Harvard or UPenn with scholarship?

[MSZ]

I was recently accepted to Harvard and UPenn (with a scholarship). At the moment, I don't know what to choose. I do consider both schools to be excellent choices with very different programs. I was hoping students could provide me with some insight as well as personal experiences at either school or even what aspects to consider. Thanks for everyone's help in advance!

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[Jone]

What are your career plans after graduation? It could be that neither school is your best choice depending on what your goals are...

I was recently accepted to Harvard and UPenn (with a scholarship). At the moment, I don't know what to choose. I do consider both schools to be excellent choices with very different programs. I was hoping students could provide me with some insight as well as personal experiences at either school or even what aspects to consider. Thanks for everyone's help in advance!

 

[onetoothleft]

Clearly, you should go to Columbia

 

[Rube]

I was recently accepted to Harvard and UPenn (with a scholarship). At the moment, I don't know what to choose. I do consider both schools to be excellent choices with very different programs. I was hoping students could provide me with some insight as well as personal experiences at either school or even what aspects to consider. Thanks for everyone's help in advance!

Both great schools. Congrats. Both will allow you to postgrad whereever you want. To me it comes down to this.

Is it worth 250k to say "I went to Harvard" for the rest of your life?

 

[liya]

Hi,
I am a third year at Penn and like the other person said it all depends on your career goals. Penn is known to be research oriented, but aside from that it give its students a great experience in clinical aspect of it. The greates attraction for applicants is the fact is that Penn gets the most amount of students into specialties. If you know that you are going to do general dentistry then stay away from these two schools and find something cheaper. Some schools are especially great that they dont expose their students to any research but mostly into clinical aspects and they do come out with more experience than we do. In terms of Harvard, is practically 100% research oriented and abosultely gives no clinical experience to its students. MOst of its students also apply to specialties. I know one dentist who said that he hired one of Harvard's students right after she graduated and it was extremely difficult for her because she was not exposed to alot of procedures. If you are not sure of your plans yet then i would absolutely without a doubt recommend you penn. Our staff is incerdible very helpful as you probably have met some of them by now, our dean is from Harvard(so you get 2 in one) and most of all you will probably have the most amoutn of confidence than any other person coming out from other dental schools. Anyways, i hope this to some extent helps you if you have any questions please feel free to ask. Oh, and btw columbia is very much like Harvard in terms of research and clinical experiene so between those two i would pick HArvard.

 

[goldstar]

Nor does it cost $250K. As Harvard students, we have to do an 8 week research project. That's it. It's not 100% research. We have the same, if not more, clinical requirements than Penn. We simply start preclinical stuff later, which means you do have to work somewhat harder because you need to pick things up quickly. We get funding to do research and have access to work any number of incredible projects at HSDM, HMS, and the Forsyth Institute. Since many residency programs like to see applicants with research experience, the easy access we have to said research projects is actually to our advantage. Maybe when replying to a thread like this you should speak only about the school you attend instead of making incorrect statements about other schools that you don't attend simply because you heard "he said she said this person said this about Harvard." It's ridiculous.

 

[Dukie]

Hands down, go to Penn. Both are very good schools, but are you really prepared to give up that scholarship to go to Harvard? Unless you have some overwhelming need to go there or just love Boston, I would definitely choose Penn.

 

[goldstar]

Hands down, go to Penn. Both are very good schools, but are you really prepared to give up that scholarship to go to Harvard? Unless you have some overwhelming need to go there or just love Boston, I would definitely choose Penn.

The Penn scholarship simply brings Penn tuition down to the level of Harvard's. It doesn't really make enough of a difference to choose Penn over Harvard.

 

[DcS]

The Penn scholarship simply brings Penn tuition down to the level of Harvard's. It doesn't really make enough of a difference to choose Penn over Harvard.

Living cost difference b/w philly and boston over the span of 4 years is enough to make a considerable difference.

 

[jpollei]

Looks like you already made your mind up judging by your signature tag...

I was recently accepted to Harvard and UPenn (with a scholarship). At the moment, I don't know what to choose. I do consider both schools to be excellent choices with very different programs. I was hoping students could provide me with some insight as well as personal experiences at either school or even what aspects to consider. Thanks for everyone's help in advance!
__________________
HSDM Class of 2010

 

[Woodsy]

go to harvard

 

[stomatologist]

Im a fourth year Harvard student. I turned down the 1/2 tuition scholarship at Penn for HSDM, and dont regret it.

