to GPA/DAT because I had a 4.0 and 22. I don't know if these two schools are just harsher than others though.
 
biochem5 said:
I agree. I had 60 shadowing hours and not one, but two schools explicitly asked me in the interview why I had a "low" amount of hours. Going into applying last cycle, I had no idea that it was considered low, but I guess the other applicants must have had well over 100.
And this was unrelated to GPA/DAT because I had a 4.0 and 22. I don't know if these two schools are just harsher than others though.
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Which schools were they?
 
Get 100. It'll save you some headaches. I spaced my shadowing hours out over about a year.
 
InformMe123 said:
What is the minimum amount of hours for shadowing to get into dental school? I have less than 20 right now, will this be a problem with dental school admission?
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Like others have said, you should go for 100hrs. Which isnt much, considering you could shadow multiple offices at once or one office multiple times a week.
 
I have a problem with questions like this =/ Not to bash you or make you feel bad, but why ask about the minimum shadowing hours? People don't all get into dental schools because they did the minimum. Applicants don't get noticed by the admissions committee because they did the minimum. Although schools state their minimums, no applicant should be setting their goals to the minimum. As free99 said, you need to keep up with other applicants - show them that you are more qualified than them. If you are really, truly, genuinely interested in dentistry, you'll find the time to bump that up to at least a 100 and you won't even see it as a "chore"
 
upcomingcycle said:
I have a problem with questions like this =/ Not to bash you or make you feel bad, but why ask about the minimum shadowing hours? People don't all get into dental schools because they did the minimum. Applicants don't get noticed by the admissions committee because they did the minimum. Although schools state their minimums, no applicant should be setting their goals to the minimum. As free99 said, you need to keep up with other applicants - show them that you are more qualified than them. If you are really, truly, genuinely interested in dentistry, you'll find the time to bump that up to at least a 100 and you won't even see it as a "chore"
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Agree 100%
 
upcomingcycle said:
I have a problem with questions like this =/ Not to bash you or make you feel bad, but why ask about the minimum shadowing hours? People don't all get into dental schools because they did the minimum. Applicants don't get noticed by the admissions committee because they did the minimum. Although schools state their minimums, no applicant should be setting their goals to the minimum. As free99 said, you need to keep up with other applicants - show them that you are more qualified than them. If you are really, truly, genuinely interested in dentistry, you'll find the time to bump that up to at least a 100 and you won't even see it as a "chore"
Click to expand...

I agree with this. Plus if you're really wanting to become a dentist don't you think you would want to learn everything you could?! There's approximately 8,760 hours in a single year - think about how small 60 hours is in 4 years of undergrad. Be the best you can be and push yourself to the limit. Don't shadow to get a requirement met, do it because you LOVE interacting with patients, watching procedures, and seeing how an office operates. Enjoy it 🙂
 
upcomingcycle said:
I have a problem with questions like this =/ Not to bash you or make you feel bad, but why ask about the minimum shadowing hours? People don't all get into dental schools because they did the minimum. Applicants don't get noticed by the admissions committee because they did the minimum. Although schools state their minimums, no applicant should be setting their goals to the minimum. As free99 said, you need to keep up with other applicants - show them that you are more qualified than them. If you are really, truly, genuinely interested in dentistry, you'll find the time to bump that up to at least a 100 and you won't even see it as a "chore"
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, shadowing is the least important of all the other qualifications.

predentstudentL said:
I agree with this. Plus if you're really wanting to become a dentist don't you think you would want to learn everything you could?! There's approximately 8,760 hours in a single year - think about how small 60 hours is in 4 years of undergrad. Be the best you can be and push yourself to the limit. Don't shadow to get a requirement met, do it because you LOVE interacting with patients, watching procedures, and seeing how an office operates. Enjoy it 🙂
Click to expand...

Learning "everything you" can about dentistry is what dental schools are all about.
 
Yeah, I'm gonna agree on this one. You could easily learn all the stuff from Youtube videos that you could watching a dentist. It's not like you're really doing anything. I ended up spending a lot of my shadowing time actually volunteering--it's not like the dentist is doing stuff the entire time. 100 hours is plenty to get a feel for the occupation and see if you could envision yourself doing it for life.
 
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