Charles, I appreciate the perspective you bring to this forum and I actively seek out your posts. However, I've seen you bring this up before with the same anecdotes and it's disappointing to me to see a dentist so ardently defend the difficulty of medicine vs dentistry. Your experiences decades ago and with a small number of relatives do not come close to accurately describing the current landscape. Yes, MD schools, on average, have about +0.1 GPA difference with DDS programs. However, consider the numerous alternate pathways to medical school (e.g. DO programs, Caribbean MD, etc.) which are all substantially easier than getting into dental school.
A few of my HS classmates just gained admittance to MD schools within the last two years with extremely easy degrees from low-ranked universities with grades below the average of any DDS program. If I were to base my opinions off of them, I'd think medical school was less competitive than any other health profession.... But it's a limited anecdote that I know isn't reflective of the bigger picture.
There's not a single person in my dental class that wanted to be a physician, failed, and then ended up in dentistry. People favored it due to the perceived lifestyle, ownership opportunities, family business, etc. Now, there ARE a few that wish they had gone the medical route after having experienced the hellscape that is dental school... But there are just as many, if not more, physicians on the other side of that same fence.
Since I don't want to derail the thread, to the OP: your activities and research experience will be very beneficial for your hypothetical ortho app. Your GPA seems low, but GPA doesn't matter - class rank does. Apply broadly. Every year you're out of school, your chances diminish as there's not many ways to improve your application in private practice.
