2012 Cost of US Dental Education

thanks for this!

doc toothache said:

Some schools are approaching the 1/2 million mark for the cost of dental education. For most private schools, there is no difference in the cost for residents or non residents.

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Thanks Doc! Going to dental school is like buying a house.

By the way, what's PR? It's tuition is dwarfed by basically every other school.

Thanks!
_____________
I believe in being a good person, but not in a God.

Stacker said:

Thanks Doc! Going to dental school is like buying a house.

By the way, what's PR?

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Puerto Rico.

And so true! Except a dental degree gives you the tools to make the $ to pay off the loans, hopefully....
But as 1000s of house-flippers learned, a house doesn't really make you money.

This is fantastic. Thank you!! Also I didn't see UNC, did I just miss it somehow? o:

UNC isn't on there because of the housing expenses or something. Its there down below in the detailed year by year breakdown of costs, but there are no solid numbers for it due to the varying expenses.

doc toothache said:

Some schools are approaching the 1/2 million mark for the cost of dental education. For most private schools, there is no difference in the cost for residents or non residents.

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Greetings,

You see, we don't have things handed to us like others think. I have heard comments such as " couple years of college, dental school and you guys start to make big bucks right away!". They failed to realize that overwhelming majority of us have at least a BS or advanced degree, have to pay an outrageous sky high dental tuition, and if you want to specialize, be prepared to spend a minimum of 3 years and pay tuition on top of that too like in endo, perio, pros, ortho. This is in contrast to medicine where residents start making money while in residency. Newly dental graduates can easily get into half a mil in debt before they can start making money. So next time if you hear how we got it made, give them a dose of reality. People often complain about dentists being a bunch of rich people and how our fees are so high but they do not realize what we all had to go through to be where we are today. DP

ushaseos said:

UNC isn't on there because of the housing expenses or something. Its there down below in the detailed year by year breakdown of costs, but there are no solid numbers for it due to the varying expenses.

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I spent 4 years as a UNC undergrad and can tell you that rent varies in Chapel Hill. If you room with several people you can get rent as cheap as $500/month. By yourself you could be upwards of $1500/month.

If you do your research you can definitely find some places for relatively fair prices. My buddy had a one bedroom apartment and spent $600/month. On a bus line. And it was a fairly nice community.

This is great, Thank you!

Is Western wrong on the totals? It seems like all the other schools have living costs factored in but Western does not?

chellis said:

I spent 4 years as a UNC undergrad and can tell you that rent varies in Chapel Hill. If you room with several people you can get rent as cheap as $500/month. By yourself you could be upwards of $1500/month.

If you do your research you can definitely find some places for relatively fair prices. My buddy had a one bedroom apartment and spent $600/month. On a bus line. And it was a fairly nice community.

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Wow, that's great! I don't know anyone at UNC, so I will definitely look into and do more research on one-bedrooms. Thank you for the info.

@ushaseos: Ah, I must have missed the info about UNC at the bottom. Thanks!

Thanks for the helpful info, Doc!

NYU is sooo expensive.

wow.. I pay about 700 $/month in Brazil ;X And I´m complaining about the price

Are there errors in this spreadsheet? Some schools 4-year totals include cost of living, while other schools don't. Ex: Colorado does not include cost of living.

EDIT: There's something funky in general with CO sponsored vs. non-sponsored. Do you have a version with the formulas still in there?

doc toothache said:

With that many numerals in the spreadsheet, there are bound to be "errors". Since you are so concerned, why not make it your crusade to check all the numbers? Think of it as part of your EC. As for Colorado, unless your file is corrupted, wouldn't that be line 155? The only school that does not have the living expenses listed is Roseman. The formulas have not been deleted from the file, so you should be able to find them.

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Not meant as an attack, just thought there were some inconsistencies.

The formulas are still present, but only the ones for adding the annual totals together. There are no formulas for totaling the columns (e.g. tuition, fees, instruments, living expenses), they are just values. Could be my error, but when I use a formula to add those, I get different numbers than your totals in many cases.

Is there a 2013 spreadsheet like this that anyone has made? This is so helpful/convenient.

UDM (Mercy) tuition fees are not correct!
http://dental.udmercy.edu/admission/financial/
I asked the students who attend too. It is about $300,000

Well, if you include the housing fees into the calculation then your figure may have validity to it, but housing fees can be variable for individual students. The actual tuition fees on the website are $71,502/year X 4 = 286,000. Now your figure is @ 330. How did you come up with that?

Any update since the guide's been released this year? Thank you!

Wow - this just confirms my thought that some folks are almost priced out of dental school. With $30-40k in undergrad debt, one could easily be looking at $350k+ in debt (plus opportunity cost). That's about $2120/month for 20 years.

$150k salary = ~$90k net or $64k after loan payments.

And you still have to pay rent or house payment, food, credit card debt, utilities, car payment, insurance, gasoline, save for retirement, etc.

A lot of folks mention opening your own practice if you have great business skills, but that's more debt which will negate some of your gains.