I heard some great things about Temple and I have an interview there in a couple weeks. In my eyes Temple> MWU-AZ. Every school will have some bad apples and things that can be improved. The difference in cost is over 200k and both schools are strong clinically. I can see how the location of Arizona maybe appealing but unless you really want to boggle down and work rural afterwards to pay the debt off in a reasonable time I would stick with Temple.
They are not the only school to place implants; there are many others. They tow the line with what they say, I personally didn't like that since they are effectively lying. I don't think the traffic is as bad as here in Toronto or LA or NYC. Regardless, the cycle isn't over and perhaps some other options may open up to you.
It’s sad to hear this story. Since they have been out of school for couple years and the tuition and fees are increasing at the rate of 4%-7%, I will assume the debt now is over 650k... Unless parents wanna pay for the 500k expense to avoid the interest, otherwise it will be a huge debt.
Interesting thread. It seems there is a lot of bias in here, so I'll offer the other side as a current MWU-AZ student. I will be probably be equally biased.
First, a lot of people in this thread seem to have horror stories about grads from our program. For everyone you know who is failing, I can give you an example of a grad from our school who is doing exceptionally well. And don't think for a moment that there aren't people graduating from other schools and working corporate, going "nowhere fast" as someone earlier said. I hate to break it to you guys, but most of you will be working corporate straight out of school too.
A D4 friend of mine here at MWU-AZ is buying a practice grossing $1.2 million. He is an outlier in that he is smart and super motivated, but he managed to secure the small business loans DESPITE having a huge debt load like the rest of us. He also runs a dental podcast (some of you may have heard it) about buying dental practices.
Our program is expensive. All private dental schools are expensive. If you don't have the luxury of a state school like me, then you choose the best private option you can find. OP has the choice between Temple and MWU-AZ. After doing the fee + tuition calculations I found Temple's tuition cost to be $295,032 for a PA resident. Tuition + fees at MWU-AZ is $368,897.
If you are not a PA resident, then you will pay $323,840 to go to Temple which really isn't that much cheaper than MWU-AZ folks; especially not when you consider how much money you save on CE and living expenses by going to Midwestern. For OP it makes slightly more financial sense to go to Temple (cost of living?), but not everyone is a PA resident. But OP isn't a fool for considering MWU-AZ.
There are a lot of people here arguing that MWU-AZ offers an inferior clinical education. I find that interesting, because every other week we have faculty and admin from other schools touring our SIM clinic to see what we're doing differently. Just this year UDM decided to revamp their entire pre-clinical course and base it off of our program. Every year we are taking transfer students from other programs who are absolutely blown away by what we are doing.
When I was interviewing, the one question I asked students at each dental school was "if you didn't go here, where would you go?" The most consistent answer I got was "MWU-AZ, because they are learning way more stuff than anyone else I know." UOP was a close second. When I was speaking with OMFS residents, radiology residents, anesthesia residents at other programs they consistently said that MWU-AZ is offering things to their pre-doctoral students that no other school can match. They meet our students on the interview circuit, compare notes, and are surprised at what we do here. Maybe I just happened to speak to a bunch of people across the country who had super positive things to say about this program, but that seems like a bit of a stretch.
So yeah, you can talk about how Creighton places implants. Good for them. Do they learn four different implant systems (Bicon, BioHorizons, Straumann, and Hiossen) during their 2nd year when most dental students are still studying for the boards we passed after our first year? And guess who will be sucking up all the implants cases at many dental schools? The OMFS and perio residents... We have 4 OMFS residents here at MWU-AZ, meaning the vast majority of implants go to us. Students who aren't interested in implants usually hand them off to students who are. Given that we live in a retirement city, the 5th largest metropolitan area in the US now (larger than Philly), we get lots of retired folks with money and aging dentition. What is the patient population like at your favorite school?
And one of the beautiful things about our program is that because the patient is ours, we get to say whether or not we want to do the case or hand it off. There is no ortho resident breathing down our necks waiting for a particularly juicy case to come along to steal away from us. If we choose to keep the case, then our specialty faculty will work with us 1-on-1 in the specialty clinic and help us do even the most difficult molar endo or impacted bony third extraction. In the entire state of Arizona there is only one small ortho residency at ASDOH and one small OMFS program at our school. We get to do a ton of procedures that students at other schools have to feed to their specialty students and residents.
