The PBL at Case is absolutely nothing to worry about, its nothing like USC. I spoke with students during my interview and Case is primarily lectures and has some minimal amounts of PBL incorporated into it. Case has plenty of dentists and faculty there to instruct you at all times, probably more than many other dental schools. Case has a great curriculum that prepares you to be a strong general dentist, especially since they are one of the few schools that actually have business and finance courses that teach you how to run a private practice (i asked other schools I interviewed at like UPenn and they don't have such courses at all). The clinical experience is great and you have your own chairs so the patient pool is not a problem at all, this is Cleveland and the Cleveland Clinic is one of the best clinical and hospital care in the country, the patients will be plenty in abundance. Like others have said there were many instructors in the Case dental clinic during the interview so there is no lack of instructors at all. The reputation of Case Western in general as a school is not bad, its overall campus is ranked #37 by USNEWS and has one of the best medical schools in the country, I would imagine it's dental school is no different in quality. Case is a very old dental school from the 1800s so most working dentists know about Case, this isn't a new school like Midwestern, Lecom, or UNLV that practicing dentists have no clue about, Case has a rich history. There are research opportunities but its primarily a clinical school so although the opportunity is there, it is not the focus, but I would imagine Louisville to be no different than Case in terms of research. People specialize from Case every year, just like every other school, but before you consider specializing you need to first do well in dental school so take it one step at a time. Board pass rates is not an issue its very hard to fail out of Case, according to what the tour guides said during interview day. Case focuses on making general dentists, graduating on time is not an issue either. The total cost of Case is $396,000 according to their website which although is expensive its still just slightly above the average for all schools (354K) and is less than the price of MWU, Tufts, NYU, USC, UPenn etc etc. Cleveland is not that bad at least they're not Detroit. They're not Detroit!!!
