The problem is often misappropriated "cause and effect" in that the common denominator is the student. The school does not get you into residency, the student does. It is often thought that the Ivys specialize a lot of their students because they attract the kind of student who would want to specialize, regardless of where they went. If you have what it takes to be a student at Harvard, Penn, etc, then you have what it takes to specialize (for the most part). That said, if the student is the deciding factor in whether or not they specialize, why then pay extra for a school? I would go to the Texas school.
agreed. schools also have different emphasis and appeals. for example, most GRU grads become general dentists (the website emphasizes clinical training), but that does not mean the students there cannot specialize. some do if they want/choose to. on the other hand, there are schools with high specialty % rates, providing the opportunities for the students, but that doesn't mean those student can't be general dentist (ex. 50 graduates from penn class of 2013 are entering private practice). a lot of times in my interviews in the schools known for specializing, some students state that they have no idea what they want to do, but would like to have options just in case.
since you were inquiring about harvard/columbia/penn (also penn is not h/p/c), i got some numbers from the official website.
Penn: "61.5% of 2013 graduates are pursuing postdoctoral studies." 17 students in oral surgery residencies. 50 entering private practice
( page 7/64 in...
http://issuu.com/penndentaljournal/docs/pdj-fall-2013-final-aa)
Columbia: "95% in postdoc study" 8 in OMFS. they have smaller class size than Penn I believe. since 2003, 91 - 95% of the students at Columbia have pursued postdoc studies.
(
http://dental.columbia.edu/page/post-doctoral-placement)
Harvard: couldn't find much information other than.. "Our experience is that 90 percent of each DMD graduating class continues their education through advanced studies." harvard has the smallest class size of 35 so the school will be super invested in these students.
(
http://www.hsdm.harvard.edu/students)
UCSF and UCLA seem to have high specialty % as well. I couldn't find the info on them, but at the UCSF interview, it seemed like a "if you want to specialize, we got your back and can give you a lot for rec/activities. if you don't, you'll still graduate with 3700 clinical hours. do what you wanna do" type of feel. i was interviewed by a student who just wanted to do general dentistry and didn't care for research. Then during lunch, i talked to a D4 who was gonna go out into private practice. however, my second interviewer was an oral surgeon who was also training residents. obviously this is my personal review so take it with a grain of salt.
and since the OP is from Texas (making an educated guess here), i also just looked at Baylor but couldn't find much info which personally implies to me that that post-graduate studies are not the biggest emphasis... same with UNC and GRU website. buut it did tell me that "More than half of all the dentists in the Dallas/Fort Worth area received their dental education at the college, and nearly one-third of all dentists in Texas are TAMBCD graduates." (
http://bcd.tamhsc.edu/about/)
well, that's all i got. i'm hungry for some bacon. best of luck!
