Buffalo, Rutgers, or UConn Dental

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Wav3s

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Hey guys! I was wondering if anyone could give me advice! I am stuck between 3 great schools and have no clue where I should put a deposit down.

Buffalo- Love the new renovations, its in state for me, but its super far.

Rutgers- love it, but the location is terrible

Uconn- like the pass/fail, but the new learning approach is scaring me away because I heard theres basically no lectures anymore, and you do most of work outside of the class vs. learning it in the class

Any advice would be appreciated!

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#1 - money #2 - location.
I would go buffalo because it's cheaper. Uconn is great - one of my co residents went there and he loved his experience there. His only complaint is the hill. He hated living on that hill and would leave every chance he got.
 
Buffalo, unless you really liked UConn. I would not pick a school just because it's pass/fail, and that looks to be why you are keeping it. @Scumbag_Steve can probably tell you more about his experience with the new curriculum if you ask nicely
 
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Buffalo.
 
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I'm leaning towards Buffalo but the weather is also scaring me a little
 
I'm also surprised that no one said Rutgers, any reasons why?
 
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OP, you have like 3-4 days left to send in the deposit correct? Does it have to be postmarked or reach the office by the deadline?
 
I think just for the sake of time during interview day they can't really give you a super detailed explanation of the curriculum, at least now that it has changed and people have so many questions about it. The dean of admissions is a super nice person and does an excellent job but she has a lot to get to in a small window of time, so I understand how some stuff could get left out.

So about the curriculum. It has been a bumpy ride, but I would say that the faculty has been extremely receptive to feedback and right now in our second block (you'll know what this means in a bit), everyone is really happy with the quality of the resources and facilitation our sessions. It wasn't this way during the first block, but my classmates and I have been the trailblazers (euphemism sacrificial lamb) for so that your class and later classes can have a better experience. There's just no way of knowing how stuff is going to work out before it is actually implemented, so it stands to reason that there were some things that worked well and things that didn't work well. The growing pains were worked out on us so that you guys will have, in my opinion and the opinion of a lot of my classmates, a really awesome curriculum with the changes that were made.

Below is a copied and pasted description of the curriculum from the first block I gave to someone. Each block of the basic science curriculum is ten weeks long. The exam for each block is on one day and about 6 hours long, encompassing everything from the ten week period. We're currently on Christmas break between weeks 3 and 4 of Block B. DoCC (see below) has been replaced by dental morphology (waxing and stuff), which we have TThu 1:00-4:30.

So here is the simplest way I can describe the curriculum while not leaving anything out. There are three different Learning Communities, A, B, and C. They are mixed med and dent. All this determines is which days and times you have classes and activities that every student has, but not all students have simultaneously. The classes are as follows:


CoRE (basic sciences, i.e. what you expect school to entail)- MWF 10:00-11:50 are our Team Based Learning (TBL) session. This is where we have our Individual Readiness Assessment Tests (iRATs, or quizzes), and our Team Readiness Assessment Tests (tRATs, or group quizzes). There are 2-3 iRATs/tRATs per week, so most days you have CoRE you’ll be taking one. You come in and the iRAT is first, directly followed by the tRAT. You take the tRAT together and your group must come to a consensus and scratch off a scratch ticket. Your group is mixed between med and dent students, and is usually 2 dental and 5 med.. Full credit for the correct answer the first time, half credit the second time, and then no credit. After this, faculty will go over questions on which people struggled most, and field questions on them. For each given topic, the faculty member facilitating the discussion is a "content expert". Geneticists teach genetics, cardiologists teach cardio, so on and so forth. After this, we go into application exercises, which are ungraded and all teams answer as a group. These are supposed to use the concepts for the week and apply them to case based scenarios.

iRATs and tRATs are each 20% of your CoRE course grade, making up 40% with the end of block exam making up 60%. For all courses you need a 65% for the course to pass, not a 65 on the exam itself.

You’ll notice that we have about 6 hours per week in CoRE. This comes with the assumption that you spend time on your own learning the material before each session. In order to do this, we have required readings/videos called ReALMs. On the syllabus for each section, you’ll get objectives to help guide your reading of the ReALMs. This is where most of the mystery about the new curriculum comes in. I get a lot of "so are there really no lectures?" questions from people on here, and the answer is yes, there are no lectures. So I feel like you need to have a better picture of the resources you'll be using to guide your learning in lieu of lecture.

