Graduating from schools like Columbia...& Harvard...a disadvantage?

[Tracy47]

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Those schools are notorious for poor clinical exposure...is it a big disadvantage, say if you plan on doing general dentistry? If you want to practice right out of school, is a 5th year of dental school ie GPR...absolutely necessary?

 

[fightingspirit]

Those schools are notorious for poor clinical exposure...is it a big disadvantage, say if you plan on doing general dentistry? If you want to practice right out of school, is a 5th year of dental school ie GPR...absolutely necessary?

the purpose of GPR is not just to improve your clinical skills. a year of GPR is also great for knowing what you wanna do (hospital dentistry, associate, private practice, specialize, what kind of specialty, quit dentistry, insurance stuff.....etc). therefore, even those who graduate from clinically oriented schools tend to opt for GPR programs after graduating. if you go to a school that is, in your opinion, lacking in clinical education and you know you wanna be a general dentist, then you'd surely need a GPR, perhaps more so than someone who comes from a clinically oriented school. however, it is not "absolutely necessary" because if you are taking over your father's practice or if you are guaranteed a position at a particular associateship right after school, then they'd take you. many find it advantageous to do GPR to increase their confidence in their skills.

 

[mr_gestapito]

Those schools are notorious for poor clinical exposure...is it a big disadvantage, say if you plan on doing general dentistry? If you want to practice right out of school, is a 5th year of dental school ie GPR...absolutely necessary?

I thought you might like a bit of advice from someone who has at least completed a bit of dental school already so here goes. If you are sure you want to be a general dentist then I would go to a more clinically oriented school. I go to Temple because I want to be a general dentist and want to have as much clinical exposure in dental school as possible, I don't care how I will be viewed in academic circles. More academic or research based programs may not give you sufficient exposure clinically to practice right out of school and a GPR or AEGD might be necessary. A GPR is designed to do a lot of things but if you have not figured out, "...what you wanna do (hospital dentistry, associate, private practice, specialize, what kind of specialty, quit dentistry...)," by the time you finish dental school then you seriously missed something somewhere along the line.

 

[Miss Mammelon]

Sigh... Over and over again it seems that our school (Columbia) gets a bad rap for not providing enough clinical exposure. That is just not true. If its any indication of our capabilities, almost all of my class passed all parts of the NERBS (manikin, patient, written) with flying colors and near perfect scores. I've done lots of crowns, lots of fillings, perio surgery, endo, implant restorations, dentures, Cerec, just about anything you could possibly do. I'm doing a specialty, so I probably practiced much more than I would ever need, but its always good to have a good foundation.

I spoke to a few dental students from other schools, and they boasted that they had nearly 5 clinic days a week, compared to our 3. However, at our school we consider "clinic" to be the full day (with evening clinics) of only adult general dentistry, and we do not count pediatric clinic, triage, oral surgery in that category. The students I spoke to were including that in their "number". If you count ours that way too, then yes- we are pretty even. Also, our summer session is a 5 day clinic work week.

Most of my class is going into general dentistry. Only a small number go straight into private practice or work for the armed services. That just seems to be how we are around here- most of us do GPRs... and the other good size chunk does specialty. It may be the personality of the students here, I really don't know the cause. A lot of us seem to be in agreement that extra training and exposure is a really good thing. If you want to be a general dentist, coming to this school is not a disadvantage. But, it is definitely what you make of it. Many schools out there provide great training. Columbia is not the only great school out there, but I certainly think that Columbia has been a wonderful place for me- I have learned and tried so many things here... and I wouldn't have changed my decision at all.

Those schools are notorious for poor clinical exposure...is it a big disadvantage, say if you plan on doing general dentistry? If you want to practice right out of school, is a 5th year of dental school ie GPR...absolutely necessary?

 

[toysareus]

Sigh... Over and over again it seems that our school (Columbia) gets a bad rap for not providing enough clinical exposure. That is just not true. If its any indication of our capabilities, almost all of my class passed all parts of the NERBS (manikin, patient, written) with flying colors and near perfect scores. I've done lots of crowns, lots of fillings, perio surgery, endo, implant restorations, dentures, Cerec, just about anything you could possibly do. I'm doing a specialty, so I probably practiced much more than I would ever need, but its always good to have a good foundation.

I spoke to a few dental students from other schools, and they boasted that they had nearly 5 clinic days a week, compared to our 3. However, at our school we consider "clinic" to be the full day (with evening clinics) of only adult general dentistry, and we do not count pediatric clinic, triage, oral surgery in that category. The students I spoke to were including that in their "number". If you count ours that way too, then yes- we are pretty even. Also, our summer session is a 5 day clinic work week.

Most of my class is going into general dentistry. Only a small number go straight into private practice or work for the armed services. That just seems to be how we are around here- most of us do GPRs... and the other good size chunk does specialty. It may be the personality of the students here, I really don't know the cause. A lot of us seem to be in agreement that extra training and exposure is a really good thing. If you want to be a general dentist, coming to this school is not a disadvantage. But, it is definitely what you make of it. Many schools out there provide great training. Columbia is not the only great school out there, but I certainly think that Columbia has been a wonderful place for me- I have learned and tried so many things here... and I wouldn't have changed my decision at all.

Actually, NYU has the least amount of clinic hours of any dental school.
We are in clinic 5 days a week, but there are too many students to allow us to work more than 4 hours. We are in clinics 4 hours a day, 5 days a week. The students are divided into two groups. One group will take the 8:30-12:45 session and the other will take the 4-6pm and 6-8pm clinic session. Rotations are 8 hours long...
Everyone says NYU will give you a good clinical foundation, but I'm not sure about that considering we have limited clinic hours.

 

[backaction]

I thought you might like a bit of advice from someone who has at least completed a bit of dental school already so here goes. If you are sure you want to be a general dentist then I would go to a more clinically oriented school. I go to Temple because I want to be a general dentist and want to have as much clinical exposure in dental school as possible, I don't care how I will be viewed in academic circles. More academic or research based programs may not give you sufficient exposure clinically to practice right out of school and a GPR or AEGD might be necessary. A GPR is designed to do a lot of things but if you have not figured out, "...what you wanna do (hospital dentistry, associate, private practice, specialize, what kind of specialty, quit dentistry...)," by the time you finish dental school then you seriously missed something somewhere along the line.

Exactly!

I think that going through dental school should be enough to determine if you want to specialize or not. I too recommend going to a clinically oriented program. I don't think that most AEGDs or GPRs do much dentistry that is different from what you learn in dental school. Sure your speed picks up and maybe you will do more rotary endo and restore a few implants, but I just don't picture GPR residents doing lots of high end restorative/ pros stuff like veneers, onlays, pressed ceramics etc. The only reason I would ever do a GPR is if I was interested in learning hospital dentistry and spending time on call, which I'm not. I'm sure there is a fairly large variation in differnt GPRs and maybe there are some out there where you spend the majority of time doing high end work, but these are probably very few. If you choose one of these 1 year residencies make sure that the patient pool lends itself to being able to doing quality dentistry, not high volume, low quality patch work. Don't get me wrong, GPRs can be of value, just a differnt value than I'd ever be interested in. So my advice would be go to a clinically oriented program and then go directly into practice. I'm at a very academic program similar to Columbia, and we have a small number going straight into private practice. I'm 4 weeks away from freedom and I would go straight into practice right now if I wasn't specializing. We have 29 hours of clinic per week as 4th years, but if I went to a program like Temple or UOP, I'd probably have more confidence and be a little ahead of the game.