Volunteering & EC's

[Continuum]

How many hours of volunteering and shadowing are necessary for a competitive application to podiatry schools (not considering MCAT, GPA, & LORs)?

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[ftdoc11]

How many hours of volunteering and shadowing are necessary for a competitive application to podiatry schools (not considering MCAT, GPA, & LORs)?

There isn't any magic number. In my opinion, as long as you spend enough time with a podiatrist to get a good letter of recommendation, something more than he/she came into the office and seemed somewhat interested, you should be all set. No amount of volunteering or shadowing will make up for sub-par GPA or MCATs though.

 

[OnePodRanger]

How many hours of volunteering and shadowing are necessary for a competitive application to podiatry schools (not considering MCAT, GPA, & LORs)?

Honestly, hours, in terms of experience, does not really matter. I would have at least a good amount of each experience to talk about in your interviews. For example, I only shadowed my DPM for 20 hours total but I only cared about the actual experience itself instead of trying to get hours in.

 

[de Ribas]

How many hours of volunteering and shadowing are necessary for a competitive application to podiatry schools (not considering MCAT, GPA, & LORs)?

aim to shadow podiatrist for about 20+
If you have opportunity, go with him/her to OR

 

[Continuum]

Thanks for the feedback. As for volunteering, about how many hours? Is it weighted as heavily as MD/DO programs?

 

[de Ribas]

Thanks for the feedback. As for volunteering, about how many hours? Is it weighted as heavily as MD/DO programs?

definitely not as heavy, but you have to have something to talk about. For sure, interview conversations are about what you do outside of school.

If you have about 50+ hours of non-clinical volunteering then it should be more than enough for pod school. Being active and involved in other community and schools programs/clubs is a plus. But, if your stats are awesome, nobody will care much.

As for clinical experience anything over 100 hours is also good enough for pod. Most candidates will probably have all these anyways because they were pre-med.

I have thousands of non-clinical hours and going and thousands of leadership hours. I have about a 1000 hours of clinical experience total combining work, ER volunteering, and Internship. All these are not necessary, but over the years they accumulate. I have total of about 120 shadowing hours of which 26 hours spent with podiatrists.

 

[GypsyHummus]

Agree with the advice above.

For Pod, its not the shadowing hour amount, it about how do you feel about going into podiatry vs other fields. This isnt MD where you get to pick a specialty later on down the road, get the highest paying Nuero or Spine surgical residencies if you do well on the test or barely pass and scramble into family medicine. A Pod, for better and worse, is locked in at the start. There are pluses and minuses to Podiatry vs other specialties, and it is up to you to do the research on it.

It is also one of the most rapidly evolving medical specialties. Laws are constantly being decided on the rights on a licensing podiatrist, that will have lasting effects for generations to come (again, for better or worse). I see podiatry very optimistically because there are some really quality students out there pounding the pavement for practicing rights. The old Pods "Eating their young" so to speak are retiring or dying out and will be when you are done with your residency in 7 years (really 8+ if you are getting started now). I feel bad for the pods getting out now, they suffered through the worst of the profession-the residency shortage, the lack of quality jobs, but that is changing by the year.