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- Dec 17, 2013
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Hi there pre-dents!
I just wanted to write this thread to give you guys a current perspective of the school. This will be beneficial for those who have been accepted and have already been interviewed and are deciding to attend or not, and those with upcoming interviews. I see a lot of misinformation out there and remember this is just my perspective of the school, which has been a rather positive one.
I'm a D4 student, from out of state, currently live in Manhattan nearby the school, pursuing advanced education next year.
I hope to provide a perspective that you have not seen during your interview and possibly answer questions that would have been awkward to ask during interview day and also to answer questions that may not be on the website.
The Cons: I wanted to start a short list of these so that in the event any of these are deal breakers, you need not read further.
Tuition is expensive, living is expensive, you will not get spoon fed, pre-clinical is begins in D1 and you pick up a handpiece in the second month of school and drill/prep/restore a ton of teeth, school is very diverse, clinics are open 8:30AM-8PM (2 days of the week you will be doing a 6-8PM session), Class size is big (you will see someone different every day), our bad reputation from >10 years ago still lingers and may affect you depending on your future plans, school is not pass fail
1. Tuition and Fees: The school is expensive. You have to decide whether its worth it to you, and whether you can get what you want out of it cheaper somewhere else. If this is the only school you got into, you have no choice and while you are here you should make the most of it.
My tuition has been around 64,000 a year for 4 years. You will also spend 800-2400/month depending how you want to live (share a place to studio apartment+). Then there is living + food + misc.
To many, this is one of the most expensive schools and to many posters on here it is not justified. While I was applying, I was choosing based on where I thought I would be happiest and did not want to consider price a factor because I wanted the best education and either way I was going to be taking out loans. For my situation it has been justified because I am where I want to be, I finished almost all graduation minimal requirements by the end of D3 year, the amount of exposure you get to dentistry from all specialties and the amount of patients you get here is overwhelming (a good thing). The network here is amazing (all your faculty are from different dental schools etc). The amount of local/international outreaches you can go to, the Honors programs (various specialties, implant honors, special patient care, survivors of torture, hospitals) As a pre-dent you do not see these things. We have a ton of research going on, from basic science, clinical, to educational research.
2. Dental Requirements:
You start clinic in D2 Spring semester, but get your patients/rosters assigned at the beginning of Summer semester in D2(June).
In a nutshell, here is a list of the minimal requirements you will get done by graduation (I didn't include competencies/exams).
Fixed: 10PFM Crowns, 1 Procera/All-Ceramic, 1-2 Fixed Bridge, 1-2 Implant Crown
Removable: 3 Arches of Complete Dentures, 3 Arches of RPDs, 1 overdenture, 1 more Removable
Endo: At least 5 endos, 1 of which has to be a molar and premolar
Perio: 24 Quads of SRP
Operative: At least 10 Class II, and At least 10 Class III for D3 year, 4 arches of bleaching
Oral Surgery: these are done in "experiences" in our school, but the D4 requirements are 10 Surgical Extractions, and 20 Non-Surgical Extractions, 10 nitrous admin
In addition to these requirements, you need to make a certain amount of "CEE = clinical education experiences" which the minimal requirements come no where near fulfilling the required CEE for graduation. So you will be doing much more than the minimal in order to graduate. Most students choose trying to get minimal requirements done first, so in their D4 year they can spend time taking on big cases and doing the kind of dentistry they want. If you have 1-2 friends that are residents from each specialty, it makes referrals/completion of cases a lot easier and each specialty is its own floor and easy to communicate. For example, if you need an implant placed that qualified for a "pre-doc implant (1250 or implant and crown)" then you do the extraction/get it done by a resident in OS, 3 months later evaluate yourself for implant placement, time it such that Perio/Prosth/Implant Program/OS can place the implant immediately after it has been cleared, wait 3-4 months for stage 2, then you can take impressions to restore the crown.
