Shadowing and Volunteer Hours Story + Question

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ASPEN'S NIGHTMARE

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Sooooo I go to a branch campus and it's pretty much like high-school where everyone knows everyone (esp. after the first year when 90% of the people transfer out to main campus).

That being said, there's like 5 kids I know who are trying to become a dentist from this branch. Out of the 5, only two of us have taken the DAT, one of them being myself (to give you an idea of where everyone stands).

I really don't know the other kid that took the DAT that well, but I do know that he got a 19AA the first time he took it, then he said he followed Ari's 10 week schedule and retook summer of 2018 and got a 20AA.

Idk his GPA's and like I said I barely know the guy but from other kids that do know him, they told me he applied to OSU for Dentistry last summer and got rejected. He went down to ask them the reason for his rejection/ how to improve and they told him everything was fine, he just needed to increase volunteer/ shadow hours to around 300 :wow:

Did something change!???? I was under the impression that 100-150 hours of shadowing and volunteering during college was good? I was planning on knocking out 100 volunteer hours during this semester and getting like 200 shadow hours by shadowing at a clinic everyday during the first month of the summer. There's no way I can hit 300 hours for each and now I'm worried. I checked OSU and a few others and I just see "minimum is 40 hours, matriculant average is around 100 each" (this was posted on OSU in 2014). However I also looked at VCU stats and their average was like 750 hours for the entering class :( I thought about what I could add and I could add like 200 or so hours that I've spent feeding people at my church over the course of 3-4 years but idk. Those VCU numbers got me tweakin haha

I just want to hear everyone's thoughts. How many hours will you be applying with? Did you get accepted with way less? Is the average still at around 100 a piece or has it really gone up that much recently? For those already in, what would you say the avg. for your entering class was?

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As long as you have a good gpa and DAT, you’re fine with 100 hours. I had about 250 hours volunteer and 100 shadowing and I got into 4 schools, including VCU. I think gpa and DAT scores are more important.


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I don't think you should be worried too much, I think it's more important that whatever extracurricular you do it is something you genuinely enjoy and done for a long time. I really enjoying volunteering and have a lot of volunteer hours but I don't think it's a requirement for most schools (on the flipside, I tried research and didn't like it so I just stopped instead of continually doing it to look good on my application). Of course there are schools that really want students who volunteer but they're schools that want students who do a lot of research.

If you're gonna do any extracurricular, make sure it's something you throughly enjoy. I heard many schools notice when people start "fluffing" their application by adding a bunch of extracurriculars in their senior year.
 
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Quality of hours > quantity. One on one volunteering hours or hours in a leadership greatly trump something like folding sheets at a hospital. Just make sure you can describe your extracurriculars passionately, genuinely, and accurately. 100+ is fine for both categories when you have a good GPA and DAT.
 
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Cramming 200 shadowing hours into a month in the summer you apply, is not going to look good to the admissions committee in my opinion. Are these just additional shadowing hours to hours you already have?
 
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