How hard are the actual exams in Dental School

[GoToHolmes]

I understand that dental school is a brutal experience overall but I don't see many people talking specificially about the difficulty of the exams in dental school. Most people seem to focus on how difficult time management is/the grind of having so many tests and classes rather than the difficulty of said tests. I went to a quarter system school fror my undergrad so I like to think I am a little better at time management than average and I was wondering how difficult the exams are compared to those in undergrad STEM courses.

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[frozenicecreamDMD]

lol dental school exams are jokes. there are test banks everywhere for any specific class and specific exam. sometimes you spend more time searching through years of test banks and study test banks than study the "real" materials. professors are too lazy to change test questions. if they do change, its rewording, the angle they ask from is the same so its easy to guess.

the exams ask like recall questions not even high critical thinking questions even.

dont worry. if you pass undergrad you will pass dental school exams

 

[HatInTheCat]

The amount of info you’re learning is a lot, but if you’re good with memorizing lots of info, you’re golden. Some struggle with that, others don’t.

 

[oralcare123]

Depends

 

[n02688402]

D1 here. I found them to be a little challenging at first, but nothing that can't be overcome. They tend to focus a lot on critical thinking questions rather than simply asking for facts, but those exist as well. Normally it's sort of a scenario question, like "patient comes in complaining of this, what's wrong?" or something to that effect. I was also not the best in undergrad so there was a learning curve for me, but I sort of got the hang of it and if you memorize some important facts you can apply them.

 

[blablabla1]

I went to a pretty difficult undergrad (top 5 state school) and found dental school exams to be very easy. My undergrad science courses had much, much more challenging exams than dental school.

However, dental school was overall more difficult due to the sheer courseload. Each exam covers much more content in dental school and you have less time to prepare because of the fact that you're also taking another 25-30 credits of other courses at the same time.

It doesn't take a genius to do well on dental school exams, but it does take a very disciplined person in terms of study habits in order to do well on all of them.

 

[blablabla1]

lol dental school exams are jokes. there are test banks everywhere for any specific class and specific exam. sometimes you spend more time searching through years of test banks and study test banks than study the "real" materials. professors are too lazy to change test questions. if they do change, its rewording, the angle they ask from is the same so its easy to guess.

the exams ask like recall questions not even high critical thinking questions even.

dont worry. if you pass undergrad you will pass dental school exams

Depends on the school. Those type of recall questions did not exist but for maybe a couple exams in total during my D1 and D2 year. Admin at my school purged the test banks each class passed on to the next after discovering they existed on a google drive and so we did not have any of that to work with. Ever since that incident, classes have been too scared and lazy to create recall question documents.

 

[MLC45]

It depends on the class, the instructor, your strengths and weaknesses. For me Pharm was hard. However, I had a reading disability and was taught to read phonetically when I was 21. So a word like glycopyrrolate or Ezetimibe are hard for me to read and remember. Some of our easiest classes have some of the hardest tests. There might be 500 Powerpoint slides filled from top to bottom and 40-50 questions that are only touched on in one paragraph on one slide. We also have one instructor that gives multiple choice test where the answers are A, B, C, A & B, A & C, B & C, All of the Above, or None of the Above.

When it's all said and done you'll learn which way to study that works best for you. Also you'll find some classes you just want to pass and that will be good enough to graduate.

 

[frozenicecreamDMD]

I definitely think this statement is highly dependent on school. Maybe one or two of the classes we took had actual test banks, but everyone at my school spends a significant amount of time studying (and not even gunning for a 4.0, just because of the sheer amount of material). Some classes like physiology or anatomy took a decent amount of critical thinking and understanding.

The exams are definitely easier individually than undergrad, but your free time is 1/3 of what you had in undergrad, and the mental stamina required to study for several exams/quizzes every single week is the hard part.

yea for hardcore classes like physio, head and neck, gross anatomy, and pharm, the rests are pretty much just test bank.

Depends on the school. Those type of recall questions did not exist but for maybe a couple exams in total during my D1 and D2 year. Admin at my school purged the test banks each class passed on to the next after discovering they existed on a google drive and so we did not have any of that to work with. Ever since that incident, classes have been too scared and lazy to create recall question documents.

who stores test bank on google drive? at my school it is passed around on physicial hard drive disk like the old fashion way. and the school knows but cannot purge because they simply cant.


there is a joke in dental school that if you don't think there is a test bank, you may not be in the group that have access to test bank yet. yea totally school dependent.

