First Year Dental School Advice

Started by XtrasDental
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XtrasDental

XtrasDental

Full Member
7+ Year Member
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Hey everyone, so I'm vacationing and chilling this summer before dental school begins for me in the Fall.

I just had a few questions that i could really use advice on:

1) How much time is spent per week studying? (Including preparing for lab practicals, exams etc)

2) Would you recommend purchasing a tablet (surface pro, iPad etc) or a high trim laptop (lenovo thinkpad, macbook etc)?

3) what is the best method to acing your classes? Is it in class notetaking or just kind of study/learn on your own?

Any other advice on anything at all would be appreciated as well.

Goodluck to all the incoming D1s as well all the current graduating/continuing dental students. We got this!!!!!
 
XtrasDental said:
Hey everyone, so I'm vacationing and chilling this summer before dental school begins for me in the Fall.

I just had a few questions that i could really use advice on:

1) How much time is spent per week studying? (Including preparing for lab practicals, exams etc)

2) Would you recommend purchasing a tablet (surface pro, iPad etc) or a high trim laptop (lenovo thinkpad, macbook etc)?

3) what is the best method to acing your classes? Is it in class notetaking or just kind of study/learn on your own?

Any other advice on anything at all would be appreciated as well.

Goodluck to all the incoming D1s as well all the current graduating/continuing dental students. We got this!!!!!
Click to expand...
1) Depends on your personal goals and how you are as a student. Some people have to study a ton to make A's some people can cram for a day and make A's. Do you wanna do ortho or general? Do you care if you make C's and D's? It really varies from student to student.

2) I bought an IPad Pro and Apple Pencil before D1 and loved it. I just took notes on the slides. But a vast majority of the class just typed notes on their MacBook.

3) I just read from the slides they give. At my school everything you need to make an A is in the PowerPoint so if you understand everything in them you should be golden.
 
Advance said:
1) Depends on your personal goals and how you are as a student. Some people have to study a ton to make A's some people can cram for a day and make A's. Do you wanna do ortho or general? Do you care if you make C's and D's? It really varies from student to student.

2) I bought an IPad Pro and Apple Pencil before D1 and loved it. I just took notes on the slides. But a vast majority of the class just typed notes on their MacBook.

3) I just read from the slides they give. At my school everything you need to make an A is in the PowerPoint so if you understand everything in them you should be golden.
Click to expand...



Wow thanks, yeah most of my textbooks are going to be online as well. Probably going to invest in a tablet but just unsure which one haha
 
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Tablets have their benefits in some specific cases - I personally just use a 13" Dell Laptop. It allows me to take notes and do all that I need to on a technological level. First decide what kind of tablet you want: what do you want to do with it? Does it support a desired application? How big? Price range. Etc.etc. With that kind of criteria, there probably is a good tablet out there 😉. Surface seems good - accessibility and portability of a tablet, productivity of a laptop. I would consider buying one if I was a D1 now 🙂

-Fyz
 
Advance said:
1) Depends on your personal goals and how you are as a student. Some people have to study a ton to make A's some people can cram for a day and make A's. Do you wanna do ortho or general? Do you care if you make C's and D's? It really varies from student to student.

2) I bought an IPad Pro and Apple Pencil before D1 and loved it. I just took notes on the slides. But a vast majority of the class just typed notes on their MacBook.

3) I just read from the slides they give. At my school everything you need to make an A is in the PowerPoint so if you understand everything in them you should be golden.
Click to expand...

Would you say the material is more difficult or on the same level as undergrad?

How many slides would you estimate you study per exam?
 
stoopidmonkeycatdog said:
Would you say the material is more difficult or on the same level as undergrad?

How many slides would you estimate you study per exam?
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The information is the same. For instance for biochemistry/cell & molecular biology at A&M I didn't learn anything new. The only difference is that in undergrad I took 3 biochem courses. But in dental school they covered all of that info that I learned in those three courses in one class.

The number of slides varies per course. The heavier courses like physiology, biochem and gross might have 250-400+ slides per exam I think? I'd have to double check but that seems about right.
 
Advance said:
I'm sure someone in my class does. It should be fine as long as it can run our exam taking software.👍
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So, is a student can cram information and just wants to a general dentist, and they can also learn from home, how often would they actually have to attend class? Are there ever days you can skip completely or is there always a lab of some sort going in.

Could you give us a glimpse into a D1s week, or day?

Thank you for any response you give
 
stoopidmonkeycatdog said:
So, is a student can cram information and just wants to a general dentist, and they can also learn from home, how often would they actually have to attend class? Are there ever days you can skip completely or is there always a lab of some sort going in.

Could you give us a glimpse into a D1s week, or day?

Thank you for any response you give
Click to expand...
Yeah so, first semester there's dental anatomy lab that you have to be present for and that's on monday and Wednesday from 9am-12pm. Then there's gross anatomy lab from 2pm-5pm(Monday, Tuesday and Thursday) that you have 2-3 times per week that you also have to be present for. Other than that you can skip everything else if you want. Second semester you have to attend class more because you have lab pretty much every day. We have occlusion on mondays, operative on tuesdays and Thursday's and dental materials lab on Wednesday. The good thing is that all the labs are before noon so you could technically leave if you wanted. The only thing is that our physiology professors love to give pop quizzes so usually people don't skip physiology and we have physiology 5 days a week. At that point I feel like skipping isn't worth it if you're going to go to physiology cause you would have already been in class most of the day so you might as well stick around for the rest of the classes.

But yeah, I didn't really go to class after a while. Especially first semester. I think I stopped going around late October. It really reduced my stress levels and made me have SO much more time during the day to study and enjoy myself. There are some classes I literally never showed up to once (oral histology lol).
 
1) How much time is spent per week studying? (Including preparing for lab practicals, exams etc) probably something like 70 hours a week+ if you are looking to do very well otherwise you can totally BS and study a few days before the exam and will survive

2) Would you recommend purchasing a tablet (surface pro, iPad etc) or a high trim laptop (lenovo thinkpad, macbook etc)? yes because you are going to be studying from slideshows mostly

3) what is the best method to acing your classes? Is it in class notetaking or just kind of study/learn on your own? 99% is your work rate and you handling the workload, much less emphasis on how smart you are honestly. watch the lectures (probably will be offered online) at like 1.5x speed --> take notes --> memorize the hell out of that powerpoint --> move on. thats what dental school is essentially
 
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