The ReALMs were a point of contention during Block A. For most topics, we were assigned only readings from a textbook. There were no, and still aren't any,powerpoint slides (except for review sessions that are held by faculty, which are helpful), and we don't have any lectures, so this was a big adjustment for all of us. Block B is a different story. Faculty was receptive and worked with us. We now have video "lectures" for the majority of topic covered so far, hence why all of us are absolutely loving Block B. Part of the reason why I think this is the case is because Block B is a lot of cardio, at least right now, with our sessions being facilitated by a cardiologist named Dr. Ryan, who is an absolutely fantastic teacher. This guy has his own video review series for USMLE Step 1 for med students, so he's great at making video lectures (think Chad from DAT videos but for more complex stuff). He's absolutely great, and his videos are so helpful. A lot of used his videos that aligned with the subjects in Block A because this guy gives a free subscription to his review videos to us students. This is very common among all students and it really is a more time efficient way to learn than simply reading the book. In Block B we still use his videos because they're relevant and helpful, but they're more supplementary now as opposed to Block A when they were a lifeline.


Vitals (biostats, epidemiology, public health type stuff)- Vitals is once per week, and the day and time depend on your learning community. Mine, for example, is M 3:00-5:00. You have an iRAT/tRAT each week. You have another group of seven for this, but it’s different from your group for CoRE. You are still assigned ReALMs and expect to come to class having done them. The ReALMs for this class always include a video lecture by the professor who runs the course, and in addition to the video there are journal articles.

FAB Lab- This is comprised of human cadaver lab, histology, radiology, and the virtual anatomy thing. You have cadaver lab and histology first, and then histology ends and gets replaced with radiology/virtual anatomy. My schedule is cadaver lab M 8:00-9:50, and histo/rad/virtual T 10:00-12:00.

You will be in a group of three or four that stays the same throughout the block. You will each share responsibilities with the cadaver, which is also shared between two other groups in the two other learning communities. So you do 1/3 of the cutting and fat trimming, but are responsible for knowing all the information so everyone comes into anatomy on their own time in order to come in and learn everything you’ll need to know for the practical. You have ReALMs to make sure you’re ready to go in knowing how to do the dissection and a list of structures to find, but again, most learning is done with the actual cadaver, not a textbook. They do send out answer keys for the histology, radiology, and virtual anatomy exercises for you to study before the exam.

DoCC- this is the class where you learn how to take patient histories, perform the physical exam, counsel patients on behavior change, all that type of stuff. Mine is W 1:00-4:00, and you’ll have an additional 2 hour time slot most weeks at varying times in order to go practice physical exam maneuvers on patient instructors and stuff like that. ReALMs are also provided, mostly video instruction of how to perform the procedures. This class is pretty fun. It's not too hard. Again, this is only for Block A. Med students continue with it but we leave for morphology.​

The curriculum is tough, but you learn a ton. It's crazy to think how much you learn actually. Also, I feel like the best thing about it as that you do the learning on your own time (not your own pace, the pace is decided for you and it's very fast lol). Not having to constantly be in lecture is nice. You still need to study a ton, but you do it where/when you want to.

I hope this has helped clear up any confusion about what to expect. I apologize for not knowing what the curriculum is going to be like past this point; I just don't want to speculate about the future and give you information that is inaccurate.

I don't regret my decision to come here at all. I absolutely love it and if I had the opportunity to choose again I would make the same choice. The small class size and true P/F nature of the school are really both huge blessings. I can say that I am very good friends with at least 20 of the 49 kids in my class. Everyone knows everybody, and as cheesy as it sounded in the interview, we really are one big family. I've been over my DoCC professor's house for dinner as a group. We have class dinners pretty frequently (one kid in the class is a bomb cook, and not to toot my own horn but it's me), and we have class ski/rafting trips to Vermont. I would say "work hard play hard" would be a good mantra that describes our class. Nobody has an incentive to be shady or annoying when it comes to school; everyone works together and helps each other out because we're all friends and all want each other to succeed. Whenever there are a ton of readings for an upcoming TBL session, your TBL group will split up the readings into 7ths, with each individual person taking notes on their section and making a compilation for the whole group in order to save time. This wasn't something that we were told to do, it kind of just happened. Everyone really looks out for one another.

Dental school is going to be tough no matter where you go, but I can safely say I wouldn't rather be doing it with anyone else besides my classmates.

Feel free to reach out if you have any more questions you think would be helpful to make your final decision.
Thank you so much for the detailed descriptions!!!! I really appreciate it
 
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OP, you have like 3-4 days left to send in the deposit correct? Does it have to be postmarked or reach the office by the deadline?
Lol yes I need to send my deposits tomorrow and I'm still really indecisive
 
I'm leaning towards Buffalo but the weather is also scaring me a little
All of the schools are in the northeast. There's not such a big difference between NJ and CT weather. In the same manner, there's not a big difference between CT and Buffalo.
 
