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D4 at NYU here. I never even looked at Case when applying, but I should be able to answer questions about NYU. Shoot!
Case vs. NYU
- Thread starter BobLoblawDDS
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I'll ask two questions:
Is the huge class size a problem in your opinion?
Is it difficult to get patients?
Thanks!
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1) I hear this a lot, but I'm not really sure why it would be a disadvantage. I went to the sixth largest university in the country for undergrad, so I was already used to large lecture halls and just being another face in the crowd, but I feel like a large class gives you a bigger number of people to connect with. Maybe it's harder to get to know the professors, but if you're looking for recommendation letters, you'll get those from your clinical faculty. Besides, once you get into clinic, you be broken down into groups of 25-30 (x2 since D3s and D4s are both there), and that really becomes the group of people you live with.
2) Maybe when you first start out, but you get a good roster going pretty quickly. Lots of ways you can get patients: hand-me-downs from a graduating senior, new patients from the admissions clinic, patients who come in for the first time in a few years and their student has since graduated (front desk will randomly book these for you when they call), urgent care (though these patients tend to be less reliable by nature, in my experience), and referrals from your existing patients. It isn't long before you have more patients than appointment slots.
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Great info! Thank you
One more question (OP brought this up in an earlier post), as far as you know, is it true that NYU overadmits and kicks a few people out after year one? Some kind of rule like, the bottom 5% has to leave?
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Great info! Thank you
One more question (OP brought this up in an earlier post), as far as you know, is it true that NYU overadmits and kicks a few people out after year one? Some kind of rule like, the bottom 5% has to leave?
My interviewer said this doesn't happen. It happened only 1 year and that's because the curriculum was faulty. This is no longer a problem my friends
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Good to know. Tonight, I had someone tell me something similar to what was said to the OP. Even though it didn't make much sense, I figured I could ask.
Thanks!
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I straight out asked my interviewer about the "NYU kicks people out rumor", and she denied it right there. She said the class is just very competitive and people choose to leave for personal/academic reasons in such a large class.
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Hey what's up I'm a current NYUCD D1 from Cali. here's what I can say:
Pros:
-It's in NYC. you get exposure to all sorts of people, cases, teachers, students etc. I believe this will ultimately make me a better dentist.
-It's in NYC, meaning whenever you do get time off (rare but it happens), it's not hard to find something to do! great restaurants, museums, clubs, parks, music events, sporting events, TV shows, broadway shows, pretty much everything is here. It is a beautiful city (this is my 1st time on the east coast btw, never really dreamed of living here). Plus, I'm only a 20-something once.
-Facilities are great in my eyes. I toured in total 6 schools (UOP, UCSF, Temple, Meharry, Howard, and this one). NYUCD seemed slightly better than UOP which seemed much better than the rest IMHO.
-itunes like others have probably said- if you are sick or just don't feel like walking to class it's all backed up on itunes. and if the recording broke that day, you can still browse through four previous years of lectures to find it. I would STRONGLY recommend going to class though. really easy to get behind.
-basically no wet labs - Anatomy is a BITCH in terms of workload, but I think it was taught very well here. we work with plastinates and you can really see everything that's important. you don't smell like formaldehyde at the end of the day, you don't have to waste time cutting open dead bodies that may or may not have the blood vessel you are looking for - you just sit down and learn (broken up into small classes ~1:16 teacher : student).
-curriculum seems to be very forward thinking - I guess I mean that they don't seem to be chained by tradition - in the past they used to give a few big mid terms, now they give weekly quizzes and i guess scores have been improving. rather than making us do wax ups for a whole semester like in previous years, they realized it's more important to get students used to drilling as soon as possible (there is a huge learning curve), so we were the first year to start drilling in November of D1. We will also be the first class to start seeing patients as early as spring of D2. stuff like that.
-don't have to share classes with med school students so classes are all very Dental School focused. "THIS WILL BE ON THE [DENTAL] BOARDS" is a regular phrase from Profs, happy to hear it.
-I feel embarrassed for not knowing exactly, but I know there are a lot of specialties that NYUCD has. aka, if you are gunning for a specialty here might be a good choice. If you like Oral Cancer research there is a brand new wing devoted to it. You can tell I'm not all that interested in a specialty huh?
Cons:
-It's in Manhattan - although the school is in one of the safer areas in the city, everything is pricey. food, rent, and everything else. Case and NYU might be the same in tuition ( i haven't checked), but I can guarantee the cost of living is going to be way more here.
-Congestion - if you are not the city type, then maybe this isn't for you. People are always around. always. Finding a quiet spot (i've found my spots but it's a secret!) can be hard to come by including in the school. If you had an interview here - remember how crammed the elevators were? elevators are like that every floor everyday.
