I am new to this site but I just came across a couple postings about my school at UCSF. I am glad to see the postitive feedback from our future students and also the work that was done by our admission committee to make that happen. I am a 4th yr at UCSF ready to graduate in June. We were always asked by some interviewee how I like the school/program after all these years. Honestly, I found it difficult to answer this question. I wanted to say yes, but there are certainly a few improvements that need to be done. On the other hand, I won't say no because dental school is hard everywhere else and this school had given me the education afterall. In the end, I would end up tell them UCSF had it good and bad, if tuition is a concern to you, then UCSF is a good place come.
Let me go back to my first year. Class started in Jul/Aug when Pre-fall started. Main course is Gross anatomy and some other small classes to warm up. This quarter was OK not that bad until Fall begans. That was a crazy quarter that I won't forget. We had more than 14 finals by the end of that quarter and I couldn't even open my eyes when I took the Histology practical when we need to look into microscope. Students were still in high spirit and very competive to get good grades back then. We did not question why we need to take so many courses at that time, we just trusted UCSF's program. Later quarters in the years were mainly the same kind of academic courses, and we started to cut prep in spring first yr after finishing 2 quarter of waxup classes. The courses we took this first year was supposed to get us ready for the NDB part I which was at the end of my 2nd yr. These courses are taught by faculties from other schools. They are very in depth and there are a lot of memorization involved. Some of these courses are overlap and should be combined with other classes. They are not designed based on the syllabus of NDB I and later I found certain material we spent the whole quarter in, simply shows up to have only 3 questions in the board. There seems to be no co-ordination among these courses and no one in the committee seems to over look all the first year courses to make them more effective in preparing us for the NDB I. However, a lot of lecturers we had were top-notch from the field because UCSF in a world class research in med. science. We did learn a lot...................(cont' later). GAB
Let me go back to my first year. Class started in Jul/Aug when Pre-fall started. Main course is Gross anatomy and some other small classes to warm up. This quarter was OK not that bad until Fall begans. That was a crazy quarter that I won't forget. We had more than 14 finals by the end of that quarter and I couldn't even open my eyes when I took the Histology practical when we need to look into microscope. Students were still in high spirit and very competive to get good grades back then. We did not question why we need to take so many courses at that time, we just trusted UCSF's program. Later quarters in the years were mainly the same kind of academic courses, and we started to cut prep in spring first yr after finishing 2 quarter of waxup classes. The courses we took this first year was supposed to get us ready for the NDB part I which was at the end of my 2nd yr. These courses are taught by faculties from other schools. They are very in depth and there are a lot of memorization involved. Some of these courses are overlap and should be combined with other classes. They are not designed based on the syllabus of NDB I and later I found certain material we spent the whole quarter in, simply shows up to have only 3 questions in the board. There seems to be no co-ordination among these courses and no one in the committee seems to over look all the first year courses to make them more effective in preparing us for the NDB I. However, a lot of lecturers we had were top-notch from the field because UCSF in a world class research in med. science. We did learn a lot...................(cont' later). GAB
