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[atoothfairy]

nope its not!! I have heard of a good chunk of people that have switched careers to dentistry. You're definitely not alone and 33-34 is not too old. Plus dental schools seem to love older applicants anyway! If you are passionate about it, do it! good luck 🙂

 

[2thDoc11]

Two biggest struggles with being an older applicant would be family/kid responsibilities and the finances. Obviously not impossible to do well in school with kids as many have done it before. So it mostly would come down to the finances as I'm sure you are more than aware about. If the numbers don't scare you then go for it! Good luck

 

[2thDoc11]

I haven't looked at the finances too too much. I know that it's a hell of an expense but we have lived with combined income of ~$125,000-175,000 for the last 7 years and my partner's first attending job should pay $500,000+ based on the job offers of the class above her so I think we can make it work without too much headache. I would probably apply very broadly and just go wherever I can.

If you don't mind me asking, which state are you located in? With that type of income and smart financial planning I'd think you'd be more than alright.. shoot your shot

 

[2thDoc11]

We are in Pennsylvania at the moment. We know people who have received offers around $500,000 (up to $750,000) for my wife's specialty in PA, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Colorado, Texas and Georgia. Mostly in tier 2/3 cities like Scranton, Erie, Akron, etc. but also Detroit and Dallas suburbs. East coast, west coast, top 10 cities and academic powerhouse places (Cleveland Clinic, Mayo, Wash U, etc.) tend to pay around $300,000 - $325,000 in her field.

We tend to be really frugal/big savers which was one of the major reasons I decided not to go for medicine. We've been able to build up a nice retirement fund and pay off almost all of our debt the last 7 years. Now that she's about to hit a big jump I am thinking more about what I want to do for the next 20 years and less about how to make the most money to have a nice lifestyle during the absurdly long medical training process.

oh dang yea I think you're doing well! Good work and good luck!

 

[luisfigo]

Do it, great field. It's actually an advantage being older, more mature.

 

[HKSZYU]

Yea, logistically I see no reason why this wouldn't work. I'm also a non-trad and had a similar path as you actually. Age really hasn't been a factor in dental school at all. It sounds like the high cost of dental school isn't a big barrier for you, so I say go for it.

 

[doyinDO]

We are in Pennsylvania at the moment. We know people who have received offers around $500,000 (up to $750,000) for my wife's specialty in PA, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Colorado, Texas and Georgia. Mostly in tier 2/3 cities like Scranton, Erie, Akron, etc. but also Detroit and Dallas suburbs. East coast, west coast, top 10 cities and academic powerhouse places (Cleveland Clinic, Mayo, Wash U, etc.) tend to pay around $300,000 - $325,000 in her field.

We tend to be really frugal/big savers which was one of the major reasons I decided not to go for medicine. We've been able to build up a nice retirement fund and pay off almost all of our debt the last 7 years. Now that she's about to hit a big jump I am thinking more about what I want to do for the next 20 years and less about how to make the most money to have a nice lifestyle during the absurdly long medical training process.

what's her specialty?

 

[Dr.Deadpool97]

Hi all,

I am a non-trad thinking of pursuing a career in dentistry. I have a really winding strange background across a variety of careers. 7 years ago I completed a post-bacc geared towards future MDs and was accepted to the attached medical school. My spouse who is a few years older (MD) had already matched to a completely different location by the time I was admitted. After lots of reflection, I choose to turn down my acceptance to be with my partner. At that point, I took a role as a project manager for a large healthcare organization. I have spent the last 7 years at this organization doing everything from IT implementation to Quality Improvement and most recently jack-of-all, master-of-none, in-house consulting for telehealth initiatives. For the last ~2 years, I feel as though I have been languishing in my role. I am ready to go in a different direction and my wife's training is coming to an end soon (finally). For the last year or so I have been strongly considering dentistry as a possible career. Reasons for interest include:

• Helping people
• Problem solving
• Interest in owning/running a business
• Working with hands
• Ability to learn/use new technologies and skills throughout career
• Not something I would say to an adcomm but much shorter training compared to medicine

My question to you all is would 33-34 be too old to go back to dental school? How big of a negative is it to be an older student?

Age is only the number of times that earth revolved around sun in your existence. Do what makes you happy!