-Also if you are not used to walking everywhere for things, it can be a pain (bring a bike and a good lock - you WILL NOT regret it). Not so much in the exercise kind of way, but in the, "I want to buy a plant for my room, but I never have time to walk all the way to Home Depot, get it and come back" kind of way. parking is a nightmare, buses and subways are only economical for long trips, taxis are super convenient but always work out to between $5-10 dollars per ride (good if you are late for a test or something though)... so everyone walks everywhere. Also there are no dorm rooms, which I find more of a pro - you see the same people day in day out for four years... ya know?
-Our dental school "library" - sucks. its inside a hospital next to the school - but it's too small and needs to be renovated. The main NYU library is friggin huge, but it's a 20 min walk (albeit a nice walk through the center of manhattan). The NYU Med school library is a few blocks away and nice, but I guess we aren't supposed to use it...
-The teaching level is uneven and courses are split between too many professors. Part of biochem was taught by one of the worst teachers I've ever had in higher education (don't think she will be back next year though). keep in mind that there are like 5-7 teachers per class, and about 5-6 classes per semester. Many teachers come in and lecture because they are specialist on a topic, which is all well and good... but they come in with there own teaching styles, and there own special powerpoints and opinions on what's right and whats wrong, and it's just... ugh... it adds another layer of complexity onto an already complex life. I wish there was a bit more cohesion amongst the professors. You hear "Areolar CT" from one professor, and "Loose Areolar CT" from another professor, and you ask them what they want for a test and they answer as if they don't know what the other is talking about. One teacher barely uses his slides and talks incredibly quickly and goes on tangents, the next only uses the chalkboard and talks so slow you can take little naps between words (but EVERY WORD is testable). some have their test material content only in their slides, some only in their words.... it's annoying
- suppose this is true for any school full of over-achievers - it seems like there are a lot of complainers and people that drink too much coffee sometimes. People need to chill sometimes. Like I said though, I'm from cali, this is my first exposure to the east coast, and I'm a little bit older then some @ 26... again there's a lot of variables unaccounted for in this experiment.
Toss ups:
- I've heard a teacher say this and I agree - you have to kind of be an independent adult. You have to know that even though this is "the city that never sleeps", you have to sleep... and get up for 8am for lecture. The option to go clubbin is there Tuesday through Saturday but you got to be mature about things. Teachers/Admin aren't going to hold your hand through the process. In a class of 244, it's very easy to sit in the back and completely vanish. teachers are very helpful, but you have to push a little to get the most out of them. I sit in the front and go to class everyday, email questions to them from time to time... and teachers are very responsive (usually get emails back within an hour, teachers will always stay after class and work through breaks to explain things over again). standard stuff for a big school though. you get out of it what you put in. You are going to be entering a profession where you are the boss of things, so maybe this is prepping you for the future more than other schools? maybe not?
-Vitalbook (Ebooks over textbooks)- no one really uses it (because we don't have time) and It's not the most refined software in the world, but you have 91 textbooks in your computer which is much easier to carry around and in the long run, a bit cheaper than buying the books individually (I think). easy to do a word search for terms too.
-Fellow students again another toss up. I can't speak for other schools, but there is a huge foreign crowd here. Our class size ballons up to well over 300+ I think next year [D2] when we get international students too (mainly indian). [Although I suppose it's true in many schools], If you are not accepting of other cultures and customs, maybe a midwest school is more your bag? I hear Chinese, Korean, Hindi, Hebrew, Russian, Spanish, Persian on a daily basis. makes me feel like a dummy for only knowing english and a some spanish haha. Although it can kind of divide people at times, ultimately it's probably a richer experience having it like this.
got anymore questions feel free to shoot me an email with "NEW STUDENT NYUCD" in the subject line -> [email protected]. Spring break is in a few weeks and Spring D1 aint that bad, so I might be able to respond!
Ultimately you gotta do what works for you man!
Pros:
-It's in NYC. you get exposure to all sorts of people, cases, teachers, students etc. I believe this will ultimately make me a better dentist.
-It's in NYC, meaning whenever you do get time off (rare but it happens), it's not hard to find something to do! great restaurants, museums, clubs, parks, music events, sporting events, TV shows, broadway shows, pretty much everything is here. It is a beautiful city (this is my 1st time on the east coast btw, never really dreamed of living here). Plus, I'm only a 20-something once.
-Facilities are great in my eyes. I toured in total 6 schools (UOP, UCSF, Temple, Meharry, Howard, and this one). NYUCD seemed slightly better than UOP which seemed much better than the rest IMHO.
