does dental assistant = a more competitive candidate?

[Oracle DMD]

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The question is how to stand out among other applicants with similar numbers?

What differentiates two applicants with similar numbers is experience. The best experience to stand out will be the one where you utilize what you have learned through HIGHER education. In other words how you have applied the knowledge gained in undergrad and beyond in the real world.

However if you still believe that dental assisting will help you in your dental career, by all means go ahead and enlighten an admission member at your next interview that you have acquired a job as a dental assistant after earning a Bachelor's degree because you feel it will make you a better dental student and a more proficient dentist in the end. In other words, their school is a complete failure to adequately educate and train students to become proficient dentists thus applicants need prior dental experience in order to excel in their dental careers.

there isn't a lot of "higher education" that replaces a couple of years of dental assisting. seriously, i'm a 3rd year right now, and you would be blown away to see how the high volume suction is owning some people! dental school teaches you how to be a dentist but having assisting experience gives you real world knowledge about dental materials, chair side manner, and buisness management, and what your assistants go through and how much they can help you work faster and easier.


the last part of your post concerning telling dental schools: "In other words, their school is a complete failure to adequately educate and train students to become proficient dentists thus applicants need prior dental experience in order to excel in their dental careers" is complete

 

[doc toothache]

and I am not saying that it is the only thing, I just feel that it will help push me over the top if I am on a cusp

If only you were the one and only Lone Ranger on the proverbial cusp; but, we are entitled to our own fantasy.