Advice on improving my chances for acceptance please

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rcbm

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Hi all, i'll try to be concise. Really grateful to anyone with advice for me. Feeling extremely lost in my path to pursuing dentistry.

- 24 year old Canadian citizen and would-be international dental student in the USA. I WANT to move to the USA for dental school and to live and practice dentistry in the USA. 1st choice NSU, 2nd choice NYU.

- Graduated York University in Toronto, Canada with a bachelor of science in 2019. The school endured 2 faculty-strikes which made those academic years absolutely hell. I took a 5th year of study, scored 3.8++ GPA for the last two academic years with full course loads while simultaneously owning and managing an espresso bar business that did over 1M in annual sales. Using this point to prove I am capable of multitasking.

- Overall GPA is 3.30. First two academic years were quite brutal, but the upward trend is significant. In Canada, my science-GPA is above a 3.0. In the USA, all the courses I have successfully appealed for exclusion from GPA in Canada and eventually retaken are fully counted in the American system's calculation of GPA. This reduced my sGPA and bcpGPA to 2.70. Embarrassingly low.

- My DAT score is 20AA on Canadian exam. I am rewriting, but cannot decide between rewriting the American DAT or Canadian DAT. I just want an advantage. I've already paid for the american DAT at prometric but i'll sacrifice any amount of money as debt to attain my goal of pursuing and practicing dentistry in the U.S.A.

- I applied to NOVA SU Dental November 2020 (very late; pandemic circumstances) and they rejected me only 4 days later. This opened my eyes to the reality that I am really on the lowest end of the applicant pool.

What can / should I do to improve my stats to be accepted? From what I understand: Post-Bacc will only increase my science GPA ever so slightly, even with several A's in science courses. Second option: A Master's program. Issues is that it is costly, and most likely a minimum of two academic years. At this moment, I am horrified by this reality. Third option: Going abroad, but then I'm faced with 3 more expensive years in the american dental school system.

Thank you a million times in advance for the advice, information, constructive criticism, and anything you have to contribute.

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I read all I needed to in the first 2 paragraphs. (But I did read the rest and heard you out)

Unless your getting a full ride or school paid for, NYU and Nova are some of the absolute worst picks. Both financially, quality, and reputation wise. It makes it ESPECIALLY worse if your from Canada (in the sense that they are WAY cheaper). But you do you.

Why not go to a Canadian school? And then move to the states to practice??
 
I read all I needed to in the first 2 paragraphs. (But I did read the rest and heard you out)

Unless your getting a full ride or school paid for, NYU and Nova are some of the absolute worst picks. Both financially, quality, and reputation wise. It makes it ESPECIALLY worse if your from Canada (in the sense that they are WAY cheaper). But you do you.

Why not go to a Canadian school? And then move to the states to practice??
I believe Canadian schools are much more competitive than American schools. At least for me, as a CAN-US dual citizen who went to McGill, I have 7 interviews with American schools, but my 3.7 GPA is below average at McGill (3.85+ in years past) and I am not holding too much hope for an invite.
 
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I would definitely take the American DAT because you can choose when to take it, as opposed to being restricted to Feb or November. Also, Ontario schools are really competitive because they take people from all provinces right? It's my impression you need to have a virtually perfect GPA to get into a Canadian school (like with McGill in my case). Correct me if I'm wrong- but your best chance is probably in the US

NYU is soo expensive though. Have you considered BU? Still costly but not as much. My dentist is from BC and he went there as an International. If you retake, try to crack that DAT though!
 
Hi all, i'll try to be concise. Really grateful to anyone with advice for me. Feeling extremely lost in my path to pursuing dentistry.

- 24 year old Canadian citizen and would-be international dental student in the USA. I WANT to move to the USA for dental school and to live and practice dentistry in the USA. 1st choice NSU, 2nd choice NYU.