-itunes like others have probably said- if you are sick or just don't feel like walking to class it's all backed up on itunes. and if the recording broke that day, you can still browse through four previous years of lectures to find it. I would STRONGLY recommend going to class though. really easy to get behind.
-basically no wet labs - Anatomy is a BITCH in terms of workload, but I think it was taught very well here. we work with plastinates and you can really see everything that's important. you don't smell like formaldehyde at the end of the day, you don't have to waste time cutting open dead bodies that may or may not have the blood vessel you are looking for - you just sit down and learn (broken up into small classes ~1:16 teacher : student).
-curriculum seems to be very forward thinking - I guess I mean that they don't seem to be chained by tradition - in the past they used to give a few big mid terms, now they give weekly quizzes and i guess scores have been improving. rather than making us do wax ups for a whole semester like in previous years, they realized it's more important to get students used to drilling as soon as possible (there is a huge learning curve), so we were the first year to start drilling in November of D1. We will also be the first class to start seeing patients as early as spring of D2. stuff like that.
-don't have to share classes with med school students so classes are all very Dental School focused. "THIS WILL BE ON THE [DENTAL] BOARDS" is a regular phrase from Profs, happy to hear it.
-I feel embarrassed for not knowing exactly, but I know there are a lot of specialties that NYUCD has. aka, if you are gunning for a specialty here might be a good choice. If you like Oral Cancer research there is a brand new wing devoted to it. You can tell I'm not all that interested in a specialty huh?
Cons:
-It's in Manhattan - although the school is in one of the safer areas in the city, everything is pricey. food, rent, and everything else. Case and NYU might be the same in tuition ( i haven't checked), but I can guarantee the cost of living is going to be way more here.
-Congestion - if you are not the city type, then maybe this isn't for you. People are always around. always. Finding a quiet spot (i've found my spots but it's a secret!) can be hard to come by including in the school. If you had an interview here - remember how crammed the elevators were? elevators are like that every floor everyday.
-Also if you are not used to walking everywhere for things, it can be a pain (bring a bike and a good lock - you WILL NOT regret it). Not so much in the exercise kind of way, but in the, "I want to buy a plant for my room, but I never have time to walk all the way to Home Depot, get it and come back" kind of way. parking is a nightmare, buses and subways are only economical for long trips, taxis are super convenient but always work out to between $5-10 dollars per ride (good if you are late for a test or something though)... so everyone walks everywhere. Also there are no dorm rooms, which I find more of a pro - you see the same people day in day out for four years... ya know?
-Our dental school "library" - sucks. its inside a hospital next to the school - but it's too small and needs to be renovated. The main NYU library is friggin huge, but it's a 20 min walk (albeit a nice walk through the center of manhattan). The NYU Med school library is a few blocks away and nice, but I guess we aren't supposed to use it...
-The teaching level is uneven and courses are split between too many professors. Part of biochem was taught by one of the worst teachers I've ever had in higher education (don't think she will be back next year though). keep in mind that there are like 5-7 teachers per class, and about 5-6 classes per semester. Many teachers come in and lecture because they are specialist on a topic, which is all well and good... but they come in with there own teaching styles, and there own special powerpoints and opinions on what's right and whats wrong, and it's just... ugh... it adds another layer of complexity onto an already complex life. I wish there was a bit more cohesion amongst the professors. You hear "Areolar CT" from one professor, and "Loose Areolar CT" from another professor, and you ask them what they want for a test and they answer as if they don't know what the other is talking about. One teacher barely uses his slides and talks incredibly quickly and goes on tangents, the next only uses the chalkboard and talks so slow you can take little naps between words (but EVERY WORD is testable). some have their test material content only in their slides, some only in their words.... it's annoying
- suppose this is true for any school full of over-achievers - it seems like there are a lot of complainers and people that drink too much coffee sometimes. People need to chill sometimes. Like I said though, I'm from cali, this is my first exposure to the east coast, and I'm a little bit older then some @ 26... again there's a lot of variables unaccounted for in this experiment.
Toss ups:
- I've heard a teacher say this and I agree - you have to kind of be an independent adult. You have to know that even though this is "the city that never sleeps", you have to sleep... and get up for 8am for lecture. The option to go clubbin is there Tuesday through Saturday but you got to be mature about things. Teachers/Admin aren't going to hold your hand through the process. In a class of 244, it's very easy to sit in the back and completely vanish. teachers are very helpful, but you have to push a little to get the most out of them. I sit in the front and go to class everyday, email questions to them from time to time... and teachers are very responsive (usually get emails back within an hour, teachers will always stay after class and work through breaks to explain things over again). standard stuff for a big school though. you get out of it what you put in. You are going to be entering a profession where you are the boss of things, so maybe this is prepping you for the future more than other schools? maybe not?
