Healthcare experience as a medical assistant included in personal statement for dental school

[Nam Ly]

Hi Everyone, I need your enthusiastic advises for my personal statement for dental school
I am working as a medical assistant. In the paragraph where I want to describe an experience that made me interested in serving others through Healthcare. I include my experience working as a medical assistant. Some people advised me not to include anything related to medicine so that I can absolutely convince the committee that I, 100%, want to be a dentist. To me, I just want to convince the committee that I care for people, I help people, and this helps me advance my healthcare experience in serving others. I also include a paragraph where I show my interest in being a dentistry via shadowing different offices and general dentists. I saw a different between dentistry and medicine; and my best ability to help people in dentistry compare to medicine

Thank you for all your help and I really appreciate your time!
NL

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[princeafrica]

I included my time as a pharmacy technician and 11 schools didn’t seem to care. It shouldn’t be a problem.

 

[Nam Ly]

I included my time as a pharmacy technician and 11 schools didn’t seem to care. It shouldn’t be a problem.

Thank you very much for your advise! I think so too! Thanks a lot again

 

[Cthuluhoop]

I think that's a great tie in to your desire to be in healthcare. I don't think it's a bad idea at all, a job is a job!

 

[Nam Ly]

I think that's a great tie in to your desire to be in healthcare. I don't think it's a bad idea at all, a job is a job!

Thank you very much!

 

[sharkdent]

Hi Everyone, I need your enthusiastic advises for my personal statement for dental school
I am working as a medical assistant. In the paragraph where I want to describe an experience that made me interested in serving others through Healthcare. I include my experience working as a medical assistant. Some people advised me not to include anything related to medicine so that I can absolutely convince the committee that I, 100%, want to be a dentist. To me, I just want to convince the committee that I care for people, I help people, and this helps me advance my healthcare experience in serving others. I also include a paragraph where I show my interest in being a dentistry via shadowing different offices and general dentists. I saw a different between dentistry and medicine; and my best ability to help people in dentistry compare to medicine

Thank you for all your help and I really appreciate your time!
NL

To me, being a medical assistant makes you a better candidate. Big part of dentistry is about patient interaction. You have an advantage versus applicants only shadow, but never interacted with patients. To me, doing dentistry is easy. How to handle patients, how you speak to them, and having that time interacting with different type of patients give you a big edge. Most dental stress are from patients, not doing the actual work.

 

[ab117]

Yeah, tons of people start out with an interest in healthcare in general and start volunteering, then shadow different doctors and dentists and stuff later before they hone in on one thing. Absolutely doesn’t negate the value of your experience. The real concern is when people apply talking about how they were premed and took the MCAT and everything and slowly realized they weren’t interested and looked for something else. It sounds like a thinly-veiled cover for doing bad on the MCAT and dentistry being your second, easier choice whether that’s what happened or not. Talking about volunteering experience is totally different as long as you don’t sound unsure about picking between med and dent.

 

[BluntForceTrauma]

Include it. I wrote about medical scribing and got into a few schools (problem was GPA, but hey, I'll be a DMD in the end so it matters not now). It would be silly on part of admissions to write you off due to a job you had.

 

[Nam Ly]

Thank you everyone for your great advises

 

[Nam Ly]

One more question!
Will my competition be affected if dental schools know that I took the MCAT exam and tried to get to medical school before being interested in dentistry? I took the MCAT exam and applied for medical school but my MCAT score was low and I got rejected by medical schools. I kept practicing the MCAT and took some more FL practice tests but the score was still not good. I then decided to shadow some dentists and become interested in dentistry

 

[AppalachianDentalBoy]

You have to disclose that you've applied to med school in the past. Be able to articulate why dentistry>med

 

[ab117]

Yeah, see, that’s what I was concerned about. If it sounds to them like that’s what happened, they may not like it, because even if you say you really love dentistry after shadowing and getting more experience, it might seem like you think that dentistry < medical and you only “dropped down a level” after having a hard time with the MCAT and it’s not what you would be doing otherwise. They’ll be comparing you to people who have been working towards going to dental school for a long time and may prefer that. You have to be careful about how you frame things.

 

[Nam Ly]

Do I have to disclose that I have applied to med school in my personal statement or I will be asked in the application?

 

[ab117]

In the application, there’s a question like “have you ever applied to other health profession programs and if so what?”

 

[Nam Ly]

In the application, there’s a question like “have you ever applied to other health profession programs and if so what?”

Do I have to disclose that I have applied to med school in my personal statement

 

[BluntForceTrauma]

Do I have to disclose that I have applied to med school in my personal statement

You don't have to disclose anything in your personal statement, but you better be able to articulate why dentistry now.

 

[Nam Ly]

You don't have to disclose anything in your personal statement, but you better be able to articulate why dentistry now.

Thank you very much for your advise