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To be fair, Columbia has pass/fail/honors and I'm pretty sure Penn ranks, so it's not really a good example.


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It is my understanding that Penn ranks only the top 10.

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if u get into ortho, u dont have to think twice.. u do it. the salary is double that of a GP so u will make the money back quickly.
Do NOT go to state school if u can avoid it. The environment is vastly different. Have u ever been to a party school vs an ivy league? If u take the harvard yale ivy league students and put them into UPENN dental school, there is a different culture vs SUNY Rutgers syracuse and other state schools (which have a party reputation) and put them into NJ Dental school or NY dental school (Not talking about NYU.. maybe yes or no.. ). It's jsut different.
And yes, if u wanna go to speciality, ppl are right.. go to a school that graduates a lot of specialties. thats common sense
 
if u get into ortho, u dont have to think twice.. u do it. the salary is double that of a GP so u will make the money back quickly.
Do NOT go to state school if u can avoid it. The environment is vastly different. Have u ever been to a party school vs an ivy league? If u take the harvard yale ivy league students and put them into UPENN dental school, there is a different culture vs SUNY Rutgers syracuse and other state schools (which have a party reputation) and put them into NJ Dental school or NY dental school (Not talking about NYU.. maybe yes or no.. ). It's jsut different.
And yes, if u wanna go to speciality, ppl are right.. go to a school that graduates a lot of specialties. thats common sense

This is quite possibly the dumbest post I have ever seen on here. Firstly, ortho salaries are no where near double a GP. If anything in current markets they are equal, maybe GP higher. Furthermore, saying not to go to a state school is completely stupid. To all predents reading this: go to the cheapest school and you can specialize anywhere! Don't go somewhere more expensive, that is the worst advice you can get.
 
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This is quite possibly the dumbest post I have ever seen on here. Firstly, ortho salaries are no where near double a GP. If anything in current markets they are equal, maybe GP higher. Furthermore, saying not to go to a state school is completely stupid. To all predents reading this: go to the cheapest school and you can specialize anywhere! Don't go somewhere more expensive, that is the worst advice you can get.

The ADA booklet on salaries shows the Ortho salary being near double that of the average GP ( $183340 for GP vs. $301760 for Ortho)


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The ADA booklet on salaries shows the Ortho salary being near double that of the average GP ( $183340 for GP vs. $301760 for Ortho)


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Lol. The ADA also says there is a shortage of dentists and we need more schools. Yea, the ADA has their facts in order.
 
Lol. The ADA also says there is a shortage of dentists and we need more schools. Yea, the ADA has their facts in order.

Well they aren't wrong per se. We do need more dentists, just in places no one wants to live.
 
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It's important to point out there's not shortage of dentist, just a shortage of dentist who are willing to work for free. That's one of the biggest problems. You can't just look at dentist to population ratio, that only tells you a small part of the story. You need to look at average income of area, demand in said area (do the patients really care about having teeth, some really don't), and medicaid reimbursement rates. There really isn't a shortage of dentist in areas where people are willing to pay for it, as a whole.
 
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Well they aren't wrong per se. We do need more dentists, just in places no one wants to live.

This, I was going to say in certain parts of my home state entire counties won't have a dentist, it's just that those counties aren't near any big cities.
 
In some states, I think there is no shortage even in rural areas - with dentists and specialists willing to travel a little and set up satellite offices in rural locations. The original thread is about ortho, and I think that's especially true with ortho. They can be in the bigger city and get most of their patients for 3 days of the week, then travel to satellite offices in rural areas the other two days of the week. And if they want to choose to work even more, then can have more offices. I've looked into the ortho market in my city and state, and there were two separate orthodontists that had offices in one small city of 5,000 people. Both of them lived in a bigger city about 45 minutes away. It wasn't sustainable, and the orthodontist who got there later ended up having to close shop. (I have been following these things through their websites lol). Every single small town like this that is 1 hour radius of my city has at least 1 orthodontist in it, sometimes more. The reason why I say 1 hour radius, is because if you go to the north or the south for one hour you will reach another "bigger" city (and we're talking bigger like 50,000 people lol).
 
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Rural doesn't = make more. Rural has different dental needs (less about aesthetics and more about restorative and extractions, etc.). It's not always easier money in rural, in fact the money could be harder to earn since you may be doing lower producing procedures. And you have to figure that some dentists don't like being noticed in public all the time in rural.
 
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Quick question, I got into UNE (P/F) and UDM (not P/F). I am Canadian and if I don't get into a Canadian school this year I will have to choose one of these schools. Im not sure if I want to specialize, but I want to keep my options open. UDM is my top choice because its closest to my home, and the cost of living is cheapest since I'd live in Windsor, not Detroit. I'm just curious what the consensus is regarding P/F schools though, do they offer an advantage for specializing, or not really? I know UNE is a pretty new school so its hard to tell, but I just want to make sure before I make my final decision.
 
Quick question, I got into UNE (P/F) and UDM (not P/F). I am Canadian and if I don't get into a Canadian school this year I will have to choose one of these schools. Im not sure if I want to specialize, but I want to keep my options open. UDM is my top choice because its closest to my home, and the cost of living is cheapest since I'd live in Windsor, not Detroit. I'm just curious what the consensus is regarding P/F schools though, do they offer an advantage for specializing, or not really? I know UNE is a pretty new school so its hard to tell, but I just want to make sure before I make my final decision.

P/F schools only matter for top schools in terms of specializing such as UCLA/UCSF/Harvard/Upenn/Uconn/Columbia. A new school like UNE will have to release your grades and class rank to the program director or they wont even consider you.
 
