Final 6 Months Before AMCAS: Shadowing Tasks to Complete and Record

It is six months before your planned AMCAS submission date. Your friends are cramming for the MCAT or talking about gap year jobs, and you are staring at a spreadsheet labeled “Shadowing” that feels half-finished at best. You have a handful of scattered clinic days from sophomore year, a memorable surgery observation, and a bunch of “meant to do more but life happened.”

At this point on the timeline, you need to do two things in parallel:

1. Finish the right kind and amount of shadowing.
2. Turn those scattered days into clean, AMCAS-ready entries with dates, hours, and takeaways.

Here is your month‑by‑month, then week‑by‑week guide for the final 6 months before AMCAS to complete and record your medical shadowing experience.

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Month −6: Audit and Triage Your Shadowing

At six months out, you are in information-gathering and damage-control mode.

Step 1: Build a Shadowing Inventory (Week 1)

Open a blank document or spreadsheet. At this point you should list every shadowing instance you can remember, even if you think it was small or “not impressive.”

Create columns for:

• Physician name
• Specialty
• Setting (academic hospital, community clinic, private practice, telehealth)
• City/state
• Approximate dates (month/year at least)
• Approximate hours
• How you got the opportunity (cold email, formal program, family friend)
• 1–3 bullet memories (a case, a conversation, a lesson)

If you are fuzzy on details:

• Use:
  • Old emails
  • Calendar entries
  • Texts to friends (“I’m going to the OR today!”)
  • Photos (badges, parking passes) to estimate dates
• Err on the side of underestimating hours rather than inflating them.

By the end of Week 1:

• You should have a single, messy but comprehensive list of all shadowing.
• You should see gaps:
  • No primary care?
  • Only one specialty?
  • Total hours less than ~40–50?

Step 2: Set Specific Shadowing Targets (Week 2)

Now you move from “whatever I can get” to “purposeful filling of gaps.”

Common target ranges:

• Total shadowing: 40–100 hours is typical and sufficient for most applicants.
• Breadth:
  • At least 1 primary care experience (family med, internal med, pediatrics).
  • 1–3 other specialties that interest you (e.g., EM, surgery, psych).
• Depth:
  • At least one setting where you spent multiple days with the same physician.

Look at your inventory and decide:

• How many additional hours you realistically need:
  • If you already have 60+ hours across 3 specialties (including primary care) → you may just need to deepen or better document.
  • If you have <30 hours in 1–2 specialties → plan for 20–40 more over these 6 months.
• Which specialties or settings to prioritize:
  • Example: “10–15 hours with outpatient internal medicine; 8–10 hours with pediatrics; 5–10 hours with EM.”

Write down a concrete target:

• “From now until AMCAS opens, I will complete ~30 additional hours: 15 internal med, 10 pediatrics, 5 EM, and I will cleanly document everything in an AMCAS-ready format.”

Step 3: Start the Contact Wave (Weeks 2–4)

At this point, you should be aggressively lining up shadowing while you still have calendar flexibility.

Create a simple outreach schedule:

• Goal: send 5–10 targeted emails per week for the next 2–3 weeks.
• Mix of:
  • Your home institution physicians
  • Community doctors in your hometown
  • Alumni from your college
  • Formal hospital volunteer/shadowing programs (if still open)

Core email template elements:

• Who you are (school, year, premed)
• Why you are interested in their specialty
• Time frame: “Over the next 2–3 months”
• Flexibility: “I’m available on [X days/times] but can adjust.”
• Ask: “Would it be possible to shadow you for [half/full] days totaling 8–12 hours?”

Track outreach in your spreadsheet:

• Date contacted
• Method (email, portal, in-person)
• Response
• Follow-up date

By the end of Month −6:

• You should have:
  • A shadowing inventory
  • Clear hour and specialty targets
  • At least a few potential future shadowing days on the calendar or pending responses

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Month −5: Secure and Structure Your Shadowing Blocks

With five months to go, this is your scheduling month. You should be turning “maybe” into calendar entries.

Week 1–2: Confirm and Cluster Shadowing

Once you have some positive responses:

1. Lock in dates.

   • Aim for:
     • Half‑day blocks (4–5 hours) or
     • Full‑day blocks (6–8 hours)
   • Try to cluster hours:
     • Example: “Four half-days with Dr. Lee in internal medicine over 3 weeks” looks better than 16 scattered 1‑hour visits.

2. Spread experiences across the next 2–3 months.

   • Leave Months −2 and −1 lighter for:
     • MCAT studying
     • Personal statement
     • AMCAS entries

3. Confirm expectations via email:

   • Dress code
   • Arrival time and location
   • Any hospital paperwork or vaccine documentation

By the end of Week 2:

• You should have tentative or confirmed dates that will yield at least 70–80% of your target additional hours.