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Assuming you can get in-state tuition after the 1st year at uconn and rutgers, then I would use location as the decision maker. The price and weather would be very similar at all those schools. I'd choose rutgers as its closest to my family and friends (I live on LI)
 
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I mean Rutgers is closest to NYC. But I'm a price kind of guy. Buffalo is the cheapest and that's why they are my pick.
 
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I didn't get accepted to either uconn or buff so I picked Rutgers.
 
I picked rutgers over nyu. Had I also got into buffalo I think I would still choose rutgers
 
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1 Buffalo 2 Uconn=Rutgers.
 
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Lol this entire site is so obsessed with UConn. It's a little ridiculous. UConn is great but so are lots of other schools.
If it were me, I would not want to be a guinea pig for a new curriculum. The curriculum Scumbag Steve described doesn't seem as traditional as other dental schools. Based on the original post and the little opinions given by OP about each one, I would advise Buffalo.
 
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Droppin in to say congrats, OP. You got into three of the best programs in the nation.
 
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They don't have to be guinea pigs because I was the guinea pig for them!

Come on, my suffering can't have been done in vain you now...
Lol they will still be tweaking the curriculum come next year. They'll be half-guinea pigs lol
 
Lol this entire site is so obsessed with UConn. It's a little ridiculous. UConn is great but so are lots of other schools.
If it were me, I would not want to be a guinea pig for a new curriculum. The curriculum Scumbag Steve described doesn't seem as traditional as other dental schools. Based on the original post and the little opinions given by OP about each one, I would advise Buffalo.

@Scumbag_Steve I may be wrong, and since you are the expert I defer to you, sir, but my impression is that the TBL pedagogy and changes in the curriculum solely apply to the basic sciences at UConn, and that the dental sciences continue to be lecture oriented.

Am I correct?

Also, the "new curriculum" also only lasts for 18 months and after that it is the same clinical experience and dental lectures as before?

Thank you in advance, sir.
 
Buffalo senior chiming in - I would deff go to UCONN, they are pass/fail reasonably cheap, and have a higher rate of specialization. Buffalo's a good school but deff has plenty of cons - if I was given the choice of UCONN I'd be there! GL --- so you have an idea my tuition for spring semester is 22,800 not including living and it's steadly rising, it's not as cheap as people think and the IDP program is growing.

Edit: btw I never went to any lecture classes, I just got ppts or old ppts with notes in them, and I got mostly all As and a few Bs in the lectures.

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Buffalo senior chiming in - I would deff go to UCONN, they are pass/fail reasonably cheap, and have a higher rate of specialization. Buffalo's a good school but deff has plenty of cons - if I was given the choice of UCONN I'd be there! GL --- so you have an idea my tuition for spring semester is 22,800 not including living and it's steadly rising, it's not as cheap as people think and the IDP program is growing.


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Uconn OOS tuition is 47,387 plus fees ($8,386):whistle: which would be ~28k per semester.
Plus, living in Farmington is more expensive than in Buffalo.
NY residents are no even considered for New England tuition. I know cuz I'm in a state school here.
 
Uconn OOS tuition is 47,387 plus fees ($8,386):whistle: which would be ~28k per semester.
Plus, living in Farmington is more expensive than in Buffalo.

The tuition I gave is for in-state at buffalo 22,800. Also, they would get in-state after 1 year at conn or buffalo.

* as a friend I'm telling you P/F makes a world of a difference even if we are looking at a 12k difference for one year, not significant in my opinion.

But you can't go wrong with any of those 3 choices. I'm just giving you my honest opinion as a senior at buffalo. Gl

Edit: sorry didn't read all of callmedoct points...if it is more than a 40k diff overall go to buffalo. But do the math if we are looking at 10-30k diff I would of deff went to conn.


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Uconn is 50k more than buffalo.
 
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I like Uconn, I really do. I just think the amount of Uconn posters like @Scumbag_Steve really creates this illusion that Uconn is heads and shoulders above other schools. They aren't.

So I have to agree with @hellofuturedentists that Uconn is blown way out of proportion on this site.
 
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I like Uconn, I really do. I just think the amount of Uconn posters like @Scumbag_Steve really creates this illusion that Uconn is heads and shoulders above other schools. They aren't.

So I have to agree with @hellofuturedentists that Uconn is blown way out of proportion on this site.

I mean, it also helps that the school has a really good clinical reputation relative to a lot of private schools, has fantastic specialization rates, a really nice class size, and grant in state tuition after a year. Sure maybe they get talked about a lot on this website due to some posters, but it's talked up for good reason in my opinion.
 
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Just trying to be helpful when people ask questions, that's all. There was Bereno and Kittenz back in the day, but other than that, I can't think of anybody who went/goes to UConn that really posts with any regularity. I don't quite know what you mean by "the amount of UConn posters".

