Engineering to Dental

[rose_e]

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I am a junior in mechanical engineering and I have been debating about going to dental school, but I'm worried how my stats compare to others who are bio undergrads. I have a 3.2 gpa and the only pre reqs i've taken so far are my physics (C & B) and my inorganic chems (A & B). I was wondering if they will give me any leeway with my overall gpa since it is engineering. Anyway, please give any thought or advice!

p.s. I also have 4 semesters worth of math, but i'm not sure if that goes into the science gpa or not

 

[sobertiger]

There will be some, but minimal, consideration given regarding the difficulty of the major. That said, you can get in with 3.2 if you do well on the DAT and it will be important for you to do well on the upper-div science courses.

 

[Auntymarkovnikov]

If you do well on the rest of of your pre-reqs and score well on the DAT then you can totally do it! 🙂

 

[DentEngineer]

Hey Rose,
From my experience, dental schools DO consider the difficulty of the major.
I did BS in Mechanical Engineering with 3.2 GPA, and MS in Biomedical Engineering with 3.9 GPA. I also have about 7 years industry experience.
I got 24AA on my DAT.
Applied to 7 schools, 6 interviews and 5 acceptances.

During my interviews, all of my interviewers were more interested in my undergrad engineering experience (which is like 10 years ago with 3.2 GPA) than my recent graduate experience (which has higher GPA), possibly because it is a very well known engineering school? I have no idea.

I'm not sure which school you went to, but in my undergrad, 3.6 GPA or higher was top 1~5% of the class. Class average was always around 2.8~3.2 GPA. Again, dental schools do take that into account, at least that's what some of my interviewers told me.
Destroy the DAT and you definitely have a chance.
Good luck.

 

[2TH MVR]

Like others have said ... you should go for it. IMO dental schools like diversity in their students rather than everyone with pre-dent or biology degrees. Dental schools are always looking for qualified people to go into academics. Your background sets you apart from the typical biology student. Use it to your advantage.

Good luck.

 

[comitan21]

I got in this cycle with a 3.45 ogpa in chemical engineering and a 20 on the DAT. I did have really good extracurriculars though.