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How do the clinical years compare to the first two years of dental school in terms of getting A's? Is it harder or easier?
clinical years vs. didactic years
- Thread starter dc-10
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It's very subjective.
It can be a hassle to work in the clinic in some schools but easy in others. At NYU for example, my sister complained that you had to fight to get chair time in order to see patients when she was a student there (graduated in 2000). Here at my school (Univ. at Buffalo), it's the patient management-- The student is responsible for EVERYTHING, including patient scheduling and management, and finding your own patients if you don't have enough work to fulfill certain requirements like fixed, removeable, endo, etc.
It's subjective because some of my classmates live for that sort of stuff, while I get ulcers worrying about the same things.
And I'm sure students at other schools will differ on their experiences and preferences too.
Personally, I find both clinics and didactics to be difficult at my school, but in a different way-- All the stress that goes with patient management in clinic, vs. all the stress that goes with trying to make the grade in didactics.
Bottom line: You will have to find out for yourself. 😀
It can be a hassle to work in the clinic in some schools but easy in others. At NYU for example, my sister complained that you had to fight to get chair time in order to see patients when she was a student there (graduated in 2000). Here at my school (Univ. at Buffalo), it's the patient management-- The student is responsible for EVERYTHING, including patient scheduling and management, and finding your own patients if you don't have enough work to fulfill certain requirements like fixed, removeable, endo, etc.
It's subjective because some of my classmates live for that sort of stuff, while I get ulcers worrying about the same things.
And I'm sure students at other schools will differ on their experiences and preferences too.
Personally, I find both clinics and didactics to be difficult at my school, but in a different way-- All the stress that goes with patient management in clinic, vs. all the stress that goes with trying to make the grade in didactics.
Bottom line: You will have to find out for yourself. 😀
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I agree with Tom -- both clinical and didactic years can be difficult at any given school.
The difficulty comes in different ways, however. With didactics its memorizing/mastering information for exams. With clinics it's getting patients there, finding the patients you need, scheduling their schedules with the hours your school clinic is open, and putting formerly conceptual ideas into practice. And of course, some schools have clinics where students share ORs, which means you have to schedule the patient to match the time you are assigned to the OR, a true pain in the ass!
Not to belabor the point, but the clincial/didactic years aren't so well seperated at ASDOH.
We have a true didactic semester, which is this first one, and then we start ramping up towards clinical stuff. Next semester we have clinical medicine, followed by clincial dentistry, medicine 2, and rotations offsite in the second year. Our first semester is comparable to the first two years at other schools.
The difficulty comes in different ways, however. With didactics its memorizing/mastering information for exams. With clinics it's getting patients there, finding the patients you need, scheduling their schedules with the hours your school clinic is open, and putting formerly conceptual ideas into practice. And of course, some schools have clinics where students share ORs, which means you have to schedule the patient to match the time you are assigned to the OR, a true pain in the ass!
Not to belabor the point, but the clincial/didactic years aren't so well seperated at ASDOH.
We have a true didactic semester, which is this first one, and then we start ramping up towards clinical stuff. Next semester we have clinical medicine, followed by clincial dentistry, medicine 2, and rotations offsite in the second year. Our first semester is comparable to the first two years at other schools.
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I'm at the same school as UBTom, and yeah, both are just as hard if you are trying to get an A. But the experience probably differs from school to school.
I've had the exact same overall GPA during the two academic years and the one clinical year so far. That said, I tried VERY hard to get an A in the clinics and managed to get all my patients, requirements, practical exams, paperwork, scheduling all done and perfect. However, as wonderful as my dentistry & hand skills & patient care & personality is, I apparently suck at the very important skill of kissing serious instructor butt. B/c for us, what your teacher thinks of you is worth 60% of your clinical grade.
And I found it very hard to tell whether the teacher thinks you are fantastic or mediocre, but apparently, some of my classmates were much better at this game than me. I am a straight forward person - shady is not my style - so I was not about to play personality games with moody professors to figure out who was more likely to grade me higher in the clinics, while compromising what I was trying to learn and giving my patient the best care they deserved.
So if you can't already tell, I didn't get an A in the clinics. It felt like it was easier to get an A in the didactic courses. At least there if you didn't get an A or a B, you knew it was because you didn't study the right things or put enough time in. In clinic, you could never tell what mood the teacher was in with you or how they stacked you up against the other students (at least I never could) and couldn't control your grade as much, and that drove me nuts.
Bottom line: All four years are rough. There is no "easier" year, just different kinds of stresses in the different years.
I've had the exact same overall GPA during the two academic years and the one clinical year so far. That said, I tried VERY hard to get an A in the clinics and managed to get all my patients, requirements, practical exams, paperwork, scheduling all done and perfect. However, as wonderful as my dentistry & hand skills & patient care & personality is, I apparently suck at the very important skill of kissing serious instructor butt. B/c for us, what your teacher thinks of you is worth 60% of your clinical grade.
And I found it very hard to tell whether the teacher thinks you are fantastic or mediocre, but apparently, some of my classmates were much better at this game than me. I am a straight forward person - shady is not my style - so I was not about to play personality games with moody professors to figure out who was more likely to grade me higher in the clinics, while compromising what I was trying to learn and giving my patient the best care they deserved.
So if you can't already tell, I didn't get an A in the clinics. It felt like it was easier to get an A in the didactic courses. At least there if you didn't get an A or a B, you knew it was because you didn't study the right things or put enough time in. In clinic, you could never tell what mood the teacher was in with you or how they stacked you up against the other students (at least I never could) and couldn't control your grade as much, and that drove me nuts.
Bottom line: All four years are rough. There is no "easier" year, just different kinds of stresses in the different years.
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I'm with UBTom on the ulcer thing. To be honest, getting an A in clinic is the last thing on my mind. Getting enough done to graduate is enough of a challenge. 9 months of clinic frustration to go................ But as far as grades go, my grades have been pretty consistent thus far.
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Good luck to all of you doing battle in the clinics!