 

[LFA20]

Hi all,

I am a non-trad thinking of pursuing a career in dentistry. I have a really winding strange background across a variety of careers. 7 years ago I completed a post-bacc geared towards future MDs and was accepted to the attached medical school. My spouse who is a few years older (MD) had already matched to a completely different location by the time I was admitted. After lots of reflection, I choose to turn down my acceptance to be with my partner. At that point, I took a role as a project manager for a large healthcare organization. I have spent the last 7 years at this organization doing everything from IT implementation to Quality Improvement and most recently jack-of-all, master-of-none, in-house consulting for telehealth initiatives. For the last ~2 years, I feel as though I have been languishing in my role. I am ready to go in a different direction and my wife's training is coming to an end soon (finally). For the last year or so I have been strongly considering dentistry as a possible career. Reasons for interest include:

• Helping people
• Problem solving
• Interest in owning/running a business
• Working with hands
• Ability to learn/use new technologies and skills throughout career
• Not something I would say to an adcomm but much shorter training compared to medicine

My question to you all is would 33-34 be too old to go back to dental school? How big of a negative is it to be an older student?

33-34 is certainly not "too old" to start dental school. I had a few classmates around that age and even older.

You need to figure out if it makes sense financially to go back to school. It will cost at least 400k-500k with a starting salary of about 120k-130k.

 

[Cavity_Search]

You can definitely make it work. The oldest dental student in my class is almost 40. I know a dentist who switched careers from a completely different field to dentistry in his 40s. It's becoming more and more common.

 

[charlestweed]

Age is only the number of times that earth revolved around sun in your existence. Do what makes you happy!

It's not just the number, I am afraid. You are still young and haven't experienced any medical problem yet. It's a sad fact that your body won't stay the same as you get older. Many of my assistants and my colleagues have already experienced hand and back problems (due to repetitive manual labor and prolonged sitting) and they are only in their 30s and 40s. As you get older, your arteries get more blockage and the risk of getting stroke and heart attack increases significantly. As you get older, your insulin production drops and you will have higher chance of becoming diabetic. As you age, your immune system becomes weaker and you have a higher chance of getting cancer and other illnesses. You don't have to believe me. Go ask your parents.

With much higher student loan amount that today dental grads are facing now, they will need to work at least 5-10 years longer than the dentists who graduated 20-30 years ago when the average student loan debt was about 1/10 -1/5 of what it is today. If you plan to have kids, you will definitely have to work longer. Therefore, I think it's safer to start dental school as early as possible....ie in your early 20s. Don't underestimate the amount of damage that prolonged sitting and repetitive manual work (from years of practicing dentistry) will do to your body.

 

[2thDoc11]

Given that I've already said the state and that my partner is female the specific specialty is likely to make it very easy to dox her and by proxy me. The salary alone should narrow it down to like 5-6 possible options.

With what you've noted regarding finances, you're already ahead of the game compared to the vast majority of your would-be dental colleagues. That being said, you probably wouldn't need to pull the 5-6 day work week like most. Find a relaxing 3-4 day gig and I'm sure you'll still do very well. Or at least transition to this type of lifestyle sooner rather then later. That could help prevent those common health concern issues.

 

[charlestweed]

This is where I've struggled. I don't foresee myself stopping work until I'm at least 55-60 so I think I have the time to carve out a nice 20+ year career in dentistry but at the same time I do worry about the physical toll. You never know in life but my core health concerns are pretty low (very good cardio condition, no significant MSK injuries, no family history of cancer, I eat very little sugar and carbs, etc.). My bigger concern is honestly the last 2-3 years I've noticed little things like my ankles becoming stiff and sore if I do runs over 8-10 miles or run 3+ days in a row. I've been running long distance for almost 20 years now so it's not exactly 1:1 but I do have concerns around similar injuries from pulling 8-10 hour days doing dental work for 20+ years.

Financially, I'm not horribly concerned about dentistry. As I stated above, my wife will be the breadwinner soon and her salary should be more than enough for us. I'm not really interested in working in a corporate business setting purely for money any longer. She will make her money regardless of what I do but I see my options as:

1. Take an early retirement and raise kids --> $0/yr and not really the lifestyle I want but I could be happy doing this for a few years. Would likely be bored to death once kids hit school age.

2. Change careers --> Dentistry is the field I have the most interest in as it seems like the late start isn't as devastating and there are lots of ways to practice depending on your goals/drive to develop a large practice or run a smaller clinic. I've also considered MD/DO and PA as options. MD/DO is just too long for training into a specialty and primary care will have a large portion of their lunch eaten by PA/NP within a decade, IMO. PA is appealing but the market is getting quite saturated in cities and I worry about long-term flexibility. My read is that the ability to pull $90-120k on 3-4 days/week will be gone sooner than later. I know the major metro near me now starts at about $85k for specialty practice PA/NP and that is 40 hours per week. This is down from $110k about 6-7 years ago.

