back up plan --> med school

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ddstobe

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Hi all,

Years ago, med school applicants applied to dental with the mentality of "just in case." Is it still true in 2008? I've talked to a few pre-med master students lately and they all agreed that getting into med schools is harder than getting into d-school. I remember I came across a post a couple years ago... 42% acceptance rate for med schools. Does anyone have the newest data?
 
if you think 42% is hard...last year in 2007 there was only a 38% acceptance rate for dental school....
 
I don't think med school is harder to get into. Look at the stats for osteopath and caribbean schools.
 
there are so many more med schools in us (allo plus osteo, also caribbean) than dental. though med might have more applicants, the ratio is still worse for dent. not enough schools opening (opening/operating a d-school is major money) for a constantly increasingly flooded application pool yields greater competition, as templedmdkrazd mentioned in numbers. in other words......i'm about to make this really nerdy.

as i see it, we have a "pre-health professional chamber", refilled each application cycle with water (pre-health schools) and solute (pre-health applicants.....those who are accepted dissolve:laugh:). there is more water on one side (more med schools than dent). there is a semi-permeable membrane (career change), only allowing pre-med applicants to go down their concentration gradient ("dental school is easier to get into" mentality) and cross to the pre-dent side. in turn, not enough (if any?) pre-dents are crossing back to pre-med side. the result: mad predents in the same water!
SDN is of course the elastic, intermolecular forces between us applicants.

.....and i'm spent.
 
med schools and dent schools...........they are just different.

no one can really say which one is "harder." unless they applied to both and got accepted on both. then they can share their experiences. even then "difficulty" varies with each person.
 
dr bojangles said:
there are so many more med schools in us (allo plus osteo, also caribbean) than dental. though med might have more applicants, the ratio is still worse for dent. not enough schools opening (opening/operating a d-school is major money) for a constantly increasingly flooded application pool yields greater competition, as templedmdkrazd mentioned in numbers. in other words......i'm about to make this really nerdy.

as i see it, we have a "pre-health professional chamber", refilled each application cycle with water (pre-health schools) and solute (pre-health applicants.....those who are accepted dissolve:laugh:). there is more water on one side (more med schools than dent). there is a semi-permeable membrane (career change), only allowing pre-med applicants to go down their concentration gradient ("dental school is easier to get into" mentality) and cross to the pre-dent side. in turn, not enough (if any?) pre-dents are crossing back to pre-med side. the result: mad predents in the same water!
SDN is of course the elastic, intermolecular forces between us applicants.

.....and i'm spent.
Click to expand...

well thank you, my mind is now spent for the night 😱
 
Yeah... you made me really want to go to sleep. Bye Now.
 
dr bojangles said:
there are so many more med schools in us (allo plus osteo, also caribbean) than dental. though med might have more applicants, the ratio is still worse for dent. not enough schools opening (opening/operating a d-school is major money) for a constantly increasingly flooded application pool yields greater competition, as templedmdkrazd mentioned in numbers. in other words......i'm about to make this really nerdy.

as i see it, we have a "pre-health professional chamber", refilled each application cycle with water (pre-health schools) and solute (pre-health applicants.....those who are accepted dissolve:laugh:). there is more water on one side (more med schools than dent). there is a semi-permeable membrane (career change), only allowing pre-med applicants to go down their concentration gradient ("dental school is easier to get into" mentality) and cross to the pre-dent side. in turn, not enough (if any?) pre-dents are crossing back to pre-med side. the result: mad predents in the same water!
SDN is of course the elastic, intermolecular forces between us applicants.

.....and i'm spent.
Click to expand...

Probably the funniest thing I've heard in a while... (the last one being, "go southern blot yourself!!!" after a long long night of studying for a biochem lab final)

As for level of difficulty getting into either school, I believe it would be difficult to say for sure. I would like to believe that it is just as difficult if not more difficult to get into dental school as med school, especially in terms of % acceptance due to number of schools and spots available. However, I for one would not have enjoyed taking the MCAT to save my life fortunately, I don't have any interest in being an MD.
 
Does this thread imply that soon pre-dental students will apply to med school "just in case"?

Seems about right.

If we are playing the % game:

"In 2006 the AAMC called for a 30% enrollment increase in medical schools by 2015. The expansion would result in an additional 5,000 new M.D. students annually. In order to accomplish the increase, the AAMC suggested boosting enrollment at existing schools and creating new allopathic medical schools."

