Another WAMC Thread

[reticence]

Hello everyone, it's another one of these threads - will probably bump as the cycle gets closer. Figured I should try to get as many opinions as possible.

Date of submission: Whenever the cycle starts
Overall GPA: 3.61
Science GPA: 3.49
Bio-Chem-Physics GPA: not sure, probably higher than my sci GPA because my 2 worst grades are in math classes (B and C+ respectively)
DAT score: 25 AA: 21 BIO 21 PAT 17 GC 30 OC 30 RC 27 QR
State of Residence: FL

Undergrad Attended: UF
Major: Biochemistry
Minor: N/A
Minority? No
Reapplicant? No
Nontrad? No

Shadowing Experience:
60 hours Peds
40 General *will definitely bring up General shadowing to at least 70 hrs or so in the next few months

Volunteering Experience:
50 hours homeless shelter
50 hours emergency department
50 hours clerical work for trauma floor
65 hours adult day care for folks with dementia
100 hours surgical operating room
125 hours with emotionally/mentally challenged kids


Employment:
250 hours retail (seasonal)
300 hours hospital deliveryman
800 hours call service agent
1000 hours insurance case worker
~1000 hours researcher for health care solutions company (current job, planning to stay here until I hopefully get in)

Research:
400 hours in Psychology Lab - mostly in clinical therapy sessions. 1 poster presentation as a stand-in for the grad student that couldn't make it for some reason and I think our thing did end up getting published. I'll have to get all that sorted out.

Other Extracurriculars:
Volunteering/Shadowing Director of Pre-Health club for 2 years
75 hours teaching English to non-native English speakers
TA for 2 psych classes (maybe ~100 hours spent grading, writing, etc)
TA for Emergency Medical Responder class (2 semesters/90 hours)

Relevant Honors or Awards: N/A

Misc Info/Things not stated elsewhere: Previous pre-med, applied twice, reconsidered the whole thing and here I am. I get the impression that this is a pretty significant stigma to overcome but I'm not here because I couldn't get into a med program...although you guys aren't the ones I need to convince, it'll be the adcoms.

School list: 3 FL schools, 3 TX, anywhere that's not going to burn a hole in my pocket/OOS friendly schools

Any and all critiques/opinions welcome!

Definitely interested in how my DAT will be received - not to mince words but it's clearly a strong score, although the 17 in GC makes me pause a little. 0 chance of a retake, but will it take a bit away from the overall 25? Also curious how much my grades will affect me going forward.

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[Let me out!]

You will be fine.

 

[yasc]

Yeah you'll get in easily.

 

[macsak]

Hello everyone, it's another one of these threads - will probably bump as the cycle gets closer. Figured I should try to get as many opinions as possible.

Date of submission: Whenever the cycle starts
Overall GPA: 3.61
Science GPA: 3.49
Bio-Chem-Physics GPA: not sure, probably higher than my sci GPA because my 2 worst grades are in math classes (B and C+ respectively)
DAT score: 25 AA: 21 BIO 21 PAT 17 GC 30 OC 30 RC 27 QR
State of Residence: FL

Undergrad Attended: UF
Major: Biochemistry
Minor: N/A
Minority? No
Reapplicant? No
Nontrad? No

Shadowing Experience:
60 hours Peds
40 General *will definitely bring up General shadowing to at least 70 hrs or so in the next few months

Volunteering Experience:
50 hours homeless shelter
50 hours emergency department
50 hours clerical work for trauma floor
65 hours adult day care for folks with dementia
100 hours surgical operating room
125 hours with emotionally/mentally challenged kids


Employment:
250 hours retail (seasonal)
300 hours hospital deliveryman
800 hours call service agent
1000 hours insurance case worker
~1000 hours researcher for health care solutions company (current job, planning to stay here until I hopefully get in)

Research:
400 hours in Psychology Lab - mostly in clinical therapy sessions. 1 poster presentation as a stand-in for the grad student that couldn't make it for some reason and I think our thing did end up getting published. I'll have to get all that sorted out.

