Hours per Week

[hellopeople]

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How many hours a week would you say you put in?
We are talking in class, clinic, pre-clinic, and study time.

Specifically, during year one and/or two of dental school?

If anyone here is from Umich or MWU-IL, I would be particularly interested.

 

[ramseszerg]

It depends what kind of marks you want. All the hours you can possibly find (other than taking care of yourself and spending time with your significant other etc.) if you want to "do your best". If not, maybe 50-70 hours IMO. <50 would be if you want to "just pass" but I don't agree with this attitude because you will struggle later on without those foundations.

 

[SoulPower]

Shoot, I voted based on study time alone. My bad.

 

[hellopeople]

Looks like 60-70 hours is a popular balance. I was worried it was gonna get unreal, but I guess that's doable. My gf can rest a bit easier now....

Unless I decided to be a gunner like mr 80+ here 😀

 

[7 Iron]

I was one vote for the 60-70 hr/week crowd. D1 here

Class 5 days a week, approx. 7:30 - 4:00pm. ~42.5 hr
Study 2 hr a day at home - 10 hr
Go to preclinic lab to get lab work done, maybe 9 hr/week (my skills are coming along but slower than most)
Studying on weekend, maybe 6 hr total (weekends are mostly relax time with wife, etc)

~68 hr

 

[lotank]

to the guy asking the question: don't get psyched out by the infinite hours that dental students tell you they spend.

depending on the semester, around 30-35 hours in class. first semester of first year was less than that.

out of a 15 week semester, i'd say 8-9 of those weeks i spend 10 or less hours outside of class. there isn't much to do for the first month of the semester. there's another month between midterms and finals that requires less studying. during that time an hour or two each night (or 3-4 hours a few times a week) is easily enough to keep current.

midterms and finals that number can range between 70 and how ever many hours you are capable of staying awake.

i'm willling to bet that there aren't 10 people in my class who average 70 or 80 hours per week over the whole semester. i'd say i put in around 50 and i'm not "just trying to pass" as somebody else mentioned. i'm actually trying to specialize and so far that's been enough to get the grades i need.

 

[Lethstang]

it really depends on the school. For example, at mine the administration tweaks each test (we take all of the subjects on the same test, once every 3-4 weeks)to keep the most amount of people on the verge of failing to keep effort up. 7 people on probation after the first semester. Average of F on the pharmacology final.

Ive heard its not like this at other places.

My friend goes to a school up north who says passing is as easy as reading the slides a few times.

 

[Bereno]

it really depends on the school. For example, at mine the administration tweaks each test (we take all of the subjects on the same test, once every 3-4 weeks)to keep the most amount of people on the verge of failing to keep effort up. 7 people on probation after the first semester. Average of F on the pharmacology final.

Ive heard its not like this at other places.

My friend goes to a school up north who says passing is as easy as reading the slides a few times.

and what school do you go to? lol

 

[KillaCam]

Wow! 80+ hours/week!!!! That's stupid overkill. I do maybe over 50 per week and have not had a problem getting honors for classes. And I do not go to an easy school.

But I also honestly believe that going to class is a complete waste of my time so I almost never go. I stay home and study, get way more done in the time I have everyday, and have a lot more free time to balance out my life. I know lots of people who put in so much more time than I do but that doesn't mean anything when they spend a bunch of time screwing around and getting on Facebook. This happens so often and people say "Oh I studied everyday all this last week, and still didn't do well on the exam!" Well, my response is that they certainly wasted a lot of their own time dicking around during their supposed study time. BE EFFICIENT and there is no reason you can't do well.

 

[Lethstang]

i envy you your school killacam. Here , its mandatory attendance. And without the exam material that comes from the lecture that isnt on the slides, we wont get our A. Our scale is 94+ is an A, and you fail out below a 75. Average test sits at about an 83, so at all times half of the class is almost failing if you assume a normal distribution and a std dev of 6 points (which is about our average). We highly suspect they put an invisible curve here on the harder classes to bump up the high D's.

University of TN.