It's doubtful that the number of dental school seats/schools will increase significantly anytime soon. Over the past 40ish years the number of schools has gone from 60 to 56.

Food for thought?
 
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Thanks for the inputs.

Does anyone has the newest data of the ratios btw enrollees and applicants for both dental and med schools? Just want to see if it worth a try to apply to med schools "just in case" I don't get into any dental schools. 😎
 
ddstobe said:
Thanks for the inputs.

Does anyone has the newest data of the ratios btw enrollees and applicants for both dental and med schools? Just want to see if it worth a try to apply to med schools "just in case" I don't get into any dental schools. 😎
Click to expand...

dont you have to tell dental schools you are also applying to med? this will show less committment?
 
I think using these two professional programs as back up plans for one or the other is crazy. How do you write the MCAT and the DAT, just thinking about it makes me cry.
 
We should be realistic here. Currently, if your passion is medicine and your GPA is sub 3.6, you go into a DO program, not a DDS program. There are MANY MANY MD programs that draw in a LOT of statistically great GPAs. I think that MD programs still draw the highest stat applicants even though their acceptance rate may be a bit higher as well.

You don't see many 3.1 GPA applicants going for an MD program but plenty apply for dental school and DO programs. Plenty of 3.1 GPA applicants don't get into a med or dental program. Currently, I think MD GPA is around 3.63 and dental is around 3.56 but DO is lower than both. With the emergence of the popularity of the DO program, I don't think it is realistic for anyone who had a first goal being medicine to get a DDS degree.
 
Sorry for the rant about medicine on the dental board but...

I think you also have to realize that some people have the "I have to be an MD" complex. I went to school with several people who said they would never go to an osteopathic school because the DO degree is inferior to the MD degree, and because DO's can't do surgery, etc.

The fact of the matter is that the only thing different between the two is the approach to medicine (osteopathic manipulative medicine) of osteopathic physicians. However, many osteopathic physicians don't utilize this as much anymore. Historically, DO's have had the tendency to specialize in family medicine, OB/GYN, and pediatrics. I think many people who are so hung up on the MD degree don't realize that there are a good number of DO's who go into other specialties (i.e. surgery, internal medicine, dermatology), and that these osteopathic physicians can actually obtain MD residency positions.

So back to the original topic of MD/DO/DDS... there are many people who have medicine as a first choice, and if they can't get into an MD degree-granting school, they would rather go into dentistry to obtain their DDS. These are the people that I think are typically in the profession for the wrong reasons (i.e. prestige). They feel that being a DDS will get more respect than being a DO, but not as much as an MD, and they want to be at the top of field in terms of the degree and prestige of the degree.
 
ummjoey said:
dont you have to tell dental schools you are also applying to med? this will show less committment?
Click to expand...
If you put down "No," will they ever find out? What if I do want to apply to med schools after I submitted my applications to dental schools, will they call me a lier?

No one has the numbers for the acceptence rates for den and med schools?
 
ddstobe said:
If you put down "No," will they ever find out? What if I do want to apply to med schools after I submitted my applications to dental schools, will they call me a lier?

No one has the numbers for the acceptence rates for den and med schools?
Click to expand...

i guess you can submit your dent application in may then start working on your med application. but you will need to take your mcat after you submit your dent application?

do med applications want you to put that you are applying to other professional schools?
 
since my main concern is d-schools, if med doesn't want me, oh well.

somebody plz, throw in some numbers here...
 
ummjoey said:
do med applications want you to put that you are applying to other professional schools?
Click to expand...

I believe so, but don't quote me on that. My guess is that you don't have to put it down so long as you aren't applying to the same school's Med program... but if you get caught... weeeeellllllll, I would have to guess that wouldn't go over so well.😕
 
ddstobe said:
since my main concern is d-schools, if med doesn't want me, oh well.

somebody plz, throw in some numbers here...
Click to expand...

I actually posted this yesterday on a different thread:


Again, I don't like that this is assuming that dental students are med school rejects. As someone else pointed out, there are different reasons for wanting to go dental instead of medical. One is not the back up of another.

As far as competitiveness goes, (*Please someone correct me if my numbers are off) The average Applicant/Enroll ratio in DS was 23.54. Within the past 10 years the number of seats have not increased by much, only as a new school opens. Each of the only 56 dental schools has a set number of seats they are allowed to offer (most have around 80 seats, some with 35, some >100.) Yes there is a growing need for dentists, but that need doesn't make it easier to get into school since the number of seats in dental school are not growing as fast.

