Shadowing Question...

[BKelly734]

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Hey all, I hope someone can give me some insight on this. Does it look good on an application to have shadowing hours spread out over a number of different specialties/dentists? Some background: I plan on reapplying in June, and am currently working in a general dentist practice 16 hours a week in an intern-like position (started 3 weeks ago). I already have hundreds of hours of previous experience in a general dental practice because my dad is one and I used to work with him. I also have 20 hours of shadowing an oral surgeon. I was recently talking with a pediatric dentist and he asked if I wanted to shadow him. Has anyone had shadowing experience from 4+ dentists? Would shadowing this pediatric dentist for about 10 hours look good? Should I do more? Could scarce shadowing with a certain dentist for a mere 10 hours look bad? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks SDN,
B

 

[teethfordays]

You have more than enough shadowing hours. How many people you shadow for how many hours will not make or break your application as long as you meet minimum requirements (eg 20 hours). Since you are a reapplicant, maybe look to other areas of your app that you can focus on which need improvement. I believe your shadowing hours as it is will more than suffice many school's requirements. Best of luck!

 

[UCSFx2017]

Shadowing isn't as important as you make it out to seem. A safe number of hours is 100 hrs of shadowing a general dentist. Use your time doing something else more productive. You can't bank on getting into dental school with 1,000 hours. There's too much room for redundancy in seeing the same procedures. To me it's wasted hours with little return on time invested after you meet ~100 hours. Get involved with a school club or community organization. Better yet, find out if there is any subject that interests you and then find a related research lab that's willing to take you in.

Since you're reapplying, there is probably more important problems on your application keeping you from getting in. Work on whatever that is.