How will you pay for dental school?

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JacquesVallee said:
As a GD, the worst part was the patient interaction by far.
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Not just the dentists.....The physicians have to deal with ungrateful patients as well. The grass isn't always greener on the other side.

This gasteroenterologist's office gets a 2.5 star review (see image below). And the owner doctor had to write the responses to explain to these patients himself.

I know this GI doctor..... a good honest man....a very hard working doctor in his early 60s.....a father of 6. He is a GI doctor. I just can't imagine the amount of complaints that the plastic surgeons have to deal with. My cousin, who is a MD anesthesiologist, has to deal with a lot of unreasonable demands/expectations from patients, nurses, schedulers, surgeons etc as well. That's why he keeps telling his kid to stay away from medicine. His kid has just taken the DAT and will apply for dental schools for the upcoming cycle.


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charlestweed said:
Not just the dentists.....The physicians have to deal with ungrateful patients as well. The grass isn't always greener on the other side.

This gasteroenterologist's office gets a 2.5 star review (see image below). And the owner doctor had to write the responses to explain to these patients himself.

I know this GI doctor..... a good honest man....a very hard working doctor in his early 60s.....a father of 6. He is a GI doctor.
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Ok, lol well he may be a good guy, but that doesn't mean he is a good business owner. I could understand a patient being upset if they were waiting for an appointment and it got cancelled at the last minute, or if the office screwed up when verifying insurance. 2.5 star ratings of dental offices exist too so that's not something dental is immune to. If anything, it points out the stress associated with owning a business. Something that the majority of doctors don't have to do - which actually is favorable to contributing to a more healthy work/life balance.

You're right when saying the grass isn't ALWAYS greener on the other side. But sometimes, the grass actually is greener on the other side.

greenergrass.webp


I'm not too prideful to admit that my job isn't as good as someone else's. If I were to go back, I would have chosen medicine. I know I'd be much further ahead financially, and I probably would actually be working less than I do now.
 
New_Vegas said:
Ok, lol well he may be a good guy, but that doesn't mean he is a good business owner. I could understand a patient being upset if they were waiting for an appointment and it got cancelled at the last minute, or if the office screwed up when verifying insurance. 2.5 star ratings of dental offices exist too so that's not something dental is immune to. If anything, it points out the stress associated with owning a business. Something that the majority of doctors don't have to do - which actually is favorable to contributing to a more healthy work/life balance.

You're right when saying the grass isn't ALWAYS greener on the other side. But sometimes, the grass actually is greener on the other side.

View attachment 411622

I'm not too prideful to admit that my job isn't as good as someone else's. If I were to go back, I would have chosen medicine. I know I'd be much further ahead financially, and I probably would actually be working less than I do now.
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Jobs that require working with people are never easy. You can’t please everyone. I tried to find this GI doctor's office on the google map for my father-in-law and I was very surprised by the high number of negative reviews that his office gets. This doctor is a workaholic even in his early 60s. In addition to seeing patients at his office during the regular office hours, he also sees his patients in the hospital afterward…..he probably works 10-12 hours a day. I had never seen him with his kids when they came to my office for ortho tx. I only saw his wife with the kids.

I never like to talk to my patients either. I usually let my chairside assistants do most of the talking/explaining for me and I just focus on doing what I am good at and that is to provide ortho tx. The good thing about treating low income patients (in my office, 90+% are Hispanic and Asian) is they rarely ask questions and complain because they trust and respect their doctor. I don’t need to advertise. I don’t need to sell. The fees are low but it’s ok. I’d rather charge low fees and sleep better at night.

I was a pre med in college. I took the MCAT twice but did poorly on both because English wasn’t my first language. Two weeks later, I took the DAT and did very well because the knowledge from studying for the MCAT was still fresh in my head. And that’s how I got accepted to UCLA dental school. Before ortho, I did a year of GPR. Man, working in the hospital was hard. I hated waking up in the middle of the night….walked another 15 minutes from my apartment to the hospital’s dental clinic to splint someone’s avulsed teeth…..to drain a dental abscess….to deal with someone’s TMJ discomfort etc. I had seen so many terminally ill patients, who needed orgran transplants and needed the dental clearance from me. It’s depressing. I am glad that I am not smart enough to become a physician. Dentistry is a much more rewarding profession….financially and lifestyle wise. When my own offices don’t have enough patients, I can just travel to work part time for the corp offices....good cash flow....zero stress.