Last year more than 42,300 students applied to medical school and 17,800 were accepted (42%.) 4666 were accepted to dental school. (I do not have the official number of dschool applicants)


Numbers were obtained from the following sources:
http://www.aamc.org/newsroom/pressrel/2007/071016.htm
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=503848
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=502682
__________________
 
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I reapplied this year and my back up plan was med school.

However, I got accepted this cycle so not an issue.
 
MnBr63 said:
Last year more than 42,300 students applied to medical school and 17,800 were accepted (42%.) 4666 were accepted to dental school. (I do not have the official number of dschool applicants)
Click to expand...

Last years stats (for class of 2011) are 12,000 applied for 4,300 spots. That equates to 36%, further demonstrating that if you want a back up to MD, you should try DO. They require lower stats than MD and DDS programs.

Competition based not on programs, just on stats is still MD>DDS>DO
 
MnBr63 said:
I actually posted this yesterday on a different thread:


Again, I don't like that this is assuming that dental students are med school rejects. As someone else pointed out, there are different reasons for wanting to go dental instead of medical. One is not the back up of another.

As far as competitiveness goes, (*Please someone correct me if my numbers are off) The average Applicant/Enroll ratio in DS was 23.54. Within the past 10 years the number of seats have not increased by much, only as a new school opens. Each of the only 56 dental schools has a set number of seats they are allowed to offer (most have around 80 seats, some with 35, some >100.) Yes there is a growing need for dentists, but that need doesn't make it easier to get into school since the number of seats in dental school are not growing as fast.

Last year more than 42,300 students applied to medical school and 17,800 were accepted (42%.) 4666 were accepted to dental school. (I do not have the official number of dschool applicants)


I think their was like 12,000 sum applicants las year. I remember seeing it at one of the interviews this year. so that would put dental around 38-39ish%
Its all relative. Bottom line is that dental students are not med school rejects etc... I don't want to go on any further with this......
Click to expand...
 
SugarNaCl said:
Last years stats (for class of 2011) are 12,000 applied for 4,300 spots. That equates to 36%, further demonstrating that if you want a back up to MD, you should try DO. They require lower stats than MD and DDS programs.

Competition based not on programs, just on stats is still MD>DDS>DO
Click to expand...
You cannot really compare dat vs mcat, but I know what you mean as far as GPA. In the end if you take the whole package dds/MD is probalby about the same in difficulty. Thats my opinion, their are just so many factors that come into play with acceptances.
 
jswizdent said:
You cannot really compare dat vs mcat, but I know what you mean as far as GPA. In the end if you take the whole package dds/MD is probalby about the same in difficulty. Thats my opinion, their are just so many factors that come into play with acceptances.
Click to expand...

Totally off topic, but I will never understand why it takes a DO 4 extra years if they want to get an MD instead and practice in a country that doesn't accept DOs... but it takes a DDS 2 years of a 6 year oral surgery residency to have that status.

I do agree with you about the comparisons. It is difficult. Medical applicants still have higher stats as a whole, but less percentage of dental applicants are accepted. Does it even things out? Who knows... and does it really matter? You do what you like and what would work out best for your goals in life other than a career. There is more to life afterall.
 
SugarNaCl said:
Totally off topic, but I will never understand why it takes a DO 4 extra years if they want to get an MD instead and practice in a country that doesn't accept DOs... but it takes a DDS 2 years of a 6 year oral surgery residency to have that status.

I do agree with you about the comparisons. It is difficult. Medical applicants still have higher stats as a whole, but less percentage of dental applicants are accepted. Does it even things out? Who knows... and does it really matter? You do what you like and what would work out best for your goals in life other than a career. There is more to life afterall.
Click to expand...

Good point, although I heard that med schools are increasing in number and enrollment per class. In addition D.O. stats used to be very low and now they are coming up slowly, because I think that some students like the D.O. philosophy. My friend wants to be a D.O., don't ask me why, I have no clue. I think the D.O. school in Michigan is ranked in the top 10 in the US in primary care. Oh the reason 6 year oms guys can do it in 2 years is because
dental students are cool, I thought you got the memo when you got into VCU. lol:laugh:
 
By the time we are all out practicing we will be laughing at memories of posts like this, because nobody will care about the competive nature of grad schools.
 
jswizdent said:
By the time we are all out practicing we will be laughing at memories of posts like this, because nobody will care about the competive nature of grad schools.
Click to expand...

LOL jswiz, true on all statements... and ROFLMFAO to getting the memo about dental students being cool.
 
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