Hey guys,

I'm kind of in a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation and I was wondering if anyone has any advice.

I'm a non-trad student who recently made the decision to pursue dentistry. I made the decision after much thought, then quit my job and jumped into school two weeks later. Since then I have been doing nothing but loading up on classes in order to finish my pre-reqs by application time for Fall '07.

The thing is I haven't done much in terms of:

- research (none),
- shadowing (none),
- volunteer work (some with groups for children who stutter)

I'm taking organic I and bio I now, which are both killer classes, and I'm taking part II of both in the spring.

I wanna do research/volunteer/shadow, but am worried that time away from my classes will bring my grades down, and I wanna keep them up so I can get accepted into dental school. :thumbup:

BUT I'm also worried that if I DON"T do research/volunteer/shadow I won't get accepted into dental school.

What on earth should I do??? What's more desirable:

a - great grades with almost no extra-curriculars

OR

b - decent grades with extra-curriculars

What would you do? :confused:

Hey guys,

I'm kind of in a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation and I was wondering if anyone has any advice.

I'm a non-trad student who recently made the decision to pursue dentistry. I made the decision after much thought, then quit my job and jumped into school two weeks later. Since then I have been doing nothing but loading up on classes in order to finish my pre-reqs by application time for Fall '07.

The thing is I haven't done much in terms of:

- research (none),
- shadowing (none),
- volunteer work (some with groups for children who stutter)

I'm taking organic I and bio I now, which are both killer classes, and I'm taking part II of both in the spring.

I wanna do research/volunteer/shadow, but am worried that time away from my classes will bring my grades down, and I wanna keep them up so I can get accepted into dental school. :thumbup:

BUT I'm also worried that if I DON"T do research/volunteer/shadow I won't get accepted into dental school.

What on earth should I do??? What's more desirable:

a - great grades with almost no extra-curriculars

OR

b - decent grades with extra-curriculars

What would you do? :confused:

Get great grades and rock the DAT. Xtras matter if you had borderline grades and mediocre DATs

Get great grades and rock the DAT. Xtras matter if you had borderline grades and mediocre DATs

Shabu2, do you say this from personal experience? I see you're at Columbia - did you have extra-curriculars under your belt before you applied?

Duplicate thread, closing. Feel free to contribute to the open pre-dental thread. :)