If you don't mind me asking, how many hours of shadowing or interning did you do? So far I only have time for just the summers to shadow an optometrist.
By the point I sent off my applications, I had only shadowed 2 optometrists. I shadowed one doc in his own private practice and my own OD that works in a group practice. I shadowed each of them for just a few hours (like half a day) one time.
I had *talked* to lots of OD's though. Lots of military ones and the others all in private practice (but some had put time in at commercial practices in the past).
After interviewing at 4 of my 5 schools, I shadowed one more optometrist that only does eye disease and works at a large eye center. He doesn't refract. I shadowed him for an entire day. That was super helpful, because I had been thinking that I wanted to do what he does, but he convinced me to do private practice (what his wife does) in order to see more variation. He says crazy glaucoma cases are routine for him, so they aren't special and he's kind of lost the sensitivity for telling his patients about it since he does it every day multiple times.
Then I started working full time in an optometric practice with 2 docs who run it as a partnership. They also let me shadow them one day that they went to a local eye center for a couple LASIK procedures with our patients and I got to follow the entire time.
So...I've really enjoyed my shadowing, but I did most of it after all but one of my interviews. I still researched the field tooooooooons as I explored going for optometry, so I felt comfortable talking about all the residency options, what optometrists do, different modes of practice, etc. in my interviews.
I think that's fine that you have shadowed just in the summer. There are a few schools that say they want a set number of hours. But I think that's silly. It IS important to see the profession and understand what it's like day in and day out (see difficult patients and how OD's have to manage that, etc.). That's important for you when it comes to deciding this is the right profession. But when it comes to the interview, they will want to hear what you know about the profession, and that you can learn by researching, reading, and talking to people. Since I had relatively little shadowing done, I skipped marking that in the OptomCAS application under "Optometric Experience" (I didn't put anything in that section other than my involvement with the optometry club). I mentioned my shadowing in my personal statement so that I could talk about what I had learned in that time and not focus on how many hours I spent doing it. I never mentioned the hours or how many days, just talked about the variation in the mode of practice.
Hope that helps!!