I do tend to be very verbose, so perhaps my posts make it seem like there are more of us than there really are.

Oops Im getting confused from reading past threads. My bad, I actually look at threads from years ago and forget some people don't post anymore.

And it is not a dig at you at all. I am just perplexed at how every time there is a Uconn vs X school thread theres a large percentage going "uconn". Its a great school no doubt and deserves its praise. But when the tuition is 50k pre-interest, is it really worth that amount of money to go to Uconn over buffalo? To me no.
 
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Oops Im getting confused from reading past threads. My bad, I actually look at threads from years ago and forget some people don't post anymore.

And it is not a dig at you at all. I am just perplexed at how every time there is a Uconn vs X school thread theres a large percentage going "uconn". Its a great school no doubt and deserves its praise. But when the tuition is 50k pre-interest, is it really worth that amount of money to go to Uconn over buffalo? To me no.

Both buffalo and UConn offer in state after 1 year
 
Both buffalo and UConn offer in state after 1 year

Its stated that he is IS for buffalo. He will get IS on his first year. My friend who is attending Uconn estimates she will come out with about 300k after she got IS after the first year.

Buffalo is about 250k for IS.
 
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Oops Im getting confused from reading past threads. My bad, I actually look at threads from years ago and forget some people don't post anymore.

And it is not a dig at you at all. I am just perplexed at how every time there is a Uconn vs X school thread theres a large percentage going "uconn". Its a great school no doubt and deserves its praise. But when the tuition is 50k pre-interest, is it really worth that amount of money to go to Uconn over buffalo? To me no.

Both buffalo and UConn offer in state after 1 year

I know OP has IS from D1, but just a reference for someone who is OOS for both schools:

UB total cost of attendance before interest assuming IS after D1 is $310,581

UConn total cost of attendance before interest assuming out of New England (highest OOS rate) + IS after D1 is $308,566.

UConn wins on cost.
 
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I like Uconn, I really do. I just think the amount of Uconn posters like @Scumbag_Steve really creates this illusion that Uconn is heads and shoulders above other schools. They aren't.

So I have to agree with @hellofuturedentists that Uconn is blown way out of proportion on this site.
Lol don't blame it on Scumbag Steve. He's scummy, but that's not why it's blown out of proportion. I think it's mainly because it is pass/fail and you get in-state tuition after a year. Someone may correct me if I'm wrong, but I think now the price of UConn is slowly rising to match other schools. Maybe Buffalo is, too. When I visited, it seemed great, but so did all the other state schools I saw lol. It just gets talked about as a holy grail of dental schools sometimes, which I think is a little much lol

Edit - didn't see people post the prices already.
OP if you're still reading this, good luck choosing lol
 
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I know OP has IS from D1, but just a reference:

UB total cost of attendance before interest assuming IS after D1 is $310,581

UConn total cost of attendance before interest assuming out of New England (highest OOS rate) + IS after D1 is $308,566.

UConn wins on cost.

let me double check, I could've sworn after looking at buffalos tuition sheet it came out to about 250k.

Okay the sheet says 288,980 if you take out full loans. Chopping off 30k that is 258k. I tend to chop off 30k for just about every school.

He is INSTATE for buffalo guys.

Buffalo- Love the new renovations, its in state for me, but its super far.
!

But yes Uconn wins out if they are both OOS.
 
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Its stated that he is IS for buffalo. He will get IS on his first year. My friend who is attending Uconn estimates she will come out with about 300k after she got IS after the first year.

Buffalo is about 250k for IS.

Gotcha. But by that logic, shouldn't you automatically be choosing Rutgers over VCU without debate? (Rhetorical question)

Lots of factors go into choosing a school besides price (such as the ones I listed above about UConn) so that's probably why so many people are saying so (including a current student at Buffalo).
 
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Gotcha. But by that logic, shouldn't you automatically be choosing Rutgers over VCU without debate? (Rhetorical question)

Lots of factors go into choosing a school besides price (such as the ones I listed above about UConn) so that's probably why so many people are saying so (including a current student at Buffalo).

Oh Im like 95% chance choosing Rutgers over VCU(hence my siggy). It depends on whether my parents are willing to put in more money for me to go to VCU instead.
 
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Gotcha. But by that logic, shouldn't you automatically be choosing Rutgers over VCU without debate? (Rhetorical question)

Lots of factors go into choosing a school besides price (such as the ones I listed above about UConn) so that's probably why so many people are saying so (including a current student at Buffalo).
To be fair, many schools have good clinical reputations and UConn's small class size and location might actually be a turn-off for some people. It's all a matter of preference and opinion if you exclude price
 
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