How to decide b/w schools if there is no ranking?

Well, your board score is up to you and only you. If you want a high score you gotta study your butt off from material not supplied from the D-School(dental decks, First Aid, etc). Also, how much knowledge you gain from your classes is also up to you, regardless of the school. Does different undergrad schools "prepare" you better for the DAT than others? If you did a study I think you would find that peeps with high DAT scores either studied a lot more or were just really book smart and good test takers, something a learning institution can't help you with.


Pick the school on other stuff like:
Tuition costs
Location
Your "vibe" you got when you were there


stuff like that

Forget rankings


Dizz...out

 

Depends on what you mean by "better academically." All the information you'll ever need to know are available in commercial books. It's a matter of learning what you need...

Dental schools that share classes with medical schools overlearn. You'll spend the majority of your time learning systems that don't pretain to dentistry. Students at Harvard and Columbia do well not because the material they learn while in medical school help them for our boards. They do well because they can cram in more information during the 3 months they have to prepare for Part I. (Ex, anatomy of the urogenital system really doesn't have any meaning on the head/neck.) Students at Harvard dental will even tell you that their school doesn't prepare you. Harvard expects you to learn in on your own. On the opposite side, you can go to USC and be forced to learn everything on your own. This can be advantageous if you know what you have to learn, and you'll have more time to study than any students at ANY other school. But it can be catastrophic if you don't know what to learn. (buy a Kaplan text to guide you in your study, if you plan to go to USC.)

There are schools like Case Western and UCSF that give you certain afternoons off. This gives you the extra time you need to learn the material, so they can be "better academically."

Some schools are P/F. This takes the edge off as you learn.