Best schools for nontraditional students

[a.taylor]

Hi all! Does anyone have any thoughts on the best schools for nontraditional students? My boyfriend is pursuing a long term dream of being a dentist and hoping to enter in fall 2024. He has a chemistry degree and graduated with a 3.6ish GPA and distinction/university research scholar honors in 2015. However, a lot of his prerequisites are older and it seems that most dental schools require prerequisites to be 4-5 years old at the most. Since finishing undergrad, he has worked in a chemistry lab, gotten an MBA, and worked in the financial sector, so he’s definitely been productive with the time! He was also recently hired at a dental office and is planning on getting additional shadowing hours on top of that. When starting this process, we didn’t realize how much of a hurdle the prerequisites would be. Does anyone have any ideas on good places for him to apply with all this in mind? He’s willing to take some courses but he doesn’t want to have to redo his entire degree for time and financial reasons (he’s almost 30, student debt, we want to get married, etc.). We live in NC so we would prefer somewhere east of the Mississippi River but we’d consider places further if we have to. Also, I’d love to be able to connect with any nontraditional dental students who have started in the last few years if anyone is open to it. Thanks so much in advance!

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[doc toothache]

One wonders how motivated your boyfriend is when his personal assistant's post on SDN includes a laundry list of preconditions for achieving his dream.

 

[Kenshen]

This almost describes me in this current cycle. I got married in 2020, was a Chem major grad from 2017, and have been working in a Chem lab since graduating. No MBA for me, but went back just for needed prereqs post-bach. I am in the PNW, so I applied to a good mix of public and private schools mainly near me or where my wife and I would like to live. Research the schools that don't take 5+ years old prereqs, the ones I know that don't are Loma Linda and Detroit Mercy since they were on my initial radar to apply to. His DAT score will be crucial to prove that his prereq knowledge is still solid.

 

[a.taylor]

One wonders how motivated your boyfriend is when his personal assistant's post on SDN includes a laundry list of preconditions for achieving his dream.

He's very motivated! With being a little bit older and nontraditional, there are some different/more complicating factors than a student right out of college might have. I'm already on this forum since I'm also working toward a healthcare degree so I figured it wouldn't hurt to help him out since there are a lot of moving parts. But if you have any thoughts on what schools might be a good match, that would be great!

 

[a.taylor]

This almost describes me in this current cycle. I got married in 2020, was a Chem major grad from 2017, and have been working in a Chem lab since graduating. No MBA for me, but went back just for needed prereqs post-bach. I am in the PNW, so I applied to a good mix of public and private schools mainly near me or where my wife and I would like to live. Research the schools that don't take 5+ years old prereqs, the ones I know that don't are Loma Linda and Detroit Mercy since they were on my initial radar to apply to. His DAT score will be crucial to prove that his prereq knowledge is still solid.

That's awesome to hear, thank you! He's definitely open to retaking classes, he just doesn't want to end up redoing his whole degree. The more research we do, the more it seems like there aren't as many classes he would have to retake as we thought. I'm glad the process went well for you!

 

[Benefischl]

I am applying with 10+ year old pre-reqs, hospital administration/military background. The best tip to follow is that when he is approaching the admissions cycle, he should call and/or email every school he is interested in applying to with the age of his pre-reqs. Using websites or word of mouth isn’t secure. I saved $1000 by not applying to schools who were going to reject my old physics/gen chem class I would recommend doing it two months before apps open when the admissions teams are not as busy.

Schools that I’ve found have extremely professional/helpful admissions teams for non-trads, and didn’t have expiring pre-reqs were:
-Iowa
-Kentucky
-MUSC

All schools emphasized to me that they want to see recent academic performance, even if they accept old coursework. The DAT is where he gets to prove that old dogs can learn new tricks.

If I were him, I’d focus on trying to get into one of the two (soon to be three) dental schools in NC…Especially ECU since they’re only open to NC residents.