3. Ability to Specialize:
There is talk about us being a clinical school that produces only GP's and not specialists due to our "low specialization rate". Everyone graduating here has clinical experience due to the requirements, but what our school offers in addition is the research, the education, and ability to specialize. There are 340 people in my class, and not all of them are in the top 10%-20%. Ortho and OMFS tend to attract applicants in the top 10-20% however there are people that matched in both that were not both in my year and previous years. The one thing you cannot overlook is that there is specialists that came from almost every dental school in the nation and they have contacts at other dental schools in their respective specialty. The school is not pass fail, so this cycle we were interviewing with a lot of students from pass/fail schools with pass/fail boards.
From my class D4 program there were about:
5 Prosth
5 Endo
6 Ortho
Peds - Pending (i heard there is abou 25-30 applicants)
OMFS (there is about 8 applicants)
Oral Path - there is about 3 applicants
Dental Anesthesiology - not sure
4. Class Size:
340 students.
How can it function? Is it a factory?
The school runs group practice style, 14 Group Practices. My clinic has about 20 D4's and 20 D3's so around 40 students. There are 32 chairs, 5 are Endo chairs (has its on X-ray), 1 is a wheelchair accessible chair.
There are always students on rotation so chairs are almost never a problem. Only if you are trying to work off session, its first come first serve.
Each clinic session has 1 Endo, 1 Prosth, 6 General (2 of which can can do most prosth), 1 Group practice director, 1 Group practice Director right hand man for a maximum of 32 students. It can be a hassle if you are trying to get assistance and the prosth faculty is sitting there helping a student who is prepared do something like border mold.
5. Research
There is a ton of research going on here. For science research we are I believe 3rd in NIH funding.
There is also Educational research, Epidemiology (we have our own department), Clinical, etc.
Lots of faculty who teach/work in clinic also do research, and majority is evidence based.
You have the opportunity to do research throughout the entire dental school, attend AADR/IADR, greater new work dental meeting, other national meetings.
6. Any questions/comments/topics you want me to discuss I will be more than welcome to answer your questions.
I just wanted to write this thread to give you guys a current perspective of the school. This will be beneficial for those who have been accepted and have already been interviewed and are deciding to attend or not, and those with upcoming interviews. I see a lot of misinformation out there and remember this is just my perspective of the school, which has been a rather positive one.
I'm a D4 student, from out of state, currently live in Manhattan nearby the school, pursuing advanced education next year.
I hope to provide a perspective that you have not seen during your interview and possibly answer questions that would have been awkward to ask during interview day and also to answer questions that may not be on the website.
The Cons: I wanted to start a short list of these so that in the event any of these are deal breakers, you need not read further.
Tuition is expensive, living is expensive, you will not get spoon fed, pre-clinical is begins in D1 and you pick up a handpiece in the second month of school and drill/prep/restore a ton of teeth, school is very diverse, clinics are open 8:30AM-8PM (2 days of the week you will be doing a 6-8PM session), Class size is big (you will see someone different every day), our bad reputation from >10 years ago still lingers and may affect you depending on your future plans, school is not pass fail
1. Tuition and Fees: The school is expensive. You have to decide whether its worth it to you, and whether you can get what you want out of it cheaper somewhere else. If this is the only school you got into, you have no choice and while you are here you should make the most of it.
My tuition has been around 64,000 a year for 4 years. You will also spend 800-2400/month depending how you want to live (share a place to studio apartment+). Then there is living + food + misc.
To many, this is one of the most expensive schools and to many posters on here it is not justified. While I was applying, I was choosing based on where I thought I would be happiest and did not want to consider price a factor because I wanted the best education and either way I was going to be taking out loans. For my situation it has been justified because I am where I want to be, I finished almost all graduation minimal requirements by the end of D3 year, the amount of exposure you get to dentistry from all specialties and the amount of patients you get here is overwhelming (a good thing). The network here is amazing (all your faculty are from different dental schools etc). The amount of local/international outreaches you can go to, the Honors programs (various specialties, implant honors, special patient care, survivors of torture, hospitals) As a pre-dent you do not see these things. We have a ton of research going on, from basic science, clinical, to educational research.