Both dental schools are great. Both dental schools will make you work so hard that at times you would be frustrated and hate them. Dental school in general isnt fun: is busy, full of obligations, stress and with 100% devotion to it. In general dental schools are also full of bureaucracy, somewhat disorganized and difficult environments to thrive in. One advantage that HSDM has is that our class is only 35 people allowing direct attention from faculty. A class of 35 makes everything smaller and as efficient as possible.

Both schools pride themselves on getting people from each other. The Dean at Penn graduated from Harvard, the chairman of perio at Penn was here until recently. Equally, former faculty from Penn come to Harvard, HSDM in general love Penn students for graduate programs, particularly OMFS.

To clear the myth about low clinical experience at HSDM. Is just that a myth. Our requirements are higher than most in the country. For example, 8 perio surgeries, 20 crowns, at least one bridge, two case presentations, 18 quadrants of Scaling and Root planing per year, 16 prophys, 4 arches of complete dentures and 4 arches of removable, 14 endos during clinical years, etc. Compared to other schools thats pretty high. Most dental schools dont allow pre-docs to do perio surgeries, Temple for example has 16 crowns for graduation as a requirement. I've met people from other schools that graduated with only 1 endo. I have done 11 so far, including molars with access to Apex Locators and Rotary instrumentation (I wish we had a microscope). Now....people love to talk "Oh Harvard is only research" blablabla. Non-sense, they dont know what they're talking about.

After assisting faculty for five implant surgeries, I have placed three implants (with supervision) and will restore them as well. Most of my classmates have taken advantage of this opportunity.

So Harvard isnt full of research or with low clinical requirements. If you have poor hand skills, no matter what school you go to, it would take a little longer to improve them.

Hope it helps.

 

[lnn2]

I was recently accepted to Harvard and UPenn (with a scholarship). At the moment, I don't know what to choose. I do consider both schools to be excellent choices with very different programs. I was hoping students could provide me with some insight as well as personal experiences at either school or even what aspects to consider. Thanks for everyone's help in advance!

I say turn both of them down, just for hell of it! Ivy league schools are over rated!
My cousin has the exact same GPA as yours, only 1 A-. She only applied to state school this yr, Texas. How do you guys do it?! No life? any secrets to cheating?!!

It looks like that you already made the choice, HSDM 2010. Base on the above posts, I would choose H over P.
1. Much smaller class size, a huge advantage over a much larger class size.
2. Some dental schools strive to have an excellent track record of high national board scores. I heard that they even pay Kaplan's prep courses for the students! My school didn't even care whether our class avervage was 80s or 90s!
3.

One advantage that HSDM has is that our class is only 35 people allowing direct attention from faculty. A class of 35 makes everything smaller and as efficient as possible.

Our requirements are higher than most in the country. For example, 8 perio surgeries, 20 crowns, at least one bridge, two case presentations, 18 quadrants of Scaling and Root planing per year, 16 prophys, 4 arches of complete dentures and 4 arches of removable, 14 endos during clinical years, etc. Compared to other schools thats pretty high. Most dental schools dont allow pre-docs to do perio surgeries
I've met people from other schools that graduated with only 1 endo. I have done 11 so far, including molars with access to Apex Locators and Rotary instrumentation (I wish we had a microscope).

After assisting faculty for five implant surgeries, I have placed three implants (with supervision) and will restore them as well. Most of my classmates have taken advantage of this opportunity.

That's more than the minimum requirements of most of the dental schools. It's great that you get to do perio surgeries and implants. Most of the dental school don't even offer that to pre-docs. Anyway, I don't think that it really matters whether you've done 20 crowns or 40 crowns. If you're clueless with no clinical skills then you'd probably still be clueless with no clinical skill after 40 crowns!

Last but not least, dental school is only a stepping stone for you. It's entirely up to you to learn/practice/externship... Whether you'll become a competent practicing dentist is your own responsibility, not the Dean's! I wish that I had done more OS, endo, maybe perio!

Most of the time you have to hustle, networking, pimping...to get your requirements done. Keep in mind that some schools have much less dental patients due to their locations, demographic...

 

[stomatologist]

agreed