Advice for newly formed Pre-Dental Society

[32pearlywhites]

I just co-founded the Pre-Dental Society at my school. We don't have anything planned for this semester, and I am wondering what works for other Pre-Dental Societies. What do you find most helpful about your Pre-Dental Society? What do/don't you like? Any unique or fun community service or fund raising ideas? Has anyone tried buying DAT prep material as a club? Is it hard to get Admission Reps to come give a talk? How about educating the community? Any and all advice extremely appreciated

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[blankguy]

I just co-founded the Pre-Dental Society at my school. We don't have anything planned for this semester, and I am wondering what works for other Pre-Dental Societies. What do you find most helpful about your Pre-Dental Society? What do/don't you like? Any unique or fun community service or fund raising ideas? Has anyone tried buying DAT prep material as a club? Is it hard to get Admission Reps to come give a talk? How about educating the community? Any and all advice extremely appreciated

Another thing you could do is to work with the prehealth adviser to give the members shadowing/volunteering opportunities.

 

[ashaw]

UCSD has a really active Pre-dental Society, you could try visiting their website and contacting their president / advisor.

 

[32pearlywhites]

do you have the link? thanks!

 

[laughlovelife]

LOTS and LOTS and LOTS of community service! that's important because that's what dental schools like to see anyways. Our dental club has general meetings with guest speakers of different types of dentists or representatives from different dental schools. a meeting about what actually needs to get done to apply to dental school is also pretty helpful, because alot of people that are interested in dentistry have no clue as to where to start. on that note, mentor-mentee programs might be pretty useful. newsletters might also serve help by providing more information that can't be said during general meetings and such. hope this helps! good luck on the club!

 

[TheWiredNerv]

I try to do mock interview workshops, DAT workshops, application work shop and an open forum about the health platform. The problem is that I can't get the students here to give a f$Y*. I'll check out UCSFs page and see what they do!

 

[32pearlywhites]

Thanks for the advice! Any specific ideas for community service that everyone liked? And how does it work for setting up shadowing opportunities... does just one member get to shadow with each dentist/specialist or is it something like a sign up sheet for times? I'm assuming that's somewhat unique for each instance. Keep the advice coming!

 

[toothfairy85]

I just co-founded the Pre-Dental Society at my school. We don't have anything planned for this semester, and I am wondering what works for other Pre-Dental Societies. What do you find most helpful about your Pre-Dental Society? What do/don't you like? Any unique or fun community service or fund raising ideas? Has anyone tried buying DAT prep material as a club? Is it hard to get Admission Reps to come give a talk? How about educating the community? Any and all advice extremely appreciated

We gave oral hygiene presentations to local elementary schools. It works really well if you know someone who would be willing to donate toothbrushes, and trial sizes of toothpaste and floss, and give the students goody bags. We showed an oral hygiene video, had question/answer time, and little workbook activities for them to fill out. I think it works best with kindergarten to second grade, but do whatever you can.

We always had admissions reps come to our school, and we also went on "field trips" to the dental schools in Texas. Always very helpful and beneficial.

If you have a dental school near your undergrad campus, we always had current dental students come talk about their experiences.

We also had Air Force, Army, and Navy reps come talk to our group about scholarship opportunities.

CMDA Mission Trips... we always limited this to about 4-5 upperclassmen. We would go down to border towns in Mexico and provide oral health education, and some students had the opportunity to assist and do cleanings.

We had specialists in the area come talk about their practice, their residency, etc.

Community service... we did tons! We worked with Special Olympics, Ronald McDonald House, RAMP (build ramps at homes for handicapped individuals), Habitat for Humanity, etc.

Something we didn't do, but I think it would be beneficial is to have hygiene students and dental lab tech students come talk to your group as well. Maybe get some professors to come talk to your group about academic dentistry, because it is something some people might be interested in. Also, having dual degree students come talk about their PhD research, MPH, MBA, etc. would another thing you could look into doing.

On another note... we also made shirts for the organization, something different every year.

 

[32pearlywhites]

We gave oral hygiene presentations to local elementary schools. It works really well if you know someone who would be willing to donate toothbrushes, and trial sizes of toothpaste and floss, and give the students goody bags. We showed an oral hygiene video, had question/answer time, and little workbook activities for them to fill out. I think it works best with kindergarten to second grade, but do whatever you can.

We always had admissions reps come to our school, and we also went on "field trips" to the dental schools in Texas. Always very helpful and beneficial.

If you have a dental school near your undergrad campus, we always had current dental students come talk about their experiences.

We also had Air Force, Army, and Navy reps come talk to our group about scholarship opportunities.

CMDA Mission Trips... we always limited this to about 4-5 upperclassmen. We would go down to border towns in Mexico and provide oral health education, and some students had the opportunity to assist and do cleanings.

We had specialists in the area come talk about their practice, their residency, etc.

Community service... we did tons! We worked with Special Olympics, Ronald McDonald House, RAMP (build ramps at homes for handicapped individuals), Habitat for Humanity, etc.

