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Hey everyone,

This post is for my friend who had a quick question and asked me to post his question. He actually got accepted to the same medical school I did for next year and realized he really didnt want to do medicine after volunteering at a free dental clinic. He declined the acceptance and is now going to work for a year and take the dat this summer and apply to start next August. Will it look bad on his application to have extracurriculars like volunteering at the free medical clinic and research in medicine? He is going to definitely try and shadow and work at the free dental clinic as much as he can before his application is due. Thanks for your help!

I doubt it because they're great EC's.

Originally Posted by tvelocity514

Hey everyone,

This post is for my friend who had a quick question and asked me to post his question. He actually got accepted to the same medical school I did for next year and realized he really didnt want to do medicine after volunteering at a free dental clinic. He declined the acceptance and is now going to work for a year and take the dat this summer and apply to start next August. Will it look bad on his application to have extracurriculars like volunteering at the free medical clinic and research in medicine? He is going to definitely try and shadow and work at the free dental clinic as much as he can before his application is due. Thanks for your help!

Yes, no dental school will accept him since they will see him as a flip-flopper. He should look into chiropractic or neuropathic medicine (check out the new forums!)

I think that lots of people who are going to dental at one point or another has thought about medicine, because the two fields are rather similar. I'm guessing he has good grades/MCAT scores. I think the main thing that dental schools don't want is for students who go into dentistry as a backup to medicine. Although the two fields are similar, they are also extremely different. People who choose dentistry as a backup to medicine won't be happy. The lifestyles are different, and dentistry is more concentrated towards one area of the body and is more hands-on, whereas medicine concentrates more on the whole body. To answer your questions, I don't think his research and extracurricular activities pertaining to medicine will hinder him. He got into med school, and it's also not like he's choosing dentistry as a backup. Just have him explain why he chose dentistry is in Personal Statement to make it clear that dentistry is not a backup.

Originally Posted by tvelocity514

Hey everyone,

This post is for my friend who had a quick question and asked me to post his question. He actually got accepted to the same medical school I did for next year and realized he really didnt want to do medicine after volunteering at a free dental clinic. He declined the acceptance and is now going to work for a year and take the dat this summer and apply to start next August. Will it look bad on his application to have extracurriculars like volunteering at the free medical clinic and research in medicine? He is going to definitely try and shadow and work at the free dental clinic as much as he can before his application is due. Thanks for your help!

Is your friend a Texan? I looked at both my TMDSAS and AADSAS application. The TMDSAS (the Texas application) asked whether you have applied to any other health-related schools and whether you have been accepted. AADSAS (the application for all other 49 states) does not ask this. But just because your friend has a lot of medicine related activities, it does show that s/he was pre-med. Hope it helps. .

Originally Posted by stickybear

Is your friend a Texan? I looked at both my TMDSAS and AADSAS application. The TMDSAS (the Texas application) asked whether you have applied to any other health-related schools and whether you have been accepted. AADSAS (the application for all other 49 states) does not ask this. But just because your friend has a lot of medicine related activities, it does show that s/he was pre-med. Hope it helps. .

Thanks so much for your reply! He is not in texas so he will just be using AADSAS. That is a good point to put in the personal statement about how he has gone through working at free medical training etc and ultimately realized when he started volunteering at a dental clinic that that was what he wanted to do. Thanks for the advice!

No problem. . Best of luck to your friend. It's such a huge risk, considering that he already got into med school and that there's no guarantee whether he'd be accepted into dental school. But I think that as long as he's honest about his intentions, it'll be fine.

Originally Posted by tvelocity514

Hey everyone,

This post is for my friend who had a quick question and asked me to post his question. He actually got accepted to the same medical school I did for next year and realized he really didnt want to do medicine after volunteering at a free dental clinic. He declined the acceptance and is now going to work for a year and take the dat this summer and apply to start next August. Will it look bad on his application to have extracurriculars like volunteering at the free medical clinic and research in medicine? He is going to definitely try and shadow and work at the free dental clinic as much as he can before his application is due. Thanks for your help!

I honestly think he will be fine. He should just emphasize his interest in dentistry on his application.