That "daily site maintenance" took longer than expected. I will respond to people in this one big post.
I do want to be a businessman. But I do enjoy dentistry, as I learned when shadowing 100+ hours.
If I offended you, I apologize. And I agree, there is more untapped dentistry in those rural areas.
I will redact my wording of "intelligent". "Less educated" seems to be more appropriate. I grew up in two different rural towns before living in NJ so I can speak from first hand experience there are "less educated" people due to the lack of quality education that more urban areas can provide. You don't see billionaire fund managers and tech geniuses coming from a farm town.
As people can change political views, they can change goals too.
I used to have the mindset that I will be a regular dentist working in IL, but I learned that I like business while I was working a corporate job this past year.
Also my family dentist is an SIUE grad (who wrote me my letter), and I carry a lot of respect for him.
I do believe the business field is where I want to go. But I also believe I'll be good at dentistry (I'm good with my hands and I have a pretty high DAT).
So why not combine the two? Also NYU offers a DDS/MBA joint program with Stern, which is one of the best MBA schools in the nation.
Running a dental practice or chain is a business. I know one would need to employ cut-throat business strategies to eliminate/push out smaller practices from of the area if your goal is to maximize your patient pool and revenue.
Being in a rural area will get you more patients/revenue sure. I always heard from dentists that "if you practice in a rural area, you will live like a king". But I doubt I will meet people with extensive knowledge of banking, finances, law, corporate management, etc in a rural area. And I think you are discounting the value that connections may make you. My father met many capable and driven friends by going to Seoul National University (which is basically the Harvard of Korea), which then his friends later started their own multi-hundreds of million dollar companies and then helped my dad start his own pharma company by connecting him to large investors/VCs as well as serve as his advisors. So witnessing that myself, I think NYU can provide me those type of opportunities, and 250k for that kind of potential is a small price to pay.
Graduating and moving later is always an option. But after graduating from undergrad, I realized it is so much harder to make friends/connections "organically". Maybe its COVID playing a factor, but I hear many say "I don't think I'll ever make as many connections as I did in college".
Where's exhibit B?
Thank you for going to the trouble of finding that information.
The tuition portion is accurate. Everything else I think will vary heavily on the individual. I did my own research and 250k is the number I ended with.
You do bring up a fairly good point in regards to time, but its not as if dental school will consume all waking hours of my life (or I sure hope not). But I do have friends who are current Stern students or recently graduated living in Manhattan to hopefully make that process easier.
Unfortunately you are correct about there being a good amount of unintelligent people as well. I suppose my argument is that there is a
bigger pool of people, thus the chances of me running into someone who is well-educated and intelligent is higher than in places outside of nyc.
Other dental students are highly intelligent (usually) and probably more likely to collaborate, especially for opening joint practices. But the issue I am concerned about is that dental students' knowledge is typically restrained to healthcare and operating a dental practice.
I sense you all are starting to take this discussion personally through your wording as you all started to discuss less and instead moved to degrading and discrediting my statements/opinions. I apologize if you took my statements personally. I'm simply making counter arguments as I tend to play devil's advocate (as I am doing now with the general sentiment of "go to the cheaper school") for pretty much anything and hoping for you all to prove me otherwise.
To clarify, I came here to see if anyone had
pros and cons about either school ASIDE FROM COST (e.g. their program, student life, etc).
I am aware (and been continuously made more aware) of the loans and debt.