Week 3–4: Prepare Your Shadowing Playbook

At this point, you should start acting like someone who will need to write about these experiences on AMCAS.

Create a “Shadowing Playbook” document (digital or small notebook):

• Front page:
  • Your current total hours (estimate)
  • Target hours by specialty
• For each upcoming physician:
  • Name, specialty, hospital/clinic
  • Dates planned
  • A few things you want to pay attention to:
    • How they interact with difficult patients
    • How they explain complex diagnoses
    • How they work with the healthcare team

Design a standard debrief template you’ll use after each day:

• Date and hours
• 1–2 memorable patient encounters (no identifying details)
• 1 communication skill you observed
• 1 ethical or emotional challenge you noticed
• How this changed or reinforced your view of medicine

By the end of Month −5:

• Shadowing blocks are on the calendar.
• You have a system ready to turn raw shadowing days into AMCAS-ready reflections.

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Month −4: Execute Shadowing and Document in Real Time

This month, the main job is to actually show up, observe, and record.

During Each Shadowing Day

At this point, you should behave like a professional-in-training, not “just a student.”

On the day:

• Arrive 10–15 minutes early.
• Bring:
  • Small notebook (or secure notes app)
  • Pen
  • Hospital paperwork if required
• Ask the physician at the start:
  • “Is there anything in particular you’d like me to focus on today?”
  • “Are there times it’s better for me to step out of the room?”

While shadowing:

• Jot very brief, non-identifying notes:
  • “Middle-aged male, new diabetes, MD used simple analogies.”
  • “Family meeting about hospice; physician’s tone, pauses.”
• Pay attention to:
  • Workflow and time pressures
  • Team dynamics
  • How uncertainty is handled

Immediately after:

• Before you leave the building, quickly estimate your hours for that day.
  • Example: 8:00–12:30 → 4.5 hours.

End-of-Day or End-of-Week Debrief

Within 24 hours, you should fill out your debrief template:

• Exact date
• Start/stop times and total hours
• 3–5 bullet points:
  • One particularly meaningful patient interaction
  • One thing that surprised you
  • One aspect you might reference in your personal statement or AMCAS description

Update your master spreadsheet:

• Add new hours to the correct physician and specialty.
• Keep a running total of:
  • Shadowing hours by specialty
  • Overall total

By the end of Month −4:

• You should have completed a sizable chunk of your remaining shadowing hours.
• Your documentation should not be an afterthought; it should already be structured.

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Month −3: Fill Remaining Gaps and Begin AMCAS-Style Summaries

Three months out, you’re transitioning from “doing” to “packaging.”

Week 1: Reassess Your Numbers and Gaps

Open your inventory again. At this point you should know:

• Total shadowing hours completed to date.
• Breakdown by specialty:
  • Primary care vs non-primary care
  • Inpatient vs outpatient (if applicable)
• Whether you have:
  • At least 1–2 experiences you could feature as “most meaningful” in AMCAS (even if you eventually label them differently).

Ask:

• Do you still need:
  • More primary care exposure?
  • A different inpatient specialty?
  • Another half-day or two to round out hours?

If you are close to your target:

• Plan 1–2 more focused days with:
  • A physician who knows you a bit now (deeper relationship)
  • Or a new specialty you are genuinely curious about

If you are substantially behind:

• Consider:
  • Short, intense bursts (e.g., two full days during a break)
  • A short shadowing program at a local hospital or clinic

Week 2–3: Start Drafting AMCAS-Ready Descriptions

Now you should begin shifting raw notes into the AMCAS framework.

AMCAS shadowing usually goes under:

• “Physician Shadowing/Clinical Observation”
  • Often grouped by either:
    • Single physician experience (if substantial), or
    • “Various specialties” if multiple short experiences.

Pick:

• 2–4 entries that will carry most of your shadowing story.
  • Example:
    • “Shadowing – Internal Medicine and Primary Care”
    • “Shadowing – Emergency Medicine”
    • “Shadowing – Various Surgical Specialties”

For each prospective entry:

• Draft:
  • Organization: “Dr. Smith – University Hospital Internal Medicine Clinic”
  • Supervisor: Physician name
  • Total hours (current estimate; you can adjust later)
  • Description (up to 700 characters for standard experiences):
    • Focus on:
      • Observed physician-patient communication
      • Insight into the reality of clinical practice
      • How this shaped your view of being a physician
    • Avoid:
      • Lists of procedures
      • Overly dramatic language

Example snippet:

Shadowed Dr. Smith in an academic internal medicine clinic, observing longitudinal care of patients with chronic conditions such as diabetes and heart failure. Noted how he used plain language and visual aids to explain complex treatment plans. Witnessed difficult conversations about medication adherence and social barriers to care, which highlighted the importance of understanding patients’ contexts, not just their diagnoses.