- Graduated York University in Toronto, Canada with a bachelor of science in 2019. The school endured 2 faculty-strikes which made those academic years absolutely hell. I took a 5th year of study, scored 3.8++ GPA for the last two academic years with full course loads while simultaneously owning and managing an espresso bar business that did over 1M in annual sales. Using this point to prove I am capable of multitasking.

- Overall GPA is 3.30. First two academic years were quite brutal, but the upward trend is significant. In Canada, my science-GPA is above a 3.0. In the USA, all the courses I have successfully appealed for exclusion from GPA in Canada and eventually retaken are fully counted in the American system's calculation of GPA. This reduced my sGPA and bcpGPA to 2.70. Embarrassingly low.

- My DAT score is 20AA on Canadian exam. I am rewriting, but cannot decide between rewriting the American DAT or Canadian DAT. I just want an advantage. I've already paid for the american DAT at prometric but i'll sacrifice any amount of money as debt to attain my goal of pursuing and practicing dentistry in the U.S.A.

- I applied to NOVA SU Dental November 2020 (very late; pandemic circumstances) and they rejected me only 4 days later. This opened my eyes to the reality that I am really on the lowest end of the applicant pool.

What can / should I do to improve my stats to be accepted? From what I understand: Post-Bacc will only increase my science GPA ever so slightly, even with several A's in science courses. Second option: A Master's program. Issues is that it is costly, and most likely a minimum of two academic years. At this moment, I am horrified by this reality. Third option: Going abroad, but then I'm faced with 3 more expensive years in the american dental school system.

Thank you a million times in advance for the advice, information, constructive criticism, and anything you have to contribute.

I don't really know much about the Canadian system. I wonder about going to either NOVA or NYU as both are very expensive schools. that being said, I think your stats could improve mainly for the DAT score to start with. take 8 weeks and study really hard and aim for 23+. I'm not sure your rejection was solely due to your stats, applying so late was likely a big factor as well.

I'm genuinely curious though if you own and manage a 1M+ business, what is motivating you to be a dentist? The vast majority of dentists in the US do not have a practice producing 1M, avg numbers I've seen for private practice owner GPs is 750-800k per year with a take home around 200k. assuming you have a low overhead in your business, you likely could be making more already than many GPs without sacrificing years of your life and spending half a mil on education. I would think many dentists would actually love to have your business acumen and would happily trade places with you at 24 yr old and a million dollar business.
 
Wh
I read all I needed to in the first 2 paragraphs. (But I did read the rest and heard you out)

Unless your getting a full ride or school paid for, NYU and Nova are some of the absolute worst picks. Both financially, quality, and reputation wise. It makes it ESPECIALLY worse if your from Canada (in the sense that they are WAY cheaper). But you do you.

Why not go to a Canadian school? And then move to the states to practice??
Why would nova’s reputation place it as worst pick??
 
Wh

Why would nova’s reputation place it as worst pick??
1) COA and 2) paying the high cost of attendance to a school with the internal turmoil and scandals such as nova.
 
Wh

Why would nova’s reputation place it as worst pick??





Being a current 2nd year in school, exposing 1000’s of patients for not sterilizing your equipment is quite a big deal and is just manifestation of bigger, underlying issues.
 
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I believe Canadian schools are much more competitive than American schools. At least for me, as a CAN-US dual citizen who went to McGill, I have 7 interviews with American schools, but my 3.7 GPA is below average at McGill (3.85+ in years past) and I am not holding too much hope for an invite.
Damn Canada has it rough.

And OP, my suggestion is retake your DAT, and I'm not sure what the exact difference between Canadian vs American DAT is, but if you're targeting US dental schools, the American DAT would probably be better. And 3.3 is low, but not an impossible GPA to overcome - but I'm wondering if you count as an "international" student as a Canadian (maybe someone can clarify?) If so, you might be better off doing some more years after to try and raise that GPA. Also, keep shadowing your dentist.
 
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