Dental School Applicant

[Werewolf Canyon]

I want to know where I stand on my chances on applying to Dental School.

I had started my undergrad with a 2.63 average in the first two years, and raised it to a 3.0 when I graduated. I than spent a year, getting perfect grades in 50 credits (many upper level biology) and raised my GPA to a 3.30 and 3.10 science.

I am now attending a masters of biomedical sciences program at Barry University, and have a 3.40 graduate GPA. I got a 20 on the DAT, with a 22 PAT.

I know my undergrad GPA is still low, but my graduate GPA is considered high. The problem is that I will not have the Master's degree in time for the June 2011 application process and they wont see that I have a masters degree yet.

What are my chances at Dental school admission with a 3.30 overall undergrad GPA, 3.10 science undergrad GPA, 3.40 grad GPA, and a 20 on the DAT (22 on PAT)?

Thanks

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[amalgamgrillz]

I want to know where I stand on my chances on applying to Dental School.

I had started my undergrad with a 2.63 average in the first two years, and raised it to a 3.0 when I graduated. I than spent a year, getting perfect grades in 50 credits (many upper level biology) and raised my GPA to a 3.30 and 3.10 science.

I am now attending a masters of biomedical sciences program at Barry University, and have a 3.40 graduate GPA. I got a 20 on the DAT, with a 22 PAT.

I know my undergrad GPA is still low, but my graduate GPA is considered high. The problem is that I will not have the Master's degree in time for the June 2011 application process and they wont see that I have a masters degree yet.

What are my chances at Dental school admission with a 3.30 overall undergrad GPA, 3.10 science undergrad GPA, 3.40 grad GPA, and a 20 on the DAT (22 on PAT)?

Thanks

I have a couple of friends at Barry, and they said that they were told to maintain at least a 3.5-3.6 in the program and they would be in very good contention for an interview at Nova. As long as you have the large majority of your graduate grades in for your application, then you should be fine. You might receive conditional acceptance where you have to maintain a certain GPA in order to be admitted. I don't think you NOT having the master's yet will hurt your app.

 

[dentalWorks]

I want to know where I stand on my chances on applying to Dental School.

I had started my undergrad with a 2.63 average in the first two years, and raised it to a 3.0 when I graduated. I than spent a year, getting perfect grades in 50 credits (many upper level biology) and raised my GPA to a 3.30 and 3.10 science.

I am now attending a masters of biomedical sciences program at Barry University, and have a 3.40 graduate GPA. I got a 20 on the DAT, with a 22 PAT.

I know my undergrad GPA is still low, but my graduate GPA is considered high. The problem is that I will not have the Master's degree in time for the June 2011 application process and they wont see that I have a masters degree yet.

What are my chances at Dental school admission with a 3.30 overall undergrad GPA, 3.10 science undergrad GPA, 3.40 grad GPA, and a 20 on the DAT (22 on PAT)?

Thanks

Many schools, yes they like to see high GPAs, but they also look at upward trend. You dug yourself in a huge "mathematical hole" in your first 2 years in undergrad so that will ALWAYS hurt you mathematically. However, the good news is, you did awesome in your 50 credit post-bacc and you seem to have been doing good in your masters.

I say you can still apply with everything you have, even if you don't have a masters degrees, you are still considered a decent applicant.

Just a word of advice, from now, start looking for schools that like to see the "whole package" of an application instead of just pure numbers. I can tell you right now, both detroit mercy and univ of michigan are very much like that, they don't reject folks just due to bad numbers, they tend to look at everything. On the other hand, schools like case western reserve, will flat out reject an out-of-state student for having bad GPA (thats just been my experience with them)................ Moral of the story, picking the right schools to apply to this coming June is ESSENTIAL, I would aim at about 20 schools

 

[brightdream]

Hi Everybody,
I am a prospective dental student applicant. I have a big passion to be a dentist.
I want to know what dental schools look for applicant to have other than good GPA, volunteering opportunities, and shadowing.
I have been thinking about lots of things that might be important or unimportant. Does age, work experiences matter for them. Is required to be a part of research project before applying. I hear from others even though they have an outstanding GPA, and extracurricular work they have done, they end up being rejected. Has anyone been through a scenario like that? Kindly, would someone share their story with me on why people get rejected? I would like to know if this is the right path for me.

 

[kingenamel]

Age is not a reason why a dental school will reject/accept you. Work experience may help because it will show that you had outside experiences from school but it is not necessary to get into D school. Research is liked by schools but it is not required. One of the main things that may happen to applicants who apply to schools having a high DAT and GPA is that they did not apply broadly enough.

 

[Cello]

You're best off starting your own thread (this one is nearly four years old). To answer your questions though, it is a capricious process and I'm not sure that anyone here can answer why some people get rejected despite being qualified for the program. Maybe they had a bad interview, or their personal statement was poorly written. I sat on a scholarship committee this last year for pre-meds and I was surprised by how poorly a lot of the personal statements had been written.

Some people don't apply broadly enough or apply late in the cycle. As far as having outstanding ECs it's hard to say what outstanding is. Some people have 1,000 hours of volunteering, a research paper or two under their belt, and 150 hours shadowing plus great leadership. Other people have 400 hours volunteering, no research papers, but they also have great leadership. Frankly, both of these are pretty decent ECs but one is clearly superior to the other. How much weight does that carry with d-schools? I don't know that anyone here can tell you that definitively.

Deciding whether this is the right path for you should have more to do with whether you want to be a dentist or not, and less to do with whether you can get into dental school. There are many examples of people on SDN who had poor stats but managed to get into dental school because they wanted it badly enough.