Everyone says that nothing but $$$ matters when applying to d-school but I'll argue that NYU is the very specific reason why that is no longer true. It's progressive, state of the art (whoever said the facilities are dungy hasn't been there in the last couple of years or at least didn't make it out of the basement level), and, as Dr. Wong from UCLA said (who is leading the proteome mapping in salivary diagnostics), "NYU will be the dental school against which all other dental schools are compared by 2011".
Think about other professional schools (medicine, law) and how different each program is -- based on rankings, research, and depth of faculty in a particular area. I'd argue that if you want to drill and fill for the rest of your life you'll learn how to be a competent dentist anywhere and $$$ (and maybe sunshine) really is the determining factor. However, if you are suckered into the belief that the application of dentistry as a "medical" profession (salivary Dx, systemic health/oral disease correlation, etc) is our future then you would be best served attending a school that was dedicated towards this educational philosophy. I don't know anything about how Nova's tackling this, but I'm pretty impressed with NYU so far...
In the end, you win either way. Dentistry is getting to the point where it will be crazy hard to get in ANYWHERE, let alone have to make a choice between schools. It seems the secret got out that this is the best profession out there...