I will not continue in my current work setting for more than 1-2 years (purely to dump as much as legally allowable into retirement for a year or two) once she hits attending salary. So I really only need my career path to hit net neutral within ~10 years of starting for it to be worth it to me. I don't need this to be the most lucrative venture but more something that I find fulfilling and not catastrophic financially. I really like the level of autonomy + flexibility of dentistry the most but don't want to rush into something that is completely unjustifiable.

So right now my interest in the various career options to be Dentistry >>> PA > Commit to stay-at-home lifestyle/retire at 35 > MD/DO.

I think I may just study and take a DAT later this summer. Getting a score will determine a lot of the potential pathways and make the decision easier. Likewise, I won't be able to pull together an application for this upcoming cycle. If the DAT goes well, I can start filling out the rest of the application from ~August 2021 - May 2022 while working. If I get an acceptance then great. If I do poorly on the DAT/don't get accepted then I will probably transition to a SAH lifestyle or reapply depending on how competitive I was in the 2022-23 app cycle.

I know that was a little rambling but the TLDR is that I'm trying to answer this question: Is Dentistry completely unjustifiable for a 32-33 year old applicant?

You wouldn’t want to stay home raising kids 24/7. You’d be bored to death. Work gives satisfaction. I think you need to have a stable career for yourself and shouldn’t rely 100% on your wife’s income. How are you going to support your family if something bad happens to her? A good friend of mine passed away suddenly from a heart attack leaving a wife and 3 kids behind. He was a dentist and owned a thriving dental practice. His wife helped manage the office. After his death, his wife had to sell the practice (because in CA, only licensed dentist can own a practice) and lost her managing job. Another friend of mine lost his wife due to cancer. Fortunately, he’s an orthodontist and has 2 offices. My wife and I both have life insurances with $1 million policy (each) but that’s not enough. Kids are expensive.

I think you will be fine starting dental school this late because you don’t have any debt and your wife earns very good income. And you are right about the ranking…..Dentistry > MD > PA > early retirement. Just keep in mind that in order to achieve what you want in dentistry (being an owner dentist, full autonomy, working 9-5 etc) you will have to work extremely hard for a couple of years after graduation. It takes time to build a good reputation. Being an owner, you have to pay for everything (staff salaries, rents, malpractice insurance, and other fees etc) first and you are the last person to get paid.

 

[DAT Destroyer]

Hi all,

I am a non-trad thinking of pursuing a career in dentistry. I have a really winding strange background across a variety of careers. 7 years ago I completed a post-bacc geared towards future MDs and was accepted to the attached medical school. My spouse who is a few years older (MD) had already matched to a completely different location by the time I was admitted. After lots of reflection, I choose to turn down my acceptance to be with my partner. At that point, I took a role as a project manager for a large healthcare organization. I have spent the last 7 years at this organization doing everything from IT implementation to Quality Improvement and most recently jack-of-all, master-of-none, in-house consulting for telehealth initiatives. For the last ~2 years, I feel as though I have been languishing in my role. I am ready to go in a different direction and my wife's training is coming to an end soon (finally). For the last year or so I have been strongly considering dentistry as a possible career. Reasons for interest include:

• Helping people
• Problem solving
• Interest in owning/running a business
• Working with hands
• Ability to learn/use new technologies and skills throughout career
• Not something I would say to an adcomm but much shorter training compared to medicine

My question to you all is would 33-34 be too old to go back to dental school? How big of a negative is it to be an older student?

I am alway a believer in pursuing your dreams, do what makes you happy and you will never work a day in your life. From many years of working with non-traditional students I have been told that dental schools look at an older student as a positive. Why? Because they have had more life experience and less likely to be overwhelmed with the the rigorous workload in dental school. I personally just worked with a student older than you also with children who took the DAT scored triple 30's in the sciences and is applying this cycle. I am positive she will get in this cycle.

Wishing you the best...Nancy

 

[striveforgreatness10]

Go for it! I made the switch (similar to yours) and will be starting school this year at 30! Some things to keep in mind when applying: make sure you have met all of your pre-requisite requirements and that schools that you apply to don’t have a cut-off period for when those classes “expire.” You obviously did well in your post-bac program so I’d honestly just sit down and crank out the DAT, get at least a 20, and you’ll have interviews for days!

Feel free to PM me with whatever questions you may have and good luck!