Other Extracurriculars:
Volunteering/Shadowing Director of Pre-Health club for 2 years
75 hours teaching English to non-native English speakers
TA for 2 psych classes (maybe ~100 hours spent grading, writing, etc)
TA for Emergency Medical Responder class (2 semesters/90 hours)

Relevant Honors or Awards: N/A

Misc Info/Things not stated elsewhere: Previous pre-med, applied twice, reconsidered the whole thing and here I am. I get the impression that this is a pretty significant stigma to overcome but I'm not here because I couldn't get into a med program...although you guys aren't the ones I need to convince, it'll be the adcoms.

School list: 3 FL schools, 3 TX, anywhere that's not going to burn a hole in my pocket/OOS friendly schools

Any and all critiques/opinions welcome!

Definitely interested in how my DAT will be received - not to mince words but it's clearly a strong score, although the 17 in GC makes me pause a little. 0 chance of a retake, but will it take a bit away from the overall 25? Also curious how much my grades will affect me going forward.

texas schools are not OOS friendly...

 

[artist2022]

Previous pre-med, applied twice, reconsidered the whole thing and here I am. I get the impression that this is a pretty significant stigma to overcome but I'm not here because I couldn't get into a med program...although you guys aren't the ones I need to convince, it'll be the adcoms.

@Stanelz

 

[reticence]

texas schools are not OOS friendly...

Definitely not. But I know the chance isn't 0 and even though I need to be an absurdly good applicant, the payoff just seems too good to ignore. If I wasn't riding on a 25 DAT I probably wouldn't have considered it. Looking back I don't think I was clear, I should've said TX schools AND other OOS friendly schools.

Thanks for the replies so far btw.

 

[Stanelz]

dw about the premed thing, I applied once and was still able to get in with only decent stats (21AA, 3.8). Your stats are enough to get you at least a few interviews. They may ask you about it but you just need to give them a story about how you enjoyed medicine but feel dentistry can help you make amore meaningful impact and coincides better with your goals to improve patient care.

I would not apply to TX schools if you are not from texas considering they accept maybe one person per school OOS.

 

[artist2022]

Definitely not. But I know the chance isn't 0 and even though I need to be an absurdly good applicant, the payoff just seems too good to ignore. If I wasn't riding on a 25 DAT I probably wouldn't have considered it. Looking back I don't think I was clear, I should've said TX schools AND other OOS friendly schools.

Thanks for the replies so far btw.

I had a 25 too and didn't apply to Texas schools cause I knew how competitive they were, and in your case, I think the previous pre-med experience will hurt you at most/all schools, having applied twice and having tons of medical-related experience, but this is just my opinion.

17 in GC is meh, nothing you can do about it, so there's no use worrying about it.

Look through this post (Dental School Statistics) to find OOS-friendly public schools. It's tricky because of the previous pre-med situation and you def need to up your shadowing hours- you need to show you're committed to dentistry, and will need way more than 70 GP/130 total hours imo. Good luck!

 

[reticence]

I had a 25 too and didn't apply to Texas schools cause I knew how competitive they were, and in your case, I think the previous pre-med experience will hurt you at most/all schools, having applied twice and having tons of medical-related experience, but this is just my opinion.

17 in GC is meh, nothing you can do about it, so there's no use worrying about it.

Look through this post (Dental School Statistics) to find OOS-friendly public schools. It's tricky because of the previous pre-med situation and you def need to up your shadowing hours- you need to show you're committed to dentistry, and will need way more than 70 GP/130 total hours imo. Good luck!

Yeah, at this point the main thing I care about is finding anything that won't put me in a mountain of debt. I thought maybe TX would be worth trying for since IIRC they give instate tuition after 1 year but it might not be worth it given TX's OOS stats. Might have to think more on it, although I can't help but feel that a chance at significant less debt couldn't be passed up. From that spreadsheet it looks like UT at SA might be the only one worth trying for at 7% interviews for OS applicants. Huge, huge thanks for this spreadsheet btw. This is exactly what I've been looking for lol.

