Dental School Grading and Graduation Requirements

[dentaldreams2021]

Hello dental students/dentists! 🙂 I'm a pre-dental with a few questions for you guys. As pre-dentals, I feel many of us are so focused on just getting into dental school that we fail to think about life after getting in. I'm currently doing research on schools I want to apply to this cycle and minimum requirements for graduation, methods of grading, etc. are factors I feel I should consider.

I was wondering if anyone could tell me what you have to do at the dental school you are at in order to graduate? I'm sure there are a certain number of fillings, extractions, crowns, etc. I've been trying to research what the requirements are for schools, but I can't seem to find much, if anything. Please feel free to comment on the requirements of other schools even if you don't go there, if you are aware of them - anything helps and I really appreciate it 🙂

I would also assume current dental students would know the general level of difficulty of their requirements relative to other schools. And the general difficulty of their program relative to other schools. if you could comment on that, that would be great too. I recently attended the Dental School Preparation course at the University of Minnesota and a dental student I interacted with there told me their program seems to have more requirements/is more rigorous than most schools. She told our group that UMN has its dental students do work that normally students from other schools would have send to a lab (such as for a crown). Like they literally do EVERYTHING because UMN/the faculty there believe that doing every little itty-bitty of the behind-the-scenes work makes you a better dentist. Conversely I know someone who went to NYU and they said for crowns they had everything sent to the lab.

I am applying this coming summer, and I'm interested in going to a program with competency-based clinical requirements, where you don't have to do x amount of crowns, extractions, etc; where passing relies on showing competencies. Do you guys know of any such programs?

Also, I was wondering how you guys are graded on clinical procedures at the schools you go to, if at all. Do you get percentages/letter grades for work you do on patients and on simulated patients? For example I worked with DentSim at UMN and I was wondering if such technology is used to evaluate dental students' work on exams and such. DentSim gave me VERY SPECIFIC feedback on crown preps and cavity preps; needless to say, it wasn't great because I'm not even in dental school yet. Like I totally screwed up a proximal box cavity prep. 😛 Do faculty look at all aspects of such computer-generated feedback when they grade your work? Or is it very holistic?

Thank you everyone!! 🙂

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[dentaldreams2021]

Here are some schools I wanted feedback on. Even if your school is not in the list below, please comment and let me know. My list of schools is changing; I am open to adding/deleting schools and also just learning in general. Any feedback/insight/advice really helps 🙂

Midwestern University (Arizona)
Midwestern University (IL)
University of Illinois at Chicago
Southern Illinois University
New York University
Howard University
LECOM School of Dental Medicine
Marquette University
Tufts University
Boston University
Arizona School of Dentistry & Oral Health
Temple University
Indiana University
University of Louisville
Touro
UDM
Creighton
Roseman
SUNY Buffalo

 

[arlmay]

SIU falls into a similar group as UMN as it sounds, we have to do a bunch of preclinical lab work and even things in the clinic that aren't really necessary.

 

[jeffity]

MWU-AZ is competency-based requirements, not numbers. And they're pretty easy to get. Last year they encouraged the third years to complete them before fourth year...which is totally doable. I've never heard of someone not being able to finish because they couldn't complete the requirements. It's almost a joke. I think besides endo and removable, you do so much of everything else that it's silly.

And we didn't have to mess with any of our own lab work. Maybe little stuff like custom trays or radiographic stents for CBCT scans...but no setting denture teeth or waxing crowns. That was all sent to labs or milled ourselves. I see value in doing it, but I'm glad we didn't have to do it.

 

[vicsin]

Temple is a mix of doing lab work yourself and sending it to the lab. Most crowns lab does everything. We had to do a few wax ups ourselves but nothing difficult. Dentures you do all steps including set teeth and lab processes for you. It's really not bad. If it's a tough case lab can set it for you. Grading and requirements are both numbers and competency based. You need 75 extractions 15 crowns 6 endo canals 11 arches of dentures 20 quads of scaling and a bunch of points in restorative fillings on adults and pediatrics. That is just to graduate with a c in all clinics. If you want A you need to do more. Also you need to do a competency in basically everything. Sounds like a lot but it's doable. I was done with everything early. We have a lot of patients so you just have to work hard. Some people graduate late because of requirements. 83% of us finished in May or sooner. Most of the rest of the people will be done by July and very few (1-2) stay later than August. Grading in clinic is mostly based on quantity of your work not so much on quality. In preclinical you are graded strictly on quality and making that perfect box to the mm. Stressful curriculum but worth it.

 

[dentaldreams2021]

Thank you so much! All feedback given was very helpful 🙂

 

[molarbear9270]

Penn??


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