 

[frozenicecreamDMD]

I mean yeah, if we’re discounting anatomy & phys & pharm and all of the “hardcore” classes without test banks that are actually difficult then yeah dental school’s easy. But that’s the whole point lol, those are the classes that make dental school challenging and that people spend the most time on. That’s like saying a phd is easy and just ignoring the thesis part lol

The hardcore classes still have decent test bank around 30-40%. but truthfully, studying all these classes is pretty interesting but if your hand cannot drill, you will be in academia for life. and seeing how toxic academic dentists are, I rather die somewhere else

lol idk if you read all PhD thesis but most are jokes as well. a lot if not majority of PhDs are not productive and have very low economic value. hence, post doc hell exists out there. if one wanna do PhD, you should focus on the field that is still doing well and lucrative (AI, Tech). Life science PhD is a soul sucking journey that has no end.

 

[pubhealthdent]

Very dependent on what school you are going to and what course

 

[deleted994703]

lol dental school exams are jokes. there are test banks everywhere for any specific class and specific exam. sometimes you spend more time searching through years of test banks and study test banks than study the "real" materials. professors are too lazy to change test questions. if they do change, its rewording, the angle they ask from is the same so its easy to guess.

the exams ask like recall questions not even high critical thinking questions even.

dont worry. if you pass undergrad you will pass dental school exams

which school is this

 

[Ivy.ch]

Dental school exams are tough, but not terrible. It’s only having a single night to study for them that’s the killer part. D2s juggle like 15 courses at a time.

 

[Racquetball3r]

Where did all of you go to dental school? Tests in my school were incredibly difficult, except for maybe a few of the dental specific classes weren’t terrible. There were no tests banks, or answers from previous tests available. Professors purposely wrote questions to trick you if you didn’t know every aspect of the nitty gritty details.

 

[Bereno]

Depends on the school
Depends on the year
Depends on the class
Depends on the instructor
Depends on the grading (curved or not),
If curved, depends on your classmates
Depends on concurrent activities (such as externships, extracurriculars, lab requirements, etc)

So all in all... it depends

 

[TanMan]

- Tests aren't hard. It's just forcing yourself to learn clinically/financially irrelevant things that makes it hard to want to learn.

- People are stupid by sharing any documents with metadata online/offline, let alone a cloud based service with unique identifiers. Even on a physical drive, people inadvertently add/save files with their FULL names. This is how cheating scandals and disciplinary actions happen.

- There's always a test bank. What prevents free distribution of these test banks to the entire class are narcs that would drive them underground. Individual gunners don't play as much of a role, but groups of gunners do. Circles of trust shrink and loyalties must be proven. If you don't have access to them, either you're not part of a group (there's usually many groups that are race/religion based) and/or they don't trust you. The only exception is the introduction of an all NEW curriculum. I feel bad for those guys.

 

[frozenicecreamDMD]

- Tests aren't hard. It's just forcing yourself to learn clinically/financially irrelevant things that makes it hard to want to learn.

- People are stupid by sharing any documents with metadata online/offline, let alone a cloud based service with unique identifiers. Even on a physical drive, people inadvertently add/save files with their FULL names. This is how cheating scandals and disciplinary actions happen.

- There's always a test bank. What prevents free distribution of these test banks to the entire class are narcs that would drive them underground. Individual gunners don't play as much of a role, but groups of gunners do. Circles of trust shrink and loyalties must be proven. If you don't have access to them, either you're not part of a group (there's usually many groups that are race/religion based) and/or they don't trust you. The only exception is the introduction of an all NEW curriculum. I feel bad for those guys.

the beauty of using a test bank is you are just a user and not a contributor - hence your name is not exposed. and it is on a hard drive that is never brought to school and open on a school's internet system

yes you have to be a part of a group or have a connection to a group to have access to this test bank or else you waste your time studying stupid random stuff

 

[TanMan]

the beauty of using a test bank is you are just a user and not a contributor - hence your name is not exposed. and it is on a hard drive that is never brought to school and open on a school's internet system

yes you have to be a part of a group or have a connection to a group to have access to this test bank or else you waste your time studying stupid random stuff

If the test bank is read only and no contributions are made, then the chance of knowing who accessed the files is limited, but that also depends on the file type. However, contributors need to be careful in document and metadata generation. Physical drives are smart unless there's a mole in the chain.