At least we, dentists can decline to treat certain patients (HMO, Medicaid etc). If patients don’t have money, we don’t have to treat them and we can refer them to the county hospital for free dental extractions. The physicians can’t do that. A lot of physicians are also complaining about the mid level providers, who are taking away their jobs. We don't have the mid-level provider problem in dentistry. We hire hygienists because we hate to clean teeth.
 
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charlestweed said:
Jobs that require working with people are never easy. You can’t please everyone. I tried to find this GI doctor's office on the google map for my father-in-law and I was very surprised by the high number of negative reviews that his office gets. This doctor is a workaholic even in his early 60s. In addition to seeing patients at his office during the regular office hours, he also sees his patients in the hospital afterward…..he probably works 10-12 hours a day. I had never seen him with his kids when they came to my office for ortho tx. I only saw his wife with the kids.

I never like to talk to my patients either. I usually let my chairside assistants do most of the talking/explaining for me and I just focus on doing what I am good at and that is to provide ortho tx. The good thing about treating low income patients (in my office, 90+% are Hispanic and Asian) is they rarely ask questions and complain because they trust and respect their doctor. I don’t need to advertise. I don’t need to sell. The fees are low but it’s ok. I’d rather charge low fees and sleep better at night.

I was a pre med in college. I took the MCAT twice but did poorly on both because English wasn’t my first language. Two weeks later, I took the DAT and did very well because the knowledge from studying for the MCAT was still fresh in my head. And that’s how I got accepted to UCLA dental school. Before ortho, I did a year of GPR. Man, working in the hospital was hard. I hated waking up in the middle of the night….walked another 15 minutes from my apartment to the hospital’s dental clinic to splint someone’s avulsed teeth…..to drain a dental abscess….to deal with someone’s TMJ discomfort etc. I had seen so many terminally ill patients, who needed orgran transplants and needed the dental clearance from me. It’s depressing. I am glad that I am not smart enough to become a physician. Dentistry is a much more rewarding profession….financially and lifestyle wise. When my own offices don’t have enough patients, I can just travel work part time for the corp offices....good cash flow....zero stress.

At least we, dentists can decline to treat certain patients (HMO, Medicaid etc). If patients don’t have money, we don’t have to treat them and we can refer them to the county hospital for free dental extractions. The physicians can’t do that. A lot of physicians are also complaining about the mid level providers, who are taking away their jobs. We don't have the mid-level provider problem in dentistry. We hire hygienists because we hate to clean teeth.
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Fortunately, you graduated in a different time than today. Your educational debt to income was not what current grads have. You bought your homes with a much lower interest rate, and when the median home price to income was 2-3, not the 5-6 today. You had money in the market and took advantage of the 10 year stock boom. The math for dentistry has significantly changed in the last 15-20 years. It’s getting pretty sad…

Big Hoss
 
Big Time Hoosier said:
Fortunately, you graduated in a different time than today. Your educational debt to income was not what current grads have. You bought your homes with a much lower interest rate, and when the median home price to income was 2-3, not the 5-6 today. You had money in the market and took advantage of the 10 year stock boom. The math for dentistry has significantly changed in the last 15-20 years. It’s getting pretty sad…

Big Hoss
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It’s sad for the young generation, isn’t it? You are right. I've had a lot of luck with the real estate investments. I bought the properties (thanks to the stable dental job that allowed me to get loan approvals easily) at the right time. Therefore, I plan to share my luck with my kids, who were born too late and won’t have the same opportunities that I had had. Hopefully, with a debt free education and a large enough amount of down payment (that I will help them) for their first house, they will be at the same starting point as when I started my career.

I won't criticize my kid, if he can't buy a house at 30 yo. He won't become a MD until 25. And then he’ll have to do 3-6 more yrs of low paid medical residency. Even if he earns a real doctor's salary of $3-400k after residency, it will still take him at least 5 more yrs (if I don't help him) to save enough for a down payment for a $1.5M starter house. A starter home in my area is around $1M now....but it will probably be around $1.5M by the time my kid is ready to buy one.
 
Big Time Hoosier said:
Fortunately, you graduated in a different time than today. Your educational debt to income was not what current grads have. You bought your homes with a much lower interest rate, and when the median home price to income was 2-3, not the 5-6 today. You had money in the market and took advantage of the 10 year stock boom. The math for dentistry has significantly changed in the last 15-20 years. It’s getting pretty sad…

Big Hoss
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It really is eye opening to think about being a dentist before the dot com boom. You make a ton of cash and then have your investments explode when Amazon and apple are in their infancy. Houses were all dirt cheap. It is objectively harder for the younger generation of dentists. Not impossible, but harder
 
D1Bound said:
It really is eye opening to think about being a dentist before the dot com boom. You make a ton of cash and then have your investments explode when Amazon and apple are in their infancy. Houses were all dirt cheap. It is objectively harder for the younger generation of dentists. Not impossible, but harder
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During the dot com period, I was still a 4th year student and was about to start the GPR residency and then ortho residency. I remember a dental classmate, who worked as an associate general dentist at a small slow office making $300/day, told me “Charlestweed, we’re in the wrong profession. Look at how much those engineer guys make and they only went to school for 4 years.” At that time, I didn’t understand what he talked about because I was still a clueless ortho resident. The guy later took the Western Dental Board, left CA, and moved to TX….and it’s where he started building his massive wealth. He currently owns more than 20 properties in TX. His daughter will apply for dental schools next year.

I didn’t start investing until 2008, when the housing market crashed and home prices became more affordable. Before that, we had spent the first 5-7 years of our career (working 6 days/wk) to pay off my and my wife’s combine $450k student loans and another $175k in practice loans.
 
702 said:
Would you say every people facing profession face the same worsening in most everything about the humans?
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Yes. I would encourage my children to look for professions where you are not public facing and you work with at a minimum, college educated people. The only way I can encourage them to consider teeth is if I am able to build something with my practices and the timing is right where they can take over and turn into a very attractive asset. Otherwise the effort on the grind to build a profitable business is probably better spent in another field, not in patient-facing healthcare.
 
I’m genuinely confused. Private lenders have said they won’t go over $500k in total loans and we know for a fact that cost of attendance for at least 10 schools will be about $650k. Yet there are masses of predentals spending a lot of money on interviews at these schools. Do all of these people have access to $150k cash? Why spend money and time interviewing if not? I feel like there’s is something I’m missing.
 
texas-tornado said:
I’m genuinely confused. Private lenders have said they won’t go over $500k in total loans and we know for a fact that cost of attendance for at least 10 schools will be about $650k. Yet there are masses of predentals spending a lot of money on interviews at these schools. Do all of these people have access to $150k cash? Why spend money and time interviewing if not? I feel like there’s is something I’m missing.
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If pre-dents had the ability to make a financially sound decision, they'd never have applied to private dental schools in the first place.
 
texas-tornado said:
I’m genuinely confused. Private lenders have said they won’t go over $500k in total loans and we know for a fact that cost of attendance for at least 10 schools will be about $650k. Yet there are masses of predentals spending a lot of money on interviews at these schools. Do all of these people have access to $150k cash? Why spend money and time interviewing if not? I feel like there’s is something I’m missing.
Click to expand...
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Big Hoss
 
As noted in my signature below, the Fall 2025 Applicant Experience Survey is now open. It is open to all applicants for medicine, dentistry, and other health professions.

The survey includes the question:
💰 How much is your management of educational debt a factor in your application process (paying for schooling, selecting a high-paying career, opportunities to serve my community)?
 
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