Something we didn't do, but I think it would be beneficial is to have hygiene students and dental lab tech students come talk to your group as well. Maybe get some professors to come talk to your group about academic dentistry, because it is something some people might be interested in. Also, having dual degree students come talk about their PhD research, MPH, MBA, etc. would another thing you could look into doing.

On another note... we also made shirts for the organization, something different every year.

WOW you are awesome! Thanks! We are an hour from Boston, so I think we can get BU, Harvard, Tufts, and UConn to come up and we can visit there as well. We are definitely doing t-shirts. My mother's a hygienist and she goes into elementary schools so I could probably get her to donate and she has some fun things like a giant tooth to pour acid on to show a cavity. Are schools good with letting you come in even though you are technically not educated in the field yet? What did you put in the goody bags besides toothbrushes, floss, and toothpaste?

 

[toothfairy85]

WOW you are awesome! Thanks! We are an hour from Boston, so I think we can get BU, Harvard, Tufts, and UConn to come up and we can visit there as well. We are definitely doing t-shirts. My mother's a hygienist and she goes into elementary schools so I could probably get her to donate and she has some fun things like a giant tooth to pour acid on to show a cavity. Are schools good with letting you come in even though you are technically not educated in the field yet? What did you put in the goody bags besides toothbrushes, floss, and toothpaste?

Schools have always been pretty good about us coming in. We usually did it 1-2 times a year, mainly because it is difficult to get donations more often than that. We usually did it on Friday mornings as well when there were enough students who could attend who didn't have class. We got lucky a couple of times getting to come in on Career Day at some schools, so it made even easier for schools to say yes. In the goody bags we had the toothbrushes, toothpaste, floss, and then we had a little instruction brochure that told you how to properly your teeth, the types of foods to eat to avoid getting cavities (aka sugar bugs to little kids), how often you need to visit a dentist, remember to brush your teeth 2x daily, etc. Just stuff like that. Some dental offices will have informational stuff to give you, and if not, you can easily put together a brochure with the pertinent information. We also had word search activities, and other things like that in the bags. We also had the informational stuff in spanish too, because in San Antonio, many of the kids come from families that spanish is their first language, and you want to make the brochure where the kids and their parents can understand it. I don't know if that would be an issue in Boston, but it is something to keep in mind.

 

[predentist]

just to stretch on the shadowing opportunities, you can have one of the officers responsible for finding dentists around the area and trying to help people in your organization to find someone they can shadow. This may seem difficult for one person to handle but many dentists are willing to allow students to visit their office. and you can restrict this only to paid members which will force people to be active members

 

[toothfairy85]

The only downside I see to offering shadowing opportunities through the organization (i.e. a couple of dentists that all members shadow) is that it limits the time you can go in and observe. More than likely, you will want more than just a day or two of shadowing. Also, many schools require a letter of recommendation from a dentist, and some dentists won't write a letter unless you have been in the office for a while. Some will write you a letter without shadowing a whole bunch, but they might be writing letters for everyone in your organization, and that might take away from the personal letter they would write on your behalf. I guess it is not a huge deal, but it is something to keep in mind. I would rather find someone on my own, be able to work with them as often as I can, and get to know them, so they can write more than just a "typical" LOR.

 

[32pearlywhites]

We only have 16 members at this point, but there are also only a few dentists in the area. Do many members get shadowing experience in the summer in their hometown or do most members do their shadowing while at school? Do you offer shadowing through the Society to all paying members or do upperclassmen or members with high attendance at meetings get preference if there are limited opportunities? I'm just trying to figure out a fair way to offer shadowing opportunities to the members...

 

[toothfairy85]

I did mine during the summer while in summer school.

 

[32pearlywhites]

thanks for all the advice. let me know if you think of anything else!

 

[ak47]

put together a baller website with links to d-schools, d-school stats, requirements, personal statement examples, LOR recommendations and hwo to go about doing it. so pretty much all the common questions people ask on SDN should be summarized :] good luck

 

[UNMPDS]

Here is a link to the Pre-Dental Society for New Mexico:

hsc.unm.edu/som/predental

It should give you a lot of ideas on what you could try. My biggest piece of advice is to find a big money sponser because a lot of stuff you want to do costs money. We get a lot of money through the New Mexico Dental Association and that allows us to do a lot of different things. PM me with any other questions and I would love to help if you need it.

 

[lna2010]

WOW you are awesome! Thanks! We are an hour from Boston, so I think we can get BU, Harvard, Tufts, and UConn to come up and we can visit there as well. We are definitely doing t-shirts. My mother's a hygienist and she goes into elementary schools so I could probably get her to donate and she has some fun things like a giant tooth to pour acid on to show a cavity. Are schools good with letting you come in even though you are technically not educated in the field yet? What did you put in the goody bags besides toothbrushes, floss, and toothpaste?

Hi. I'm new to the SDN thing, but I am the current president for BU Pre-Dental Society. This past year we really turned our group around with a great new e-board. I plan on extending this turn-around in the upcoming year, but I just wanted to offer you my contact info in case you wanted to collaborate or anything. Please feel free to contact myself or the secretary [email protected] or [email protected] about anything. We are currently involved in starting a project with Harvard Pre-Dental Society called Smiles4Life. Good Luck with your society!!