-Vitalbook (Ebooks over textbooks)- no one really uses it (because we don't have time) and It's not the most refined software in the world, but you have 91 textbooks in your computer which is much easier to carry around and in the long run, a bit cheaper than buying the books individually (I think). easy to do a word search for terms too.
-Fellow students again another toss up. I can't speak for other schools, but there is a huge foreign crowd here. Our class size ballons up to well over 300+ I think next year [D2] when we get international students too (mainly indian). [Although I suppose it's true in many schools], If you are not accepting of other cultures and customs, maybe a midwest school is more your bag? I hear Chinese, Korean, Hindi, Hebrew, Russian, Spanish, Persian on a daily basis. makes me feel like a dummy for only knowing english and a some spanish haha. Although it can kind of divide people at times, ultimately it's probably a richer experience having it like this.
got anymore questions feel free to shoot me an email with "NEW STUDENT NYUCD" in the subject line -> [email protected]. Spring break is in a few weeks and Spring D1 aint that bad, so I might be able to respond!
Ultimately you gotta do what works for you man!
Thank you for your detailed post. It's great knowing what to expect before coming to NYU considering it's on the opposite coast for me too (fellow californian).
Few random facts:
1- For people saying NYU is "slightly" more expensive than Case-- look up rent prices of NY (obviously outside Manhattan) and compare it to Cleveland area.
2- Do you think having your own chair in the clinic helps you deal with your time and your patients more efficiently? If yes, and if you think that would result in a better clinical experience, then Case is the better choice.
3- Probably not a major factor if you don't go home often in the next 4 years, but Cleveland is 4 hours away driving from Toronto.
1- For people saying NYU is "slightly" more expensive than Case-- look up rent prices of NY (obviously outside Manhattan) and compare it to Cleveland area.
2- Do you think having your own chair in the clinic helps you deal with your time and your patients more efficiently? If yes, and if you think that would result in a better clinical experience, then Case is the better choice.
3- Probably not a major factor if you don't go home often in the next 4 years, but Cleveland is 4 hours away driving from Toronto.
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I thought chairs weren't a problem at NYU.... can anyone go into details about this?
Sidenote: Thank you for the detailed post Eonlay
I wasn't implying chair access is a problem at NYU. I was pointing out that booking patients is easier when your chair is always available.
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Also a D1 at NYU, agree with pretty much everything the other NYU D1 said. My favorite thing about it is how early we're drilling. I'm not even going to compare to other schools because I'm unsure when other starts, but we already can prep and restore several different classes of caries and I believe starting in the beginning of NOVEMBER of your first year is truly going to make us all better dentists.
Another thing to note is NYU's performance on the boards. We had 1 person fail out of approx. 250 students last year and NO ONE fail the year before. NYU scored 4.5-8 points higher on EVERY section than the national average this year. That's huge. And we don't get a significant time off, so you can attribute the success to the fact that the boards 'studying' is really incorporated into our curriculum from day 1. Huge plus for me, knowing that I don't have to worry about not passing the boards at this institution.
Another thing to note is NYU's performance on the boards. We had 1 person fail out of approx. 250 students last year and NO ONE fail the year before. NYU scored 4.5-8 points higher on EVERY section than the national average this year. That's huge. And we don't get a significant time off, so you can attribute the success to the fact that the boards 'studying' is really incorporated into our curriculum from day 1. Huge plus for me, knowing that I don't have to worry about not passing the boards at this institution.
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Not to sound too much like a total nerd, but I was looking at the D1 course inventory and noticed an elective course on the history of dentistry, which I thought sounded pretty interesting. Do you know anyone taking this course?
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It's a single lecture, IIRC. Interesting one, though.
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Generally they're not. We'll look at a typical clinic session:
There are 32 chairs and ~50 students in a given clinic. At any one time, maybe 5 or so of those students are out on rotation. There's also a 6-7 spot waitlist that banks on the fact that some patients will be no-shows. On top of that, usually anywhere from 5-10 of those students don't have a patient booked. In a best case scenario, this means there'll be around 4 vacant chairs after everyone gets seated. Worst case is that fewer students are on rotation, every patient actually showed, or more people than usual had patients scheduled, and so there's a shortage.
In reality, something in between usually happens. A shortage really only becomes a problem maybe once every other month or so. Would it be AWESOME to have your own guaranteed chair? You bet. Is NYU's setup a deal-breaker? Not for me.