Going back to the subject of implants, we are guaranteed placement of 4 dental implants at the very least. That's the minimum. Students who want to are placing WAY more. I know a female grad last year who placed 25 by herself from start to finish, and assisted with placement of 40+ more. She had lost count and had to look back at her charts to tell me what she'd done. She said other people in the class had done more. I have multiple all-on-four cases setup for next year when I go over to the clinic. How many schools are allowing pre-doctoral students to place all-on-fours from start to finish? Is Creighton doing that?
Lots of interviewees come through our program and get confused when they are told we are the only school that does this or that. We are the only school allowing pre-doctoral students to do their own all-on-four prosthetic cases as far as I know, and that is the claim our school makes. No other school has the facilities or trains their pre-doctoral students to do so. If you guys know of another school where pre-doctoral students are doing their own CBCT, 3D printed surgical guides, osteotomy, quadruple implant placement with gingival and bone grafting, and then placing an all-on-four system, please tell me about it because I would love to look into that program further. How many schools even have one CBCT? We have multiple!
Our dental clinic is the most productive in the US. Years ago it was UOP, now it's us. We put out more CAD/CAM dentistry than anywhere on Earth. Where some schools are averaging 5-6 crown placements, our school is averaging over 40. Last year I assisted a D4 who placed NINE lithium disilicate crowns in the same patient during one clinic day. Not a single dentist I shadowed ever placed that many in a single day on the same patient! The next time I rotated, her D3 partner was placing SIX CAD/CAM crowns (lithium disilicate and Zirconia with shading) in a patient. How many CAD/CAM crowns are being done at other schools? How many Cerec, E4D, and Trios scanners / mills do other schools actually have for their pre-doctoral students? Oh right, many schools are still doing PFM... Because that's definitely the future.
How many schools are allowing pre-doctoral students to treatment plan ortho cases, place brackets, and to do their own Invisalign cases? How many schools will allow you to see 8+ patients per clinic day? Does Temple even have the capacity to allow students to see that many patients? Most schools see 2-3 IF you can even get the chair time. How many schools are using hard and soft tissue lasers in their clinic? How many schools are actively encouraging their pre-doctoral students to get their PALS and ACLS certifications for advanced sedation?
We have opportunities to go to Tonga, Samoa, and Guatemala, which many of us do to beef up our endo experience. If there is one area that our clinic may be lacking, it is endo cases. Some students will do a bunch of them, but for the most part, we do mission trips to get more endo experience.
Is our school expensive? Yes it is when compared to state programs. But when you compare us to private schools, not so much. All private schools are expensive.
And before anyone assumes that I didn't have other options, I was accepted to six programs. I had no state option, and given what I learned about MWU-AZ determined that this was the best way to spend way too much money for a degree.
If I am the patient who needs to do bony third molar extraction, I am not gonna let dental students do it, cuz they probably cannot avoid nerve damages. That’s why they have to have omfs do it. No offense. I just feel like it’s not very a very good idea to make d-students think they can do anything even though they can’t. As a future dentist, you need to know what your limits are and don’t risk doing things that you are not competent at. You need to know when to refer those patients out instead of “trying”.Interesting thread. It seems there is a lot of bias in here, so I'll offer the other side as a current MWU-AZ student. I will be probably be equally biased.
First, a lot of people in this thread seem to have horror stories about grads from our program. For everyone you know who is failing, I can give you an example of a grad from our school who is doing exceptionally well. And don't think for a moment that there aren't people graduating from other schools and working corporate, going "nowhere fast" as someone earlier said. I hate to break it to you guys, but most of you will be working corporate straight out of school too.
A D4 friend of mine here at MWU-AZ is buying a practice grossing $1.2 million. He is an outlier in that he is smart and super motivated, but he managed to secure the small business loans DESPITE having a huge debt load like the rest of us. He also runs a dental podcast (some of you may have heard it) about buying dental practices.