And yeah, the pre-med situation is definitely my biggest hurdle. Have to agree with you on that, especially how far I went in. I actually thought about doing a dental-specific volunteering stint since I don't have anything dental-specific but have plenty of hospital volunteering. What's your take?

dw about the premed thing, I applied once and was still able to get in with only decent stats (21AA, 3.8). Your stats are enough to get you at least a few interviews. They may ask you about it but you just need to give them a story about how you enjoyed medicine but feel dentistry can help you make amore meaningful impact and coincides better with your goals to improve patient care.

I would not apply to TX schools if you are not from texas considering they accept maybe one person per school OOS.

Sounds good, I'm glad to hear that it wasn't a major problem for you. I know I'll have to have a great/convincing story on why I made the switch considering how far I went into their process, but that's just a bridge I'll have to cross when I come to it. I just wish I had more options all around lol. Can't imagine there being more than 400 IS offers out of ~1800 applicants for FL just based off this spreadsheet...

 

[macsak]

dw about the premed thing, I applied once and was still able to get in with only decent stats (21AA, 3.8). Your stats are enough to get you at least a few interviews. They may ask you about it but you just need to give them a story about how you enjoyed medicine but feel dentistry can help you make amore meaningful impact and coincides better with your goals to improve patient care.

I would not apply to TX schools if you are not from texas considering they accept maybe one person per school OOS.

21 AA and 3.8 are not "only decent"

 

[artist2022]

Yeah, at this point the main thing I care about is finding anything that won't put me in a mountain of debt. I thought maybe TX would be worth trying for since IIRC they give instate tuition after 1 year but it might not be worth it given TX's OOS stats. Might have to think more on it, although I can't help but feel that a chance at significant less debt couldn't be passed up. From that spreadsheet it looks like UT at SA might be the only one worth trying for at 7% interviews for OS applicants. Huge, huge thanks for this spreadsheet btw. This is exactly what I've been looking for lol.

And yeah, the pre-med situation is definitely my biggest hurdle. Have to agree with you on that, especially how far I went in. I actually thought about doing a dental-specific volunteering stint since I don't have anything dental-specific but have plenty of hospital volunteering. What's your take?

Dental school is, unfortunately, becoming expensive everywhere. You can try to apply to the Texas schools, but really research on how easy it is to gain IS tuition. UCSF/UCLA would be good to look into as well, UConn, UMD, etc, but you should also have privates on there like USC, Case, Tufts, Boston, etc. Make your lists based on location and opportunities too, not just cost.

A dental-specific volunteering experience would be great because yes, your hospital/medicine-related volunteering outweighs your dental-related stuff significantly. Maybe like a mission trip...

Also, make sure your LORs are strong and will help show you'd be a competent and caring dentist. This is extremely important to "diminish" the negativity that comes with being a former pre-med and not have you look like a med school reject.

Good luck!

 

[reticence]

Dental school is, unfortunately, becoming expensive everywhere. You can try to apply to the Texas schools, but really research on how easy it is to gain IS tuition. UCSF/UCLA would be good to look into as well, UConn, UMD, etc, but you should also have privates on there like USC, Case, Tufts, Boston, etc. Make your lists based on location and opportunities too, not just cost.

A dental-specific volunteering experience would be great because yes, your hospital/medicine-related volunteering outweighs your dental-related stuff significantly. Maybe like a mission trip...

Also, make sure your LORs are strong and will help show you'd be a competent and caring dentist. This is extremely important to "diminish" the negativity that comes with being a former pre-med and not have you look like a med school reject.

Good luck!

Thank you so much for your help! Looks like I've got my work cut out for me!

 

[reticence]

Bump. Didn't get anywhere with a dental-specific volunteering stint but I'm on track to get the ~110 hours before June.

Any other opinions?