By the end of Month −3:

• Your remaining shadowing days should be scheduled and purposeful.
• First drafts of AMCAS-style descriptions should exist for your major shadowing experiences.

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Month −2: Refine, Verify, and Consolidate

Two months before AMCAS submission, your shadowing should be mostly complete. Now you refine the record.

Week 1: Clean Up Hours and Dates

At this point, you should turn your rough logs into clean AMCAS-ready numbers.

For each physician/specialty:

1. List all dates and hours you have logged.
2. Sum them carefully.
3. Decide how you will group them in AMCAS:
   • Single combined entry like:
     • “Shadowing – Dr. A (Cardiology), Dr. B (Family Medicine), Dr. C (Emergency Medicine)”
   • Or separate entries if one is especially substantial.

Avoid:

• Double counting hours (e.g., two physicians in same clinic at same time).
• Inflated guesses. If you’re unsure, round down.

If dates are approximate:

• Use:
  • “01/2023 – 03/2023” for a winter quarter
  • Or “06/2022 – 08/2022” for a summer

Week 2: Optional Light Verification

You typically do not need formal letters from every shadowing physician, but having a way to verify is wise.

Options:

• Send a brief thank-you email:
  • Thank them for the experience.
  • Mention total hours you recorded.
  • Ask if that estimate seems reasonable if ever needed.
• Save:
  • Email exchanges confirming shadowing
  • Hospital badge assignments or orientation confirmations

You do not need to send them your AMCAS entry text for approval, but you should be sure your hours would not surprise them.

Week 3–4: Tighten Your Descriptions

Return to your AMCAS-style descriptions. At this point you should:

• Make each description do at least one of these:
  • Show that you understand what physicians actually do day to day.
  • Demonstrate your reflection on the experience.
  • Connect (implicitly or explicitly) to your motivations or skills.

Polish:

• Replace vague lines like:
  • “Learned more about medicine and loved it.”
• With:
  • Specific observations:
    • “Saw the importance of honest prognostic discussions, even when news was difficult.”

Check character counts:

• Standard experiences: 700 characters
• “Most meaningful” (if you choose one shadowing experience as such): up to 1325 characters plus a short “most meaningful” reflection.

By the end of Month −2:

• Hours and dates should be finalized to within a comfortable margin.
• Descriptions should be in late-draft form, ready for small edits rather than major rewrites.

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Month −1: Integrate Shadowing into Your Application Narrative

With one month to go, shadowing should now be part of your story, not just a number.

Week 1: Align with Personal Statement

At this point you should have at least a rough draft of your personal statement.

Ask:

• Which shadowing moments fit naturally into my narrative?
  • A conversation with a patient that changed how you view illness
  • Watching a physician handle a medical error or uncertainty
  • Seeing the long arc of chronic disease management

You do not need to retell your AMCAS activity descriptions in the personal statement. Instead:

• Pull 1–2 specific, vivid moments that:
  • Illustrate your understanding of physician responsibilities
  • Show growth, not just admiration

Week 2–3: Final Consistency Check

Cross-check:

• AMCAS shadowing entries
• Personal statement references
• Any secondaries you are pre-writing (if applicable)

You should confirm:

• Hours and dates are consistent across documents.
• Specialty names and physician names (if used) are spelled consistently.
• Tone:
  • You come across as observant, respectful, and realistic.
  • You do not overstate your role (you were an observer, not a provider).

Week 4: Freeze the Shadowing Section

Unless you have one last, clearly documented experience, your shadowing record should now be frozen for AMCAS.

• Lock in:
  • Final hours
  • Date ranges
  • Groupings of experiences
• Save:
  • A clean version of your shadowing inventory.
  • Final AMCAS activity descriptions in one document.

This is the point where you stop tinkering with shadowing and shift your main energy to the rest of the application.

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Final 2 Weeks Before Submission: Micro-Edits and Sanity Checks

In the last stretch, your shadowing section should need only small tweaks.

You should:

• Read each shadowing entry out loud:
  • Fix awkward phrasing.
  • Remove repetition (“I observed…” in every sentence).
• Confirm:
  • No patient-identifying information.
  • No exaggerations or misleading descriptions.

Have:

• One trusted reader (advisor, mentor, premed committee member) look at your:
  • Shadowing entries
  • Personal statement
• Ask specifically:
  • “Do these experiences show that I understand what being a physician is like?”
  • “Am I overselling or underselling my clinical exposure?”

By your AMCAS submission date:

• Shadowing is not just a list of hours.
• It is a coherent, verifiable, and reflective part of your story that supports your readiness for medical school.

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Right now, before you move on to anything else, open a new document and list every shadowing experience you have ever done, with the physician’s name, specialty, and your best estimate of hours. That single inventory is the foundation you will refine over the next six months into an AMCAS-ready shadowing record.