Our program is expensive. All private dental schools are expensive. If you don't have the luxury of a state school like me, then you choose the best private option you can find. OP has the choice between Temple and MWU-AZ. After doing the fee + tuition calculations I found Temple's tuition cost to be $295,032 for a PA resident. Tuition + fees at MWU-AZ is $368,897.
If you are not a PA resident, then you will pay $323,840 to go to Temple which really isn't that much cheaper than MWU-AZ folks; especially not when you consider how much money you save on CE and living expenses by going to Midwestern. For OP it makes slightly more financial sense to go to Temple (cost of living?), but not everyone is a PA resident. But OP isn't a fool for considering MWU-AZ.
There are a lot of people here arguing that MWU-AZ offers an inferior clinical education. I find that interesting, because every other week we have faculty and admin from other schools touring our SIM clinic to see what we're doing differently. Just this year UDM decided to revamp their entire pre-clinical course and base it off of our program. Every year we are taking transfer students from other programs who are absolutely blown away by what we are doing.
When I was interviewing, the one question I asked students at each dental school was "if you didn't go here, where would you go?" The most consistent answer I got was "MWU-AZ, because they are learning way more stuff than anyone else I know." UOP was a close second. When I was speaking with OMFS residents, radiology residents, anesthesia residents at other programs they consistently said that MWU-AZ is offering things to their pre-doctoral students that no other school can match. They meet our students on the interview circuit, compare notes, and are surprised at what we do here. Maybe I just happened to speak to a bunch of people across the country who had super positive things to say about this program, but that seems like a bit of a stretch.
So yeah, you can talk about how Creighton places implants. Good for them. Do they learn four different implant systems (Bicon, BioHorizons, Straumann, and Hiossen) during their 2nd year when most dental students are still studying for the boards we passed after our first year? And guess who will be sucking up all the implants cases at many dental schools? The OMFS and perio residents... We have 4 OMFS residents here at MWU-AZ, meaning the vast majority of implants go to us. Students who aren't interested in implants usually hand them off to students who are. Given that we live in a retirement city, the 5th largest metropolitan area in the US now (larger than Philly), we get lots of retired folks with money and aging dentition. What is the patient population like at your favorite school?
And one of the beautiful things about our program is that because the patient is ours, we get to say whether or not we want to do the case or hand it off. There is no ortho resident breathing down our necks waiting for a particularly juicy case to come along to steal away from us. If we choose to keep the case, then our specialty faculty will work with us 1-on-1 in the specialty clinic and help us do even the most difficult molar endo or impacted bony third extraction. In the entire state of Arizona there is only one small ortho residency at ASDOH and one small OMFS program at our school. We get to do a ton of procedures that students at other schools have to feed to their specialty students and residents.
Going back to the subject of implants, we are guaranteed placement of 4 dental implants at the very least. That's the minimum. Students who want to are placing WAY more. I know a female grad last year who placed 25 by herself from start to finish, and assisted with placement of 40+ more. She had lost count and had to look back at her charts to tell me what she'd done. She said other people in the class had done more. I have multiple all-on-four cases setup for next year when I go over to the clinic. How many schools are allowing pre-doctoral students to place all-on-fours from start to finish? Is Creighton doing that?
Lots of interviewees come through our program and get confused when they are told we are the only school that does this or that. We are the only school allowing pre-doctoral students to do their own all-on-four prosthetic cases as far as I know, and that is the claim our school makes. No other school has the facilities or trains their pre-doctoral students to do so. If you guys know of another school where pre-doctoral students are doing their own CBCT, 3D printed surgical guides, osteotomy, quadruple implant placement with gingival and bone grafting, and then placing an all-on-four system, please tell me about it because I would love to look into that program further. How many schools even have one CBCT? We have multiple!
Our dental clinic is the most productive in the US. Years ago it was UOP, now it's us. We put out more CAD/CAM dentistry than anywhere on Earth. Where some schools are averaging 5-6 crown placements, our school is averaging over 40. Last year I assisted a D4 who placed NINE lithium disilicate crowns in the same patient during one clinic day. Not a single dentist I shadowed ever placed that many in a single day on the same patient! The next time I rotated, her D3 partner was placing SIX CAD/CAM crowns (lithium disilicate and Zirconia with shading) in a patient. How many CAD/CAM crowns are being done at other schools? How many Cerec, E4D, and Trios scanners / mills do other schools actually have for their pre-doctoral students? Oh right, many schools are still doing PFM... Because that's definitely the future.
