First let me start off by completely agreeing that each dental school is unique in its experience and how they approach teaching, grading ect. My dental school (UoP) is what I would call a 'high DAT preference school' with an emphasis on getting the same clinical experience in just 3 years and very little emphasis on producing specialists. However, overall patterns I noticed from dental school.
1. Exams from basic science professors were miles better than tests from dentist. Dentists are among the worst test writers I have ever seen in my life. Questions were almost never thrown out even when 95% of the class missed questions (I examined many post test analysis reports).
Dental school exams overall tend to emphasize rote memorization and regurgitation with buzzwords and less emphasis on good differential diagnosis. Take a medical school test like the new oral surgery entrance exam NBME CBSE and you will probably want a refund from your dental school for the basic science they 'taught' you.
2. Clinical grades are fairly subjective since they are not conducted like licensure exams where the examiners never see the candidate. The classic example is old retired dentists grading young female students in nonprofessional attire.
3. I completely agree that a student with a 3.8 is a better dentist than one with a 2.8, but there can be less of a difference than you think. Another common example: Someone who struggles initially with hand skills, but spends a lot of time practicing to improve-- and they do. However, they improve at the cost of study time for didactics, but still has a solid understanding of basic dentistry. Another example: someone who has excellent handskills, but slacks off with patient management or hitting all the goals for required numbers (just completes the minimums of certain areas and works hard in other areas of interest).
4. Additionally, education is lifelong. If you graduate #1 but stop learning after school, then many others will continue to learn and be better dentists. I know a guy who graduates from a school that only made him do 1 endo on an anterior tooth (absolutely pathetic). This same individual knew his dental basics well, but lacked experience and confidence due to his dental school. He went to a 2 year AEGD and came out a much better dentist than many other dentists of the same graduation timeframe.
Great post.
FWIW, I have worked with UOP grads in the military, and in civilian group practice, and consider them to be very well clinically trained dentists. There were a couple of schools that I worked with graduates of (multiple grads) where I was shocked at how much less actual clinical experience / requirements they had prior to graduation. I won't name these schools in this post as I see nothing to be gained by insulting graduates of them.
And yes 90% of my instructors were male, with probably half of them being old retired military, and they were easily swayed by the attentions of an attractive young lady. I still remember the semi-hot female student in the cubicle next to mine would always wear a very tight and short skirt in the clinic, we were good friends and I would frequently say something like "I see you are doing a little fixed pros this afternoon...... (a very tough department in my school)". She would smile coyly, because she knew she was taking advantage of her "people skills" that students like myself didn't have. Always lots of giggling and touching the instructors arm and shoulder when he sat in her cubicle too......
@yappy has been a regular, and insightful, poster around the forums and is a dental student.
My biggest disappointment in dental school has been related to the grading schemes that goes on at the expense of true learning. His arguments definitely hold water and the gist of what's being stated is quite true in my experience. Dental school grading and ranking is largely due to: access to test banks (and willingness to use them), hustling the easy dental professors for sign offs, and keeping a good rapport with faculty so they are kinder to you when grading you subjectively. Combining aspects of those three is what gets you the high grades in the first half of dental school. It's an arms race - those who figure this out early on tend to have their options more open due to higher rank, grades, etc. Hand skills and business acumen obviously improve and come later.
Good points, and every school probably has some differences in the culture.
One common thread from talking to many different dentists, is that dental school is pretty much a miserable experience, lol.
I remember in my early days in the Navy, walking up to another officer, and he looked at my insignia (leaf with acorns - Navy dental corps insignia), and said, "Dentist, huh?" I saw he too was a dentist. Then he said, (obviously he could tell we were both recent grads) "Man, didn't dental school just suck balls??". It was a great ice breaker, lol, and so true.
I have been following this post and want to weigh in a little bit. I am married and am a second year dental student and live about 30 minutes away from my dental school. I have the capabilities for all intents and purposes to be top 5 in my dental school as I have a very good memory and can reguritate facts easy peasy. I am NOT the top in my class because Half of the bologna taught in the first year of dental school doesn't even apply to being a dentist so I have absolutely 0 desire to learn it I put in as much effort to not be worried about passing any class and the rest of my time trying to assist in the clinic to learn and being with my wife. The amount of effort I would have to put in to remember irrelevant facts to me just doesn't seem worth. We actually had a 3 credit course called profession, practice, and community where we did outreach to various schools for a couple of hours that had learning disabled kids such as autism, etc which was fine but then we would have lecturers that included such topics as local charter schools around the area, diversity and privilege, refugees, the amish, etc. and had an actual examination that asked about the charter schools and how many students there were. For the life of me I could not put in any effort in that bologna.
My lowered GPA due to not putting in any effort into those types of courses (we had 3 the previous semester that were all higher credits) does not make me lazy or a poor student. I am actually hoping to specialize while in the military, so when actual dental related courses start I can actually do what I came to dental school to do (learn how to be a dentist) and get my GPA up.
I appreciate your service, and you will definitely have a huge leg up when you go active duty after graduation, but personally I find it a copout to hear people say things of this nature> "I could be top of my class, BUT.........." Also comments like these are more bravado and BS than anything else. It is much easier to talk the talk, than to walk the walk in this situation.
Grades and the effort to get them talk, everything else is BS. And most of the students in dental school are pretty smart, so even if you are used to being tops in your undergrad class, you are in a whole different boat when everybody in your class is smart. I had a 4.0 undergrad GPA and got an early dental school admission. I was literally shocked at how much smarter some of the people in my class were than me. I still worked my tail off and finished in the top 10, but there is no way I could have beaten out any of the top 5 grads in my class. They were THAT smart, and worked THAT hard, and all of the top 5 had good to excellent hands.
If you are planning on specializing in the military, you will still need to have your grades in the upper half to third of your class to have even a shot at the competitive specialties. If you wanna be a "comp dentist" or prosthodontist not so much. To an extent, grades that are not tops can be overcome with a few years of top both officer fitness reports, but those too will take effort to achieve.
" is an indefensible position.
