It just hit me today that I’ll be applying for dental school in around four months, so I was hoping to get some advice.
Stats:
Overall GPA = 3.54
Science GPA = 3.43
BCP = 3.50
DAT = 26AA (26TS, 23PA)
Extracurricular Activities:
Job shadowing = ~110 hours (one general dentist)
Volunteer = ~70 hours (teaching low income high school students SAT prep)
Research = ~500 hours (microbiology)
Background Information:
I’m currently a 2nd year student at a large public university, majoring in biochemistry B.S. and minoring in law. I waived a lot of my credits (including general chemistry) via AP, so I will be graduating spring 2017. I’m hoping it won’t be too big of a deal that I skipped general chemistry since I did so well on the GC portion of the DAT (28), aced the organic chemistry series, and am majoring in something chemistry-related aka taking higher level chemistry courses. My GPA has a general upward trend, though not too drastic. I started with a 3.3 first quarter and have improved slightly every quarter to a 3.7 this autumn (freshman year was really hard jumping straight into the advanced courses). My lowest grades are B-'s in Calculus III, Biology II, and Microbiology.
I already have an opportunity lined up for spring quarter to volunteer at a dental clinic that provides free dental care to those without insurance. I’m also looking into job shadowing at a pediatric dentist sometime this quarter (maybe like 20 hours?).
Do you guys think this will be good enough to get an acceptance to a pretty decent/reputable school? I know I’m lacking a lot in the leadership/clubs department, but research takes up a majority of my time and it’s probably too late to start anything substantial now. I’m hoping to push my evaluators to mention my leadership in my classes though.