400k all in (COA and taking into account interest accrual) is the price of my public in state. Hoping to all hell my interview results come out favorably.
Currently deposited at BostonU, OOS for me, and my all in figures are running at 525k with COA and interest accrual. Obviously not favorable.
Already coming in with 50k ug and 50k SMP debt. In my best case scenario this would be 500k all in at my public in state. 630k if Boston.
My top dollar number before even applying was 700k but I can’t beleive that’s actually being a stark reality. Your jaw may have dropped already, but I can confirm a colleague with 60k private UG + 85k SMP debt who will be matriculating at ASDOH, a 650k price tag alone. It is INSANE out here.
FWIW without the SMP I wouldn’t even be in a position to be able to pursue my oral health dreams. So to say I have too much debt coming in, well there was no alternative.
With 100k under my belt in loans already, and useless degrees outside of health professional school, my only other option is to eat the 100k and do what? Teach highschool science? Take part in the corporate rat race as a career changer towards tech? In this interest rate enviorment, surely tech firms would love to hire a completley unqualified former predent. I heard healthcare consulting LOVES non-harvard Yale Princeton pedigrees!! Or, I should just go for nursing or PA right, ezpz chill respected life!! Considering I entered this game to escape a future in pharmacy, maybe I should suck it up and just go back. ? Ok since I love science so much, why not work in a lab and grind my way towards a PhD? How fun!!
No. I’ll try to stay under 500k total debt. If I get my instate to take me, I’ll even live with my parents and they’ll support my living needs as they have been. I’m a single male in my 20s, I’ll get down right ratty to keep the debt low.
I agree with everyone in this thread, that with increasing tuition rates further, which has been reliably the case for the past decade, there will absolutely be a stigma to applying to dental school, and absolutely will hurt the economics of pumping out new schools so the institutional cycle will go through another boom and bust, but ultimately a bust would be a net benefit for practicing dentists, if we are solely focusing on the idea that more dentists is more competition, which means lower quality of life for everyone . Surely there are other factors, but economics 101 tells me this might be a big one.
But unfortunately (or not depending on the dice roll associated with the life being a GP deals me), I’m gonna have to service this debt and eat whatever hard times come my way. This is the reality of 2023 tuition rates. It’s like the black hole of sunk cost fallacies, I am on a one-way ride with no going back. Sort of exciting? Mostly terrifying. Thousands of pre-dental students across the country have this running through their head.
There are absolute silver linings however…If we want to provide some confirmation bias that the grass is indeed, not greener on the other side. Friends in tech and high finance, are each day, legitimately worried about the rise of AI. Friend in fintech said their dev desk is already planning on shedding some heads due to tools like ChatGPT and GitHub Co Pilot (these things are literally writing better code than their well pedigreed, highly educated humans). Let’s not forget the massive amount of useless white collar jobs especially administrative that should all rightfully be worried right now. I’d rather be a dentist with massive debt if AI keeps improving at its current trajectory. Very real stuff and I agree this paragraph even just a few years ago would have made me sound like a total nut. Times are changing, and I would feel safer as a dentist than a radiologist.
On this subject matter, let’s consider the impact of ChatGPT on just education alone. Personally I’ve used it extensively when it first dropped. All those extremely hard to grasp anatomical relationships in the pterygopalatine fossa suddenly explained like I’m five via ChatGPT. Just feeding it research papers and it explains the abstract methodologies and findings at the level it assumes I already understand. As I speak, it is helping me finish my prep my clinical anatomy presentation on subdural and epidural hematomas tomorrow. I finished my slides In 2 hrs it took my classmate with a 4.0 6 hrs. Full stop, admissions is about to be even more competitive. No better time to be a dental student with difficult didactic courses.
This is a hell of a tangent but all of this supports the notion that there are many variables in life. People like me hope that I have my own unique skill sets I may be able to leverage in order to service my debt and make the big bucks.
The ultimate cope I will conclude with, is that even in the worst case scenario with soul crushing debt, the title of being a dentist should net me some perks in finding some joy in life, financial or not. Hey Ill need to find myself a wife somehow!
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