I was told that same advice and I totally disagree. It's quality not quantity. Usually people who take 18 + hours have a lot of easy classes thrown in. At AZCOM, students take 30 hours a quarter but not all 30 of those hours include difficult classes. There are a lot of blow off classes involved in those 30 hours like Foundations classes etc.
I agree with Tink, take 12-15 hours but make sure those classes are quality classes that dental schools can recognize. For example, dental schools know the difference between taking Genetics versus some ambiguous biology course like the biology of clowns or something like that. 🙂
Sure, it looks good if you can take 22 hours and get all A's. But what is the likelihood of that occurring? Even if you are a dedicated student, you just won't have the time to study enough to pull all A's unless a few of those hours include Independent study, research and other easy A's. It's much better to take 12 credits and get all A's than it is to take 22 hours and get a mixture of A's and B's. Keep your GPA up like the others have said.
I'm in a post-bac right now. All my classes are science classes. I took 12 hours my first quarter and got all A's. I took 19 credits last quarter and barely got all A's. I learned not to do that again. So I'm taking 15 hours this quarter and doing research and working on other things. There are people in my program who have graduated taking over 20 hours a quarter but they don't get straight A's. I can tell you that much. They usually get at least 2 B's per quarter because they can't spread themselves out that successfully. Most of these people do it to graduate early.
I spoke with the AdCom at UOP. And he told me that I should take at a minimum of 12 hours per quarter or 15 hours per semester with at least 2 science classes per quarter and 3 per semester. He also told me to not go below a B in any class and to try and maintain 3.5 GPA. I think that's very doable.
