Whether or not it is easier for Can to get into US dental schools may be debatable.
It is nice to know that Can ds have applicants that are superior to those in the US. The 3.8 gpa might be impressive were it not for the fact that comparing US and Can gpa's is more like trying to compare sour cherries and watermelons. Finding a US university where an 80 will net us an A is going to be as hard as finding a Canadian university where a 90 is required.
There a handful of ds that seem to weigh dat more than gpa. Your claim that private ds are nonchalant about legal status is not supported by the statistical evidence. You appear to be equally misinformed on the function that AADSAS has on the admission process. Whether or not there may be some wisdom in waiting until the deadline before applications are reviewed may be questionable but may be doable for a ds where the number of applicants is rather small. There are at least 4 US ds where the number of applicants (4k+) exceeds the total applicant pool of the 10 Canadian ds.
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=568870
Our debate is fruitless, it's what adcoms think that matters.
I agree with doc in that
Whether or not it is easier for Can to get into US dental schools may be debatable. Because getting in to Harvard/UCSF/UCLA is harder than getting in to any of the canadian dental schools. and getting in to canadian dschools is definitely harder than getting in to say... a private american dschool.
Generally speaking, getting in to dental school in the US is much easier than in Canada, because... US has much more opportunities, do the best and the brightest of your school go in to dental school? In canada, that's the case! because some of the best professions are not available there, healthcare is seen as one of the most prestigious and with one of the highest returns. Of all your friends from ivy league/top 20 schools, how many of them go in to healthcare? probably very few, because it's high cost/relatively low return. With their prestigious degrees, they can go to a financial firm and rake in the big $$$ with just an undergrad degree.
Grades are not dictated by the scale! when a 90 is an A at one school and 80 is an A at another school, it doesn't mean one is harder than the other, it just means different standards. The quality of gpa is decided by the quiality of the incoming students. Getting an 80 in the canadian education system is not easy. As everyone who comes from a competitive school knows, there's a lot of depressing times when you get your midterm/exams back, because most times you are looking at 30%-60%, but magically the finals grade maybe adjusted to a B-. When you have a very strong class, there is a need to distinguished the best of the best from just good students (there's no such thing as yay, everyone gets A's, a school must uphold its standards). generally there is no grade inflation from the top canadian schools as there aren't any with top american schools. However, once you get to tier 2, tier 3 american schools, the marking becomes questionable, I have done schooling in Canada and in US (Harvard-undergrad not that extension school BS and a school that ranked below the top 50), Harvard>Canadian school i went to>>>>>>>>>>>rank 50+ school
i will use my biology class at harvard for example, i never scored above a 65% in any of the exams, yet my final grade was a B- which was the average. On our exams, 85, 87 and 83 were the standards for A's respectively, does it mean that it's easier to get an A at harvard than other schools? NO, everyone in my class had 1500+/1600 SAT scores. Are we stupid that we only avg B- or did we all just decide to get lazy after we got in to college? NO! Everyone ranked top 1 or 2 in his high school....
There are at least 4 US ds where the number of applicants (4k+) exceeds the total applicant pool of the 10 Canadian ds.
you have to consider the quality of the applicant pool, 4k is a big number and statistically speaking there will be many deserving students, but how do you explain an accepted DAT avg of 19-20 at some of those schools? In canada, everyone knows only the BEST OF THE BEST have the previliage to attend dschool, if you haven't gotten 3.8+ gpa, don't bother, unless you have published in high impact journal or saved the world at least once or twice.
That's why when we make these comments about what's easier or harder, we gotta consider a lot of things, some things even a doc wouldn't have known and other things maybe i have missed. So let's not put anyone down and let the admissions ppl decide.