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Quick question, I got into UNE (P/F) and UDM (not P/F). I am Canadian and if I don't get into a Canadian school this year I will have to choose one of these schools. Im not sure if I want to specialize, but I want to keep my options open. UDM is my top choice because its closest to my home, and the cost of living is cheapest since I'd live in Windsor, not Detroit. I'm just curious what the consensus is regarding P/F schools though, do they offer an advantage for specializing, or not really? I know UNE is a pretty new school so its hard to tell, but I just want to make sure before I make my final decision.
Might be hard to specialize from UDM. Class of 144, and I got the vibe that there are a lot of gunners.
 
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Might be hard to specialize from UDM. Class of 144, and I got the vibe that there are a lot of gunners.
Really? I got the opposite vibe there but I won't really know until I start school. Thank you for that perspective
 
Quick question, I got into UNE (P/F) and UDM (not P/F). I am Canadian and if I don't get into a Canadian school this year I will have to choose one of these schools. Im not sure if I want to specialize, but I want to keep my options open. UDM is my top choice because its closest to my home, and the cost of living is cheapest since I'd live in Windsor, not Detroit. I'm just curious what the consensus is regarding P/F schools though, do they offer an advantage for specializing, or not really? I know UNE is a pretty new school so its hard to tell, but I just want to make sure before I make my final decision.
Some P/F schools still rank their students (i.e. Columbia ranks by quartile). As a side note to a post above, UPenn does rank it's students, but just the top ten. When someone at UPenn says they don't rank, it just means they didn't make the cut. A wise man once said, "If you're not first, you're last."

Big Hoss
 
Some P/F schools still rank their students (i.e. Columbia ranks by quartile). As a side note to a post above, UPenn does rank it's students, but just the top ten. When someone at UPenn says they don't rank, it just means they didn't make the cut. A wise man once said, "If you're not first, you're last."

Big Hoss

Columbia ranks by thirds and even if UPenn only ranks the top 10, the other 100 or so students are still better off that they aren't ranked than if they were. Of course is that worth 400k? Probably not, up to the individual and where else they got into.


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Too many predents talk about class ranks as if they're solely a bad thing. They are better considered a two-edged sword. A high class rank is really going to help win program directors over, with a low rank doing the opposite. Comparing two candidates one ranked in the top 10% vs. a non-ranked candidate, all else being equal, who's a PD going to choose? It's obvious. I've read on these forums of some residency programs passing over non-ranked candidates, because for all they know you were last in your class.

Big Hoss
 
Too many predents talk about class ranks as if they're solely a bad thing. They are better considered a two-edged sword. A high class rank is really going to help win program directors over, with a low rank doing the opposite. Comparing two candidates one ranked in the top 10% vs. a non-ranked candidate, all else being equal, who's a PD going to choose? It's obvious. I've read on these forums of some residency programs passing over non-ranked candidates, because for all they know you were last in your class.

Big Hoss

Oh they are definitely a two-edged sword. However, as one of the professors described it at my state-school interview, "Dental school is like the top of the food pyramid. This place is filled with nothing but the best, nothing but apex predators".

This isn't to say that you can specialize at a P/F school without putting in the work. However I think it is very understandable that students would rather not enter a hunger games of sorts where in theory you can actually be a very brilliant student, but be punished because the rest of your class also happens to be that .01% more brilliant than you.


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Oh they are definitely a two-edged sword. However, as one of the professors described it at my state-school interview, "Dental school is like the top of the food pyramid. This place is filled with nothing but the best, nothing but apex predators".

This isn't to say that you can specialize at a P/F school without putting in the work. However I think it is very understandable that students would rather not enter a hunger games of sorts where in theory you can actually be a very brilliant student, but be punished because the rest of your class also happens to be that .01% more brilliant than you.


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And that's why not just anybody can call themself "Big Hoss."

Big Hoss
 
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Oh they are definitely a two-edged sword. However, as one of the professors described it at my state-school interview, "Dental school is like the top of the food pyramid. This place is filled with nothing but the best, nothing but apex predators".

This isn't to say that you can specialize at a P/F school without putting in the work. However I think it is very understandable that students would rather not enter a hunger games of sorts where in theory you can actually be a very brilliant student, but be punished because the rest of your class also happens to be that .01% more brilliant than you.


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My experience with dental school so far has been that the students who are consistently at the top are simply the students who work the hardest. Brilliance has less to do with your grades than blood, sweat, and tears.

Also, I mentioned earlier that the school you go to means less to residency directors than your grades/ECs and having spoken to several OMFS residents in the last few weeks I believe more than ever that I am right about that. Not one of the residents I spoke to went to an ivy school, and all of them were of the opinion that getting into oral surgery is more about commitment to the field, good letters, being a team player, and most importantly having solid grades (ranking well in your class) and a high CBSE score than anything else.
 
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My experience with dental school so far has been that the students who are consistently at the top are simply the students who work the hardest. Brilliance has less to do with your grades than blood, sweat, and tears.

Also, I mentioned earlier that the school you go to means less to residency directors than your grades/ECs and having spoken to several OMFS residents in the last few weeks I believe more than ever that I am right about that. Not one of the residents I spoke to went to an ivy school, and all of them were of the opinion that getting into oral surgery is more about commitment to the field, good letters, being a team player, and most importantly having solid grades (ranking well in your class) and a high CBSE score than anything else.

Oh I completely agree with all of that, and I think even at an Ivy the only way you'll get into a school is if you work hard. At then end of the day there are plenty of reasons to go to a particular dental school, and no matter what you are going to have to put in the work to graduate, let alone specialize.
 
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