- What was your GPA/DAT/instate-or-outofstate?
- What's class/student life been like the first year?
- Hardest class? Easiest class?
- How has your stress been?
- How is the stress of your peers?
- Do they push you to be cutthroat/gunners to specialize a lot?
- Best advice?
- Do you have anything you wish you'd known when you were interviewing?
- How many students per instructor are there in clinic and whats the student:faculty ratio outside clinic?
- What kind of procedures will I be able to do in clinic?
- How many days a week am I guaranteed a chair in clinic to schedule patients? I know you dont generally get as much your first year but you may know.
- How are students expected to get patients?
- Are there many hidden costs that you didnt know or wish you knew about before you started?
- Is your literature all e-based or still general book based?
Thanks a ton for your help!
Sorry! I've had some Ipad issues today.
All great questions. I'll try to answer as many of them as I can.
I had a 3.2 GPA coming in and a 20 DAT. I really liked how the ADCOM looked at the bigger picture and saw the whole application. First year has been good. Tough, but good. I'm from out of state and I'd say the class is mostly out of state but there's a handful of local students. It's a lot of work and it's taken some adjusting, but if you work hard it's not too bad. Everything is electronic, all the notes can be downloaded and used right off your laptop or ipad.
I don't think there's a big push from the school for students to specialize. I know a lot of people want to specialize, but we're also in our first year so that's expected. I think the class ahead of us had a large number of people apply to specialty programs, but I think that's becoming more of a trend at most dental schools.
Some general advice about interviewing, just enjoy the time and be yourself. As much as you can, try to let them see who you are. They really spend time trying to get to see who you are during the interview and the more you can show them you care and are serious, the better off you'll be.
We haven't had a lot of exposure to the clinic, we start our clinical work our third year, but I have heard a few things. I do know that since ASDOH doesn't have many residency programs (they have an AEGD and Ortho residency, but no perio, endo, os, pedo or prosth) the students at ASDOH get a lot more experience with specialized procedures most students would not normally get at a school with residency programs. I also don't think you will find getting patients to be a problem. We have a clinic on campus that is rarely empty (from my understanding) and I haven't heard of anyone complaining about not being able to find patients.
There's a lot to consider with every dental school, I know ASDOH has been a great school and I couldn't imagine going somewhere else.
Hopefully that's helpful for you. Good luck!