How many schools are allowing pre-doctoral students to treatment plan ortho cases, place brackets, and to do their own Invisalign cases? How many schools will allow you to see 8+ patients per clinic day? Does Temple even have the capacity to allow students to see that many patients? Most schools see 2-3 IF you can even get the chair time. How many schools are using hard and soft tissue lasers in their clinic? How many schools are actively encouraging their pre-doctoral students to get their PALS and ACLS certifications for advanced sedation?
We have opportunities to go to Tonga, Samoa, and Guatemala, which many of us do to beef up our endo experience. If there is one area that our clinic may be lacking, it is endo cases. Some students will do a bunch of them, but for the most part, we do mission trips to get more endo experience.
Is our school expensive? Yes it is when compared to state programs. But when you compare us to private schools, not so much. All private schools are expensive.
And before anyone assumes that I didn't have other options, I was accepted to six programs. I had no state option, and given what I learned about MWU-AZ determined that this was the best way to spend way too much money for a degree.
Let’s just make the calculation easier, just tuition + instrument fees: non-PA: 62898 X 4 + 7440 +5764+4120+4500=273416. I don’t understand how you get that 330k number. It’s significantly less than MWU. And I have asked Temple students about if their tuition and fees are subject to the 4%-7% change. They said no. It’s the same. Maybe 1k more after two or three years. However, mwuaz really increases a lot. Not every dental school in this country is subject to 4%-7% increase in tuition and fees annually. I would say most private schools and few public schools do, not all of them. Don’t be allures by the marketing dept of mwu.
No, is easy to find a decent place to live with around 10k rent per year. A 2b2b apt costs around 1.8-2k at Roxborough. The coa listed on temple website is very representative. I don’t think you can finish your four years at MWU with 460k with that annual increase in tuition and fees. At least, 490k.
As I said, most private schools and a few public schools do. Not “EVERY SCHOOL”. The tuition at temple this year is the same as last year. If you doubt, grab a Temple student and ask them. I have talked to at least three of them, none of them said the tuition increase significantly, maybe 1k after two years or three years. Private schools increase a lot because they don’t get enough funding from the state, and they keep buying lots of “FANCY” stuff.
That’s why I said the coa if temple is very representative. You pay 11k for rent and then 5000 for food. But the problem with mwu is the lower rent cannot make up for the significant increase in tuition and fees.
Well. If you don’t believe it, call temple. It’s simple.
The evidence is, mwu projected their coa at 510k and temple 380k. Period.
98748+98674+96786+91190=382698. Period. That’s the official number from official site. Not your calculation.
Ok, mwu wins. Even I add 20k on the living cost, it’s still 400k, at most 420k. Mwu coa will be 510k according to the admission office because of the tuition increase. I am not gonna go cuz I don’t have half million even mwu wins. I have to be considerate for my sister in a private high school, those money I save can cover some of the cost for her. Not gonna argue anymore.
Tuition increases in all schools historically, the number just varies between schools.
Thanks for confirming what I said. The high coa for mwu comes from the significant increase in tuition and instrument fees. Their instrument fee is now over 13k which is insane. And it will increase every year...
You have to consider the significant instrument fees (already 13k) increase at 4%-7%, whereas temple barely change, still around 5k-7k depends on the grade. Actually temple did not increase 2.8k in tuition in one year, students said they were about the same. Not 60k last year and 62.8k this year. You can look back the oos tuition 5 years ago, that was 58k. So around 1k increase every year maybe. Definitely not 4.6%. And the instrument fees are the same. At MWU, tuition + fees already over 87k and this 87k will increase 4%-7% ever year, so it’s gonna be a lot. I am not planing to live with other ppl since the 1b1b apt in Philly is around 1k per month, only 250 more compared with mwuaz. So I can still save at least 80k if I go to Temple.
