How do you choose your Advanced Open Water speciality

[boulderjohn]

Is it against PADI standards to do the full speciality courses during the aowd?

No.

 

[L13]

Is it against PADI standards to do the full speciality courses during the aowd?

Each AOW dive can be one of the dives of a speciality course. For example: PADI drysuit requires 3 dives, 1 confined and 2 in open water, one of the open water dives can also be an AOW dive.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

Can you take five full specialty courses and get an automatic AOW cert from that, or do you have to specifically sign up for “AOW” ?
Sorry if this has already been answered, I’m still in brain fog zone from too much food and wine yesterday!

 

[Vicko]

The padi rep for Eu told me that as a Padi instructor I was not allowed to do 5 full specialities as part of the AOWD, the student was supposed to pay for each speciality course separately including paying the 5*80 euros for the materials that they don't actually sell in Eu, meaning that for something I personaly would consider a course the student would have to pay over 600 euros to padi, or 4 times the price in SDI, SSI and RAID.
That conversation was the main reason I did not finish my padi idc.

 

[tursiops]

As I've discussed with @tursiops, there really is no value add to the PPB course.

To be clear, that was not so much a discussion as a verbose diatribe, to which I chose to not waste my time by responding.

 

[tursiops]

The padi rep for Eu told me that as a Padi instructor I was not allowed to do 5 full specialities as part of the AOWD, the student was supposed to pay for each speciality course separately including paying the 5*80 euros for the materials that they don't actually sell in Eu, meaning that for something I personaly would consider a course the student would have to pay over 600 euros to padi, or 4 times the price in SDI, SSI and RAID.
That conversation was the main reason I did not finish my padi idc.

This is either a severe misunderstanding (or blatant lie) by that PADI rep, or a misunderstanding of what he said.
There is NO restriction like that on the AOW class, and any course pricing and policies are up to the dive shops and instructors, not PADI. If a shop wanted to give the AOW course away, they may.

To be clear, you can't just go do five PADI full specialties and get your AOW, because the AOW cert (now) has an additional section, "Thinking Like a Diver," that needs to be covered, usually by dive briefings/planning and debriefings.

Also, you can't just go do the Deep specialty (only the first dive of which is required for AOW), because AOW (or Adventure Diver) is a prerequisite for the Deep specialty.

So what you can do is four full specialties, plus the Thinking Like a Diver module, plus Dive 1 of the Deep specialty, get the AOW, and then do 3 more dives to finish the Deep specialty.

Sure, it is convoluted, but it can be done. The more fundamental point is that the AOW is specifically designed to be a sampler so the student -- usually a fairly new diver -- can find some things that are interesting and about which they would like to know more or get better at....like buoyancy. Or maybe they find after one wreck dive that they don't like old rusty pieces of metal on the bottom, so don't have to do 3 more wreck dives to complete the specialty.

 

[Vicko]

This is either a severe misunderstanding (or blatant lie) by that PADI rep, or a misunderstanding of what he said.
There is NO restriction like that on the AOW class, and any course pricing and policies are up to the dive shops and instructors, not PADI. If a shop wanted to give the AOW course away, they may.

To be clear, you can't just go do five PADI full specialties and get your AOW, because the AOW cert (now) has an additional section, "Thinking Like a Diver," that needs to be covered, usually by dive briefings/planning and debriefings.

Also, you can't just go do the Deep specialty (only the first dive of which is required for AOW), because AOW (or Adventure Diver) is a prerequisite for the Deep specialty.

So what you can do is four full specialties, plus the Thinking Like a Diver module, plus Dive 1 of the Deep specialty, get the AOW, and then do 3 more dives to finish the Deep specialty.

Sure, it is convoluted, but it can be done. The more fundamental point is that the AOW is specifically designed to be a sampler so the student -- usually a fairly new diver -- can find some things that are interesting and about which they would like to know more or get better at....like buoyancy. Or maybe they find after one wreck dive that they don't like old rusty pieces of metal on the bottom, so don't have to do 3 more wreck dives to complete the specialty.

Interesting.
The padi rep (and a course director) explained it very clearly that a student doing the aowd would have to pay extra (well, not the student but the instructor registering him) for the deep cert or any other speciality cert he would like to do with his aowd, otherwise all he would get is the aowd one. The facility can do everything for free but there are padi fees that they would have to eat for the student.

To be clear I'm not talking about doing 5 specialties and getting the aowd, I'm talking about doing the aowd and getting 5 specialties.

 

[saxman242]

Interesting.
The padi rep (and a course director) explained it very clearly that a student doing the aowd would have to pay extra (well, not the student but the instructor registering him) for the deep cert or any other speciality cert he would like to do with his aowd, otherwise all he would get is the aowd one

What are you surprised about here? AOW does not cover the entire specialty. AOW is basically an introduction to the 5 different specialties. The course material in the AOW manual and the instruction offered (and paid for) as part of an AOW course would not cover the curriculum of the 5 specialities.

 

[tursiops]

Interesting.
The padi rep (and a course director) explained it very clearly that a student doing the aowd would have to pay extra (well, not the student but the instructor registering him) for the deep cert or any other speciality cert he would like to do with his aowd, otherwise all he would get is the aowd one. The facility can do everything for free but there are padi fees that they would have to eat for the student.

To be clear I'm not talking about doing 5 specialties and getting the aowd, I'm talking about doing the aowd and getting 5 specialties.

I still think there is confusion. Let's suppose your AOW is Deep, Navigation (both required), PPB, Fish ID, and Naturalist (I chose these last 3 because those specialties only require 2 dives each). So after AOW (5 dives, one for each of the five topics) you still need 8 more dives -- and manuals -- to complete the five specialties. You think you ought to get those for free? That's like ordering and paying for a coke and then demanding a hamburger with it.

My point earlier is that PADI does not mandate course prices, that is up to each shop or instructor. The only way PADI is involved is the charges for course materials (like manuals) and cert cards.

 

[brsnow]

I took AOW with PADI due to a dive op requiring it for a trip. There we’re 4 of us in class and I was the only one with dives outside of the initial 5 or 6 needed for OW. If you don’t need the card, find an instructor you like and take some classes you think will enhance your skills. If you don’t know what to take yet, dive more and I bet you get clarity.