Delaying my dental application to the next cycle?

[moesam]

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Long story short, I am a NC resident and will be graduating from a state university in December. During the last spring semester I decided that I want to be a dentist, fortunately I am a Biology major therefore I have completed all of the dental school pre-reqs during both my times at a community college and after transferring to 4 year university. Even though my decision to pursue dentistry came late, I was planning to apply this cycle thinking that I had a decent chance and thus I started studying for DAT . However, after spending some time on SDN, I realized that the competition is fierce and I started to get a little anxious knowing that Im lacking credential on a couple major fronts. One is my GPA. Currently I have a overall 3.206 GPA and a 3.196 sciGPA. The other aspect is shadowing a dentist. I had no idea how important is shadowing for the application until very late. Currently I have less than 15 hours of observing a general dentist but im gonna increase my weekly visits. Voulnteering wise I have over 75 hours of hospital voulnteering, mostly at a hospital dental clinic.

Due to these reseans I decided to halt my application for this cycle and focus on my extracellulars and taking time to study for the DAT. I am confident that I can raise both my overall and sci GPA to around 3.3 after completing my last semester. I really need some advise pertaining to ways to improve my application, should I go for an enhancement masters program. One program, masters in physiology, offers spring enrolment which I could use to help my application for next year. I really want to stay in NC, therefore Im hoping to be at either UNC or ECU. I really need advise. THANKS

 

[DC206R]

Waiting until next cycle seems like a good idea.

 

[wengerout]

Wait for next cycle. Getting into UNC with your GPA will be tough, but ECU you have a decent shot at next year, depending on your DAT.

 

[schmoob]

Focus on srrengthening your application this year. Kick butt on your DAT, get lots of EC's, lots of shadowing, and try to bump up the GPA a little. Hopefully you will get into ECU, their tuition rates are awesome.