 

[SilkyJ]

lol dental school exams are jokes. there are test banks everywhere for any specific class and specific exam. sometimes you spend more time searching through years of test banks and study test banks than study the "real" materials. professors are too lazy to change test questions. if they do change, its rewording, the angle they ask from is the same so its easy to guess.

the exams ask like recall questions not even high critical thinking questions even.

dont worry. if you pass undergrad you will pass dental school exams

I second the comment about professors being too lazy to change questions year-to-year. I distinctly recall taking a multiple choice exam one time where “The Mentally ******ed” or “Mentally ******ed Patients” (Verbatim) was the correct answer. Pretty sure that type of wording has been frowned upon in academics for at least 15-20 years, and was considered frankly unacceptable at the time we had that exam.

 

[frozenicecreamDMD]

I second the comment about professors being too lazy to change questions year-to-year. I distinctly recall taking a multiple choice exam one time where “The Mentally ******ed” or “Mentally ******ed Patients” (Verbatim) was the correct answer. Pretty sure that type of wording has been frowned upon in academics for at least 15-20 years, and was considered frankly unacceptable at the time we had that exam.

lol seeing how dentists act outside of school I am sure the "academic standards" set by these so called academic dentists are just full of bs.

we still classify pt this way though nicer (crazy, karens, pita) lol

 

[Ellatha]

I don’t know where you guys went to dental school but at mine the exams were much more difficult than undergrad and professors asked questions on things they didn’t even lecture about.

 

[BeggarsCantBeChoosers]

Let's be real people, don't kid yourself! Don't matter which DS you go to, in terms of content difficulty, DS exams are easier than undergrad if your major in undergrad were biochem, chemistry, engineering, math etc. But if your major in undergrad was GPA builder like economics, liberal arts, music, etc. then you are in for a rude awakening in DS. NOW, in terms of volume, DS is at least 5X more than in undergrad so in a way, DS is much harder. It's all about time management and how much you can memorize (90% of dental school is memorization).

 

[su76394]

Current D1 here

short answer: it depends, your learning curve or how fast you adapt will depend on where you went to undergrad and what dental school you are attending.

long answer:
assuming you are coming from a challenging curriculum in undergrad or have been to a dental hygiene/ masters program, you should be able to adapt fairly quickly. The pace of dental school curriculum is absolutely exhausting, time is your biggest enemy, and that's no exaggeration. To be frank, it will probably take you a good three exams(about a month) to understand your best way to manage time and study and from what I hear, it gets dramatically harder so you have to continue to adapt. The material itself is not necessarily harder than undergrad but it comes in unbelievably huge bulks.

now, If you come from a less challenging undergrad (usually if your school was not competitive among its own students, internally and/or did not rank within the higher ranks nationally, this would apply to you) then it really depends on the dental school you attend. Some as you can see have test banks, some DO NOT. If your school doesn't have test banks, it will take you about two months to adapt. It's absolutely key to realize that you can always make more time. It seems impossible but you have to sacrifice certain things to gain this time. If you are feeling comfortable and find yourself having free time, there's something wrong because settling in and having free time are not options in dental school. My best advice, ALWAYS stay ahead of the lectures. There will be very few opportunities to do this, but you'll know when they show up, take advantage, instead of getting comfortable get ahead.

 

[Rambunctious]

I understand that dental school is a brutal experience overall but I don't see many people talking specificially about the difficulty of the exams in dental school. Most people seem to focus on how difficult time management is/the grind of having so many tests and classes rather than the difficulty of said tests. I went to a quarter system school fror my undergrad so I like to think I am a little better at time management than average and I was wondering how difficult the exams are compared to those in undergrad STEM courses.

Kind of a bad question since hard is a objective concept. what might be "hard" for me is "easy" for you and vice versa. what's consistent with all dental schools is they throw a lot of material at you so in that sense it is hard to manage everything with perfect grades

 

[MedSnow]

lol dental school exams are jokes. there are test banks everywhere for any specific class and specific exam. sometimes you spend more time searching through years of test banks and study test banks than study the "real" materials. professors are too lazy to change test questions. if they do change, its rewording, the angle they ask from is the same so its easy to guess.

the exams ask like recall questions not even high critical thinking questions even.

dont worry. if you pass undergrad you will pass dental school exams

I doubt that. What school did u go to? Never seen a single test bank at my school. We have to schedule to review what we did wrong and they only showed us the questions we got wrong, and nothing is allowed to be brought into the review room.

In terms of difficulty, Just pure volume. Getting As are tough but Bs are just easy.

