How Med School Admissions Committees View In-Person vs. Online Shadowing Programs

Shadowing doesn’t always show up as a formal med school admissions requirement, but it’s effectively treated as one by admissions officers.

Admissions committees want real evidence that you know what you are signing up for. The problem is that traditional physician shadowing can be difficult to secure. It typically involves hundreds of cold emails, lots of radio silence, and can take months to arrange. That difficulty is one reason virtual shadowing has become increasingly popular. 

But students often ask if virtual shadowing is viewed the same way by med school admissions committees and if it can truly carry the same weight as an in-person experience.

To answer that question, I spoke with experts on my team, and the answer was a resounding yes. Strong virtual shadowing can add real value to a medical school application. But it largely depends on the type of experience. The virtual experience should still involve live interaction and real opportunities to learn from physicians to truly strengthen your application.  

Below, I dive deeper into the specifics of how admissions officers actually view virtual shadowing experience and how to ensure you choose the right one. 

How Med School Admissions Committees View In-Person vs. Online Shadowing Programs

In-person physician shadowing is still considered the gold standard by admissions committees. It lets students see how physicians communicate with patients in real time, learn how healthcare teams work on the floor, feel the real pressure of the field, and ask questions in an actual clinical environment. 

That said, the act of shadowing itself is what admissions committees really care about. Admissions committees aren’t just checking whether you were physically standing next to a doctor during your shadowing experience. They’re looking for quality experiences that give you insights to clearly explain how they shaped your understanding of medicine. They want to see that you’ve asked physicians questions and learned about the profession and its nuances.

AAMC also confirms this. In an interview with a physician, the doctor says virtual shadowing is a legitimate way to gain exposure to medicine because students still get to observe the most important parts of clinical decision-making online. Punim Thakkar, MD, assistant professor at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences, says:

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Virtual experiences still allow you to see doctors getting patient histories, reviewing scans, and discussing treatments virtually. 

But there's an important distinction between strong and weak virtual experiences, though, and that’s how the shadowing is presented. 

One point the experts on my team emphasized was that shadowing is ultimately meant to be observational. Shadowing isn’t meant to give you patient care experience. That hands-on component is meant to be built through your real clinical experience, which admissions committees evaluate alongside your shadowing experience.

Live virtual shadowing can still capture the purpose of shadowing. When students can observe physicians in real time, ask questions, discuss cases, and engage with what they are seeing, they can still gain meaningful insight into the profession and strengthen their applications.

It’s the opposite with passive, prerecorded shadowing, which has become popular because of how accessible it is. These types of shadowing experiences typically offer no real opportunity for interaction, reflection, or deeper learning. You don’t truly feel what it’s like to be a working physician in the middle of a clinic or get a realistic understanding of its challenges. 

It’s also hard to count prerecorded hours as true ‘hours of observation,' and for most applicants, I recommend aiming for 40 to 100 total genuine shadowing hours.

You can compare the different shadowing types with this tool: