Is it true that Harvard dental school has the same curriculum like Harvard med.?

[PikminOC]

Did you get a chance to discuss basic statistics with him?

9 out of 10 dentists think the 10th dentist is an idiot

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[Member3]

I think it is funny that the vast majority of you all complaining about dentists learning basic adv. sciences are probably medical students. Pat yourself on the back because you yourself have finally taken an adv. science class.

What is it that you are exactly whinning about? That dentists have to actually learn basic science before they can practice independently? So would you argue that it is pointless for a nurse or NP to have to take basic & adv. sciences too? Afterall, they are not by any means qualified to make an scientific diagnosis/treatment.

I would honestly laugh at you (the ones that complain/bitch about everything) to have to take the science courses I did. Ph.D in ChemE is a hell of a lot more intellectually challenging than trying to memorize books & notes. Sorry. BTW, we did not get to skip class to study all day, watch lectures via internet, and take past practice exams.

 

[SpecterGT260]

I think it is funny that the vast majority of you all complaining about dentists learning basic adv. sciences are probably medical students. Pat yourself on the back because you yourself have finally taken an adv. science class.

What is it that you are exactly whinning about? That dentists have to actually learn basic science before they can practice independently? So would you argue that it is pointless for a nurse or NP to have to take basic & adv. sciences too? Afterall, they are not by any means qualified to make an scientific diagnosis/treatment.

I would honestly laugh at you (the ones that complain/bitch about everything) to have to take the science courses I did. Ph.D in ChemE is a hell of a lot more intellectually challenging than trying to memorize books & notes. Sorry. BTW, we did not get to skip class to study all day, watch lectures via internet, and take past practice exams.

I'm gunna say no. And here is why (bear with me)

If your courses were so much more difficult one would assume you are equally or more intelligent.

However.... someone with only half of the intelligence of the average med student would understand how fruitless an argument is where you speak on the relative difficulty of something you did vs something you didn't do... so I have to conclude you ain't nun too bright


P.s.... as I mentioned at my school we have grad students in many of our courses. Not a one of them wants to trade course loads with us. Anecdotally, given the amount of time my grad friends spend downtown or being social compared to me and my classmates I'm gunna go ahead and say you are blowing smoke. Or maybe celebrating Colorado's new laws


Also... I dont recall anyone complaining about them learning basic sciences.... so I also question your reading comprehension.

 

[ClemsonFirst]

I would honestly laugh at you (the ones that complain/bitch about everything) to have to take the science courses I did. Ph.D in ChemE is a hell of a lot more intellectually challenging than trying to memorize books & notes. Sorry. BTW, we did not get to skip class to study all day, watch lectures via internet, and take past practice exams.

 

[tingting]

Harvard is known to send a large proportion of grads to OMFS. Considering that specialty involves putting faces back together, it makes perfect sense why they share basic curriculum.

 

[PikminOC]

I think it is funny that the vast majority of you all complaining about dentists learning basic adv. sciences are probably medical students. Pat yourself on the back because you yourself have finally taken an adv. science class.

What is it that you are exactly whinning about? That dentists have to actually learn basic science before they can practice independently? So would you argue that it is pointless for a nurse or NP to have to take basic & adv. sciences too? Afterall, they are not by any means qualified to make an scientific diagnosis/treatment.

I would honestly laugh at you (the ones that complain/bitch about everything) to have to take the science courses I did. Ph.D in ChemE is a hell of a lot more intellectually challenging than trying to memorize books & notes. Sorry. BTW, we did not get to skip class to study all day, watch lectures via internet, and take past practice exams.

So, you made an acct and jumped on SDN to tell us this because...? Aren't there any ChemE Phd boards where you all can complain about us??

 

[FlowRate]

Harvard is known to send a large proportion of grads to OMFS. Considering that specialty involves putting faces back together, it makes perfect sense why they share basic curriculum.

About half of our current dental class is interested in OMFS. 70% of them are definitely going OMFS. The 1st year class is >half into OMFS. Almost everyone at HSDM gets into a specialty (which is rare in dentistry), especially thanks to their academic prowess. Specializing in dentistry is much like medicine--they are an academic institution and value research.

I'm really proud of our dental students. I would say 4 of the top 10 in our combined class of ~150 are dental students (whereas they are only 1/5 the population).

So, you made an acct and jumped on SDN to tell us this because...? Aren't there any ChemE Phd boards where you all can complain about us??

ChemE's like to tell other people about how awesome they are.

It's that old joke. How do you know someone was a ChemE? They told you.

Source: I'm a ChemE. /irony

However, Engineering and Medicine are totally different fields, in terms of the educational experience. Engineering does a terrible job preparing you for the huge volume of memorization in medical school. Engineers like to think that med school will be comparatively easy. It may be, conceptually, but it's still a lot of work.

 

[surftheiop]

Engineering does a terrible job preparing you for the huge volume of memorization in medical school. Engineers like to think that med school will be comparatively easy. It may be, conceptually, but it's still a lot of work.

I agree with this, as an engineering student I felt like I spent way more time thinking, but very little time studying. It would take forever to do homework assignments/projects/etc., but I almost never actually studied for tests because they were mostly open notes anyway and you knew the professor was going to ask you do do something you had never seen before.

As a second year, medschool seems like the conceptual level of highschool science class, but in highschool they would have spent an entire hour on each powerpoint slide and here they pack like a million into each hour

 

[DREDAY]

Having done both medical and dental school, I can say that dental school was more challenging to go through than medical school. Primarily because of the higher workload in dental school than medical. Obviously in medical school I learned more detailed pathophysiology and physical diagnosis. The other subjects were identical. In medical school lectures ended at noon and I had all day to study for class. In dental school classes ended at 5-7 pm and I still had to practice hand skills.

I'm not saying one is superior to the other. They are each trying to accomplish different things in their educational model. But I can honestly say that the combination of having such little time to study in addition to developing hand-eye coordination skills made dental school more challenging.

 

[PikminOC]

I think its great you did both. I understand that the hand eye coordination is very difficult and the requirements etc in dental school. Having had basic science dental classes were a solid foundation for med school and your NBDE score was very high, over 95% perhaps.

However, I have also an n of 1 where i saw an OMFS in the MD program unable to complete the USMLE step exams even though he had been thru the basic science dental and medical curriculum. His OMFS contract was not renewed due to the multiple failures. .He had obviously done very well on the NBDE exams including the first one, the basic science one.

The other OMFS MD curriculum residents I have met are cream of the crop dental students, certainly not the avg dental student.

I'm sure you were very conscientious throughout both trainings and may even go into oncology.

Everyone is different.

 

[DREDAY]

I think its great you did both. I understand that the hand eye coordination is very difficult and the requirements etc in dental school. Having had basic science dental classes were a solid foundation for med school and your NBDE score was very high, over 95% perhaps.

However, I have also an n of 1 where i saw an OMFS in the MD program unable to complete the USMLE step exams even though he had been thru the basic science dental and medical curriculum. His OMFS contract was not renewed due to the multiple failures. .He had obviously done very well on the NBDE exams including the first one, the basic science one.

The other OMFS MD curriculum residents I have met are cream of the crop dental students, certainly not the avg dental student.

I'm sure you were very conscientious throughout both trainings and may even go into oncology.

Everyone is different.

Likewise there are plenty Omfs getting 250-270. Beats me any why omfs would want a 270.

In any case, in order to address discrepancies in nbde vs usmle. All Omfs applicants will now take nbme exam in addition to nbde prior to applying to Omfs.

 

[PikminOC]

I guess my main point is that you guys in OMFS MD program are the tip top of your dental school class.

Thanks for the new info regarding the nmbe/nbde requirements. How do you take the nbme when you are not enrolled in an accredited med school?

 

[peteB]

I agree with this, as an engineering student I felt like I spent way more time thinking, but very little time studying. It would take forever to do homework assignments/projects/etc., but I almost never actually studied for tests because they were mostly open notes anyway and you knew the professor was going to ask you do do something you had never seen before.

As a second year, medschool seems like the conceptual level of highschool science class, but in highschool they would have spent an entire hour on each powerpoint slide and here they pack like a million into each hour

You're very right. The concepts in med school are pretty straightforward, it's the volume that gets you. I did computer science before med school and in my CS classes I also found myself spending most of my time thinking and not much time, if at all, memorizing. Certain concepts were so complicated it took me days to fully grasp them, but I have not found myself spending even close to that much time grasping any concept in medicine. CS was nice, because once you fully understand the concept, you're good to go. You don't need to go nuts craming info into your head right before the test. Cramming doesn't help at all.

Anyway, the point is that different fields have way different methods of education and you can't really compare them.

 

[SpecterGT260]

You're very right. The concepts in med school are pretty straightforward, it's the volume that gets you. I did computer science before med school and in my CS classes I also found myself spending most of my time thinking and not much time, if at all, memorizing. Certain concepts were so complicated it took me days to fully grasp them, but I have not found myself spending even close to that much time grasping any concept in medicine. CS was nice, because once you fully understand the concept, you're good to go. You don't need to go nuts craming info into your head right before the test. Cramming doesn't help at all.

Volume + minutia. I hate it when I know the subject the test question is asking about, I could have a conversation about it, but just can't remember 1 detail that ends up on a mc question that could falsify the entire foil.

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[peteB]

Volume + minutia. I hate it when I know the subject the test question is asking about, I could have a conversation about it, but just can't remember 1 detail that ends up on a mc question that could falsify the entire foil.

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Yeah, that's because the way our professors write questions is wrong. They focus way too much on minutia. Also, in first year, many of our PhD professors spent way too much time teaching us every last detail of their own research and hammered us on minutia from it on the tests.

 

[SpecterGT260]

That sucks... we have never been tested on content from specific profs research. That's absurd. If it isn't published it is borderline wrong to even teach it.

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[DREDAY]

I guess my main point is that you guys in OMFS MD program are the tip top of your dental school class.

Thanks for the new info regarding the nmbe/nbde requirements. How do you take the nbme when you are not enrolled in an accredited med school?

I guess the board of Omfs got some sort of agreement with usmle/acgme to take the test. Not too sure of details. But that started this year.

 

[KillaCam]

I guess the board of Omfs got some sort of agreement with usmle/acgme to take the test. Not too sure of details. But that started this year.

Yeah for all OMFS applicants now we are required to take the NBME, which was offered for the first time this last September and will now be offered 2X each year. I believe that all OMFS programs are looking for is for one to just pass it with an NBME score of 65=188 USMLE Step 1 score.

Not an easy thing to do considering most dental students do not have a med cirriculum to share with the med school, which means 80% or more is all self study.

Here is a thread that discusses our scores and such......
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=888425&page=3

 

[PikminOC]

I think the accepted OMFS students are self studiers and the majority of them will have no problem passing the NBME.

 

[gethscout]

It doesn't surprise me. Dental school is hard to get into these days.

I have a good friend who tried to get into dental school, didn't get in to any she applied to, gave up and is now at a US allopathic medical school. There is at least one future MD out there who is a dental school reject.

My friend did not want to pay over $60,000 and she didn't get into any of those competitive (AKA cheaper) dental schools so as she puts it "settled for an MD since I've already studied everything on the MCAT and the prerequisites are the same". So it shouldn't really be a surprise we have a lot of the same courses the first few years. The requirements/hoops to jump through to get in are very similar.

She should consider it a blessing...
MD > DDS by orders of magnitude.

 

[ArcGurren]

She should consider it a blessing...
MD > DDS by orders of magnitude.

Why the **** did you resurrect this particularly stupid thread?

 

[dichloromethane]

For the first two years, but that's because people who go to Harvard dental don't become dentists...Harvard has a 100% specialization rate. They become orthodontists, periodontists, oral and maxilliofacial surgeons, endos etc.

OMFS have to go to medical school on top of dental school, so a lot of pre-dents feel that going to a school where you're put in with medical students is beneficial. Columbia does this too. Maybe Upenn and UCSF.

It's pedigree. Every pre-dent and dead dentists knows that Harvard doesn't turn out good clinicians. They turn out great researchers and specialists. Pedigree is important I guess. It'll probably become more important in all fields as colleges get more selective weeding out the those that don't need to go to college in the first place..and it'll carry on to grad school.

Happened with law and business. It'll probably happen with the rest of the fields as pharmacy, dentistry, nursing, PA and maybe medicine become more competitive and saturated.

It's true among the PhDs as that market becomes saturated too.
http://chronicle.com/article/PhDs-From-Top/136113/

 

[D elegans]

 

[Katzen7]

For the first two years, but that's because people who go to Harvard dental don't become dentists...Harvard has a 100% specialization rate. They become orthodontists, periodontists, oral and maxilliofacial surgeons, endos etc.

OMFS have to go to medical school on top of dental school, so a lot of pre-dents feel that going to a school where you're put in with medical students is beneficial. Columbia does this too. Maybe Upenn and UCSF.

It's pedigree. Every pre-dent and dead dentists knows that Harvard doesn't turn out good clinicians. They turn out great researchers and specialists. Pedigree is important I guess. It'll probably become more important in all fields as colleges get more selective weeding out the those that don't need to go to college in the first place..and it'll carry on to grad school.

Happened with law and business. It'll probably happen with the rest of the fields as pharmacy, dentistry, nursing, PA and maybe medicine become more competitive and saturated.

It's true among the PhDs as that market becomes saturated too.
http://chronicle.com/article/PhDs-From-Top/136113/

I hate to bring this up again, especially because arguing on this thread is pointless, filled with bias, and know one's minds are going to change regardless of the facts, BUT:

1. Periodontists, Endodontists, Oral Surgeons, Orthodontists, Prosthodontists, or any of the other dental specialties are all dentists! (radical!) So saying they don't become dentists is not true and misleading. In order to practice any of these specialties effectively you need a solid base in general dentistry. Also, there are always graduates from Harvard Dental going into private practice general dentistry - some actually even skip the optional General Practice Residency (GPR).

2. Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons do NOT have to attend medical school. In fact, less than half of all OMFS programs offer the M.D. option. Medical training is peripheral to training and scope of oral surgeons' practice.

3. The only dental schools 100% integrated with the medical school the first two years are Harvard, Columbia, and UConn. I have heard that UCSF and Stony Brook also have a large component, but not to the extent of the three schools first listed.

 

[SOML]

nvm. lol