 

[2thDoc11]

^^ pretty easy to get Bs but As are difficult since our exams tend to be 50 questions. That may be dependent on school. 5 questions wrong and you’re already at a 90 but getting 45/50, I’d say you had a pretty good handle on the material

 

[LegendaryPanda]

Lol what dental school are you guys going to that your exams are easy? I went to a "hard" undergrad and majored in bio but took every science course under the sun. I still managed to finish a 3.6+. Yeah it was hard but guess what. My dental school exams of the same basic sciences like micro, biochem, etc, that I took are either just as hard or harder. Dental school professors love asking for minute things they spent 12 seconds on.

 

[frozenicecreamDMD]

I doubt that. What school did u go to? Never seen a single test bank at my school. We have to schedule to review what we did wrong and they only showed us the questions we got wrong, and nothing is allowed to be brought into the review room.

In terms of difficulty, Just pure volume. Getting As are tough but Bs are just easy.

I shouldnt divulge my school but other schools have it too. these test banks are memory recall test bank. it at least give the students which areas the professors focus on aka important points. using them to pass has been the tradition. if you are shooting for As then study the ppts like your life depends on it.

 

[Big Time Hoosier]

if you are shooting for As then study the ppts like your life depends on it.

This. Also, don't skip lectures.

Big Hoss

 

[lwergod]

there certain cliques at our school have 'insider' test banks that others don't have access to. anyone else go to a school like this?

 

[tinman831]

there certain cliques at our school have 'insider' test banks that others don't have access to. anyone else go to a school like this?

Pretty sure there's quite a few schools out there like this.

 

[Big Time Hoosier]

there certain cliques at our school have 'insider' test banks that others don't have access to. anyone else go to a school like this?

At my school it was the dental fraternities.

Big Hoss

 

[somefuturedoc]

This. Also, don't skip lectures.

Big Hoss

Nah skipping lectures is the way to go. Why listen to the PhD drone on when you can crank through it on 2-3x speed later on? But I agree with memorizing the powerpoints.

 

[Big Time Hoosier]

Nah skipping lectures is the way to go. Why listen to the PhD drone on when you can crank through it on 2-3x speed later on? But I agree with memorizing the powerpoints.

Recorded lectures are a luxury I didn’t have. I also recommend handwriting notes, not typing them in a computer. Actually writing something helps it stick in your brain.

Big Hoss

 

[John Muir]

At the University of Michigan, exams are a lot easier than in undergrad. Everything is multiple choice and usually ~50 questions. The majority of them only test on information that is easily found in the PowerPoints. What is difficult is that you will be taking 8+ exams within one week or so. Individual exams are easy, it is just the number of exams and the amount of information that gets overwhelming.
I would go to all lectures and pay attention, ask questions PRN, and then review the powerpoints x2 and that would be enough to pass with a B+/A-.
Just my two cents.

 

[lwergod]

exams in dental school are definitely easier, it's the breadth and volume that makes things difficult.

In undergrad, in some classes, you could have memorized all there is to memorize and still do poorly because of insufficient critical thinking skills

dental school, memorize everything and you're golden.

 

[Dentist_T]

Lots of people have touched on this above but ultimately it depends. Don't listen to the folks who are like "its easy breezy!" or the folks who say "its HARD AF"
Not just because it is inherently subjective, but also each program is defferent. At my program, we have professors where exams are a joke, and we have professors that test on such minuta that the lectures dont even go over. Furthermore at my program our grades consist of 1-2 exams, where an individual exam ranges from 30-50% of our grade AND we only have 20-25 questions on it. In other words, missing 2 questions and you have a B+. Its stupid. To ensure an A you effectively need a 100% and that is hard to do for multiple exams per week.

Which leads onto time management which people have amply covered above so I wont get to into it except to say: We are all very smart and capable people, the classes on their own or even a handful of them are fine, 15-17 of them together AND pre-clinical AND lab AND volunteering/research/ etc is a trip for anyone.

Three main things I will say:
1: Dental school is NOTHING like undergrad even the rigorous science degrees. They certainly prepare you for it, but you still need to study a lot more than you expect. Don't become complacent.

2: The things that become hard happen in ways you don't expect. The amount you study is in your control, Its the stuff that is out of your control and how you deal with them that makes things hard.
like the non-existent margin of error on most of my exams. Or the fact that I have forgotten to eat for two weeks (legit I forgot to eat). External events popping up like, getting sick for a week and now you're suddenly behind by 4 exams... you know, stuff beyond "exams are hard"


3: You will find your way. Do not stress about this! I definitely did and I am struggling in my own ways, but I am also figuring out and it is getting easier every week. You will find the way that works for you in the program that you are in I have no doubt about it!