How do you get AOW with only 20 dives? SSI requires minimum of 24 I believe PADI DOES AS well... dive your experience not your card level. I would challenge your instructor for building false confidence....
PADI requires four dives before AOW (ie OW dives 1-4) You can go right from OW into AOW.
SSI Advanced OW Diver requires four specialties and a total of 24 dives, inclusive of dives for OW and the four specialties.
---------- Post added January 26th, 2014 at 06:12 PM ----------
100 dives is hardly a lot of experience ... it's more like a threshold where people begin to realize that there's a lot to learn yet ...
... Bob (Grateful Diver)
I wish I knew as much now (approaching 1,000 dives) as I thought I knew when I only had 100 dives.
---------- Post added January 26th, 2014 at 06:16 PM ----------
Lord help us all....AOW seems to be handed out by the lottery system .... 24 min dives and 4 specialty classes is how I go by.
Yeah, because 24 dives (at least half of which would be for courses) is a ton of experience. :d