I am a freshman in college and plan on asking my dentist if I can shadow him. I know dental schools prefer if you shadow a little here and there for a long period of time rather than a ton of shadowing just at once. My only concern is, if I ask to shadow already, and do it maybe once a week, by maybe the end of this year I would already have tons of hours shadowing him and I would only be a sophomore in college. So when the time comes to apply for dental school, it would be nearly 1.5 years after I am done shadowing him and could I really ask for a LOR after all that time? Should I start shadowing later on in my college career or is this fine?
Question about shadowing
- Thread starter hs2013
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It's a catch 22. If you start early, in 3 years you may forget what dentistry is all about, but if you start in 3 years, you may decide that dentistry is not for you, after all.
Maybe you could shadow a little now to see if dentistry is for you. If you feel like it is, discuss the possibility of shadowing farther down the road with your dentist for the sake of getting a rec/fulfilling dental school requirements. I bet s/he'd be fine with it.
Or, you could do all your shadowing now, and get your dentist to write a rec for you now, that you can use later on. Some schools have career centers that will store things like recs, etc. for students that they can use down the road; check if yours does. If it doesn't, I've seen online services that will do it for a fee (recommenders submit their recs directly to the site, and the site will submit the recs directly to the school/job/etc. when the time comes). The only thing is, places may have varying policies on whether or not they'll accept recs from these services. Another option might be to just ask your recommender to write a rec now and keep it on file until you need it sent out.
In general, I don't think it's a bad idea to collect recs as you go along in your college career if you feel like you've done particularly well in a class or gotten along with a professor. Better to have more than enough recs to choose from than scramble for them when you need them.
Or, you could do all your shadowing now, and get your dentist to write a rec for you now, that you can use later on. Some schools have career centers that will store things like recs, etc. for students that they can use down the road; check if yours does. If it doesn't, I've seen online services that will do it for a fee (recommenders submit their recs directly to the site, and the site will submit the recs directly to the school/job/etc. when the time comes). The only thing is, places may have varying policies on whether or not they'll accept recs from these services. Another option might be to just ask your recommender to write a rec now and keep it on file until you need it sent out.
In general, I don't think it's a bad idea to collect recs as you go along in your college career if you feel like you've done particularly well in a class or gotten along with a professor. Better to have more than enough recs to choose from than scramble for them when you need them.
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Go ahead and do shadowing now. Later you can shadow other specialty or general dentist in area. This would really show that you were dedicated to dentistry since freshmen year. Some people so everything in last 6 months.. Just to fulfill the requirements.
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