Military or civilian AEGD?

if you have an HPSP scholarship, there is pretty much no chance the AF, or any other military branch, will allow you do a civilian AEGD.

umkcdds said:

if you have an HPSP scholarship, there is pretty much no chance the AF, or any other military branch, will allow you do a civilian AEGD.

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Why should they even allow that? According to them civilian programs are only possible if there is no comparable program available in the military and there is a need them.

All AEGD programs are reviewed I think every 3 years by an accreditation committee, so civilian and military programs should be comparable. That said some are better than others which probably depends most of all on your mentors.

You will not get increase pay after doing an AEGD unless you complete a big list of requirements that will probably take 2 years to complete. And unless the AF is different than the Army, the AEGD no longer counts as payback, it is a neutral year which means you don't have to payback for it, but you will still have 4 years payback when you are done with that year.

03 officer pay is probably much higher, ~70k with benefits, than any stipend you would get out of a civilian program, if you get anything.

As I posted yesterday, the AEGD year is neutral like BQuad said.

I firmly believe that when it comes to scope of practice, amount of procedures, and pure experience, there is no better way to go than an AF scholarship. I will not speak for the Army and Navy because I did not go through theirs.

If you read my previous posts, I can tell you that the experience I got far exceeded that of my dental school classmates who did a civilian program. The programs were not even in the same ballpark. I will also say, that my scope of practice is also larger than some of my colleagues that went through an AF AEGD at another base.

I also agree with BQuad that your instructors play a huge part in the experience. I would do it again in a heartbeat. My AEGD was the best educational year I have ever had. Remember, as with anything in life, you get out what you put in.