Gap Year Advice

[gatitoKT]

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Hi everyone!
I have recently decided to take a gap year. I wouldn’t be able to submit my application until around mid-September and have low shadowing hours and a low GPA. I figured it would be better to just take a year and improve my application rather than waste money applying to schools I probably won’t get into. With that being said, I have a 3.0 GPA and am wondering what I should do in my gap year. Would you recommend doing a masters program or just getting a job as a dental assistant?
Thank you!

 

[DS2027]

With the GPA it might be difficult getting interviews, unless you do extremely well on the DAT (not sure if you’ve taken it). Even if you do well on the DAT, you’d have to apply to a lot of dental schools. I think looking into a masters is a good idea.

 

[matthewbernard9]

With that GPA it will be hard to get through the software filtering. You should take a year and try to do a masters program and get really good grades, which will be enough, along with a good DAT score, to counteract the DAT. In addition, you need more general dentist shadowing hours and also increasing volunteer hours will be very beneficial, even if you just do something for 2 hours a week or something.

 

[Mr.Smile12]

Take the time to check with dental schools you are interested in to get feedback about your current profile. You should also check with options to address your low GPA and how schools might look at your most recent grades. Continue to work in a dental clinic setting if you have low hours of dental exposure.

 

[Lemillion]

Hi everyone!
I have recently decided to take a gap year. I wouldn’t be able to submit my application until around mid-September and have low shadowing hours and a low GPA. I figured it would be better to just take a year and improve my application rather than waste money applying to schools I probably won’t get into. With that being said, I have a 3.0 GPA and am wondering what I should do in my gap year. Would you recommend doing a masters program or just getting a job as a dental assistant?
Thank you!

I too would recommend doing a masters program that's geared towards like biomedical sciences. I had a lot of classmates who were in a similar situation like yours back in the day. Low GPA in college, did well in their masters programs (3.7+) and then got into dental school. It also gave them a leg up because they took all these additional science courses in their masters programs which helped when we took all the D1 biomed courses together.