Hey so my mom wants me to shadow my physician (who gave the okay but wants the hours I’ll be shadowing her) for 20 hours a week for 10 weeks during the summer. I am conflicted because <4 hours a day isn’t that bad but researching other people they say ~100 hours medical volunteer, ~100 hours shadowing, ~100 hours nonmedical (soup kitchen, etc) volunteer. If I go through with 200 hours of shadowing this one doctor, I was thinking of doing 100 hours the next summer (and then with the extra time begin studying for the mcat as I’ll be going into my junior year).
Any opinions on hours of shadowing needed for the top schools, let’s say top 10 med schools? Thanks.
Tell the physician what you need in terms of diversity of hours. Makes little sense to me that you should volunteer in the flower shop over the bedside but such is the world. Tell her precisely what you want to meet your needs and see if she can facilitate that. My two cents is that your hours of shadowing will have little to do with your acceptance to a top 10 medical school. And if you were gunning for a top 10 medical school you would not need your mother to supervise your shadowing hours!
You don’t need to shadow ONE doctor that many hours.
You should find about 4 different doctors/specialties and shadow each for about 25-50 hours.
so…shadow a family doc, a pediatrician, and maybe an OB/Gyn, surgeon, dermotologist, or ???
There isn’t a number of shadowing hours for top 10 schools. Those med schools care more about MCAT, GPA, and research.
Why are you focused on top 10 schools? What difference would it make to you? All American med schools are excellent.
mom2 has it right.
There is not a required or even a recommended number of hours you should shadow.
And you should shadow physicians in variety of different specialities, including some in primary care fields (pediatrics, family medicine, general internal medicine, OB/GYN)–not just a single physician.
Generally speaking, top 10 med schools want top grades, top MCAT scores and extensive research experience as well as the rest of the pre-med ECs (shadowing, clinical volunteering, non-medical volunteering with vulnerable populations, and demonstrated leadership).
If your son focus in only top 10 med schools you have a high percentage of failure and may have no schools to go at the end. My friend works for Stanford som and she had 100’s of perfectly scored rejects in her draw.
Not long ago here on cc, there was a 4.0 Gpa student from Ut Austin that did not get into any med school, even she did not applied to all top tier med schools.