Apply in Junior year or Senior year???!!

[Sonny881994]

Here's my situation, I'm a senior in highschool but i was lucky enough to get awarded an early college scholarship in my sophomore year in high school so i was going to college full-time along with my high school since my junior year. I'm gonna graduate high school this summer with my associate degree from my local university. I'm currently has sophomore stt right now at my university and i just barely figured out that i want to be a dentist therefore i have not taken any pre-req classes. Next year apparently is my Junior year even though i'm only 17 right now and i see a lot of people on SDN say that you should apply in your Junior year then finished your required classes to get matriculate. What do you guys recommend? Should i just try to take most of the pre-reqs next year and take the summer off to prepare myself for the DAT then apply in the same year? Or should i just finish all my pre-reqs then apply with will take 2 years so i'll be a Senior by then and after that would probably still have to take one more year to finish my bachelor to get matriculate? Will i look bad applying in my senior year since the Adcom might think i'm slacking off or something like that?

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[Kahr]

Let me start by saying that it won't look bad if you apply your junior, senior or 5 years after you get your PhD. They don't care about that. So scratch that off the table for something to worry about or impact your decision on when to apply.

Here's the real question, do you want to go to dental school as soon as possible? If so, then apply in your junior year after you take the DAT (we're technically talking about the summer before your senior year since applications open in June). Then if you got accepted, it would be contingent on you finishing whatever pre-reqs and probably getting your BA/BS that following May/June, then starting dental school in August/September.

This whole question is really based on you. Many people want to transition from undergrad to dental school without a gap year or something of that nature, so they apply the summer before their senior year. I personally would rather apply the summer after my senior year, I'd have everything done, and once accepted I could take a bunch of time off for myself to travel or do whatever. This way also allows you to make your application bigger/stronger, you already have your degree, prereqs are all done, you can put other things you did during that senior year on there (volunteering, research, shadowing, etc).