2. Dental Requirements:
You start clinic in D2 Spring semester, but get your patients/rosters assigned at the beginning of Summer semester in D2(June).
In a nutshell, here is a list of the minimal requirements you will get done by graduation (I didn't include competencies/exams).
Fixed: 10PFM Crowns, 1 Procera/All-Ceramic, 1-2 Fixed Bridge, 1-2 Implant Crown
Removable: 3 Arches of Complete Dentures, 3 Arches of RPDs, 1 overdenture, 1 more Removable
Endo: At least 5 endos, 1 of which has to be a molar and premolar
Perio: 24 Quads of SRP
Operative: At least 10 Class II, and At least 10 Class III for D3 year, 4 arches of bleaching
Oral Surgery: these are done in "experiences" in our school, but the D4 requirements are 10 Surgical Extractions, and 20 Non-Surgical Extractions, 10 nitrous admin
In addition to these requirements, you need to make a certain amount of "CEE = clinical education experiences" which the minimal requirements come no where near fulfilling the required CEE for graduation. So you will be doing much more than the minimal in order to graduate. Most students choose trying to get minimal requirements done first, so in their D4 year they can spend time taking on big cases and doing the kind of dentistry they want. If you have 1-2 friends that are residents from each specialty, it makes referrals/completion of cases a lot easier and each specialty is its own floor and easy to communicate. For example, if you need an implant placed that qualified for a "pre-doc implant (1250 or implant and crown)" then you do the extraction/get it done by a resident in OS, 3 months later evaluate yourself for implant placement, time it such that Perio/Prosth/Implant Program/OS can place the implant immediately after it has been cleared, wait 3-4 months for stage 2, then you can take impressions to restore the crown.
3. Ability to Specialize:
There is talk about us being a clinical school that produces only GP's and not specialists due to our "low specialization rate". Everyone graduating here has clinical experience due to the requirements, but what our school offers in addition is the research, the education, and ability to specialize. There are 340 people in my class, and not all of them are in the top 10%-20%. Ortho and OMFS tend to attract applicants in the top 10-20% however there are people that matched in both that were not both in my year and previous years. The one thing you cannot overlook is that there is specialists that came from almost every dental school in the nation and they have contacts at other dental schools in their respective specialty. The school is not pass fail, so this cycle we were interviewing with a lot of students from pass/fail schools with pass/fail boards.
From my class D4 program there were about:
5 Prosth
5 Endo
6 Ortho
Peds - Pending (i heard there is abou 25-30 applicants)
OMFS (there is about 8 applicants)
Oral Path - there is about 3 applicants
Dental Anesthesiology - not sure
4. Class Size:
340 students.
How can it function? Is it a factory?
The school runs group practice style, 14 Group Practices. My clinic has about 20 D4's and 20 D3's so around 40 students. There are 32 chairs, 5 are Endo chairs (has its on X-ray), 1 is a wheelchair accessible chair.
There are always students on rotation so chairs are almost never a problem. Only if you are trying to work off session, its first come first serve.
Each clinic session has 1 Endo, 1 Prosth, 6 General (2 of which can can do most prosth), 1 Group practice director, 1 Group practice Director right hand man for a maximum of 32 students. It can be a hassle if you are trying to get assistance and the prosth faculty is sitting there helping a student who is prepared do something like border mold.
5. Research
There is a ton of research going on here. For science research we are I believe 3rd in NIH funding.
There is also Educational research, Epidemiology (we have our own department), Clinical, etc.
Lots of faculty who teach/work in clinic also do research, and majority is evidence based.
You have the opportunity to do research throughout the entire dental school, attend AADR/IADR, greater new work dental meeting, other national meetings.
6. Any questions/comments/topics you want me to discuss I will be more than welcome to answer your questions.
