Ortho Chances

[ddsdmd2022]

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Hi all! I am a graduate of 2022 and have been practicing this past year. I have been intrigued by orthodontics due to various reasons and made the decision to apply this upcoming cycle. I was ranked 8/110 and have done research (although not ortho related). I was president of a religious dental group but do not have many ortho related stuff as I did not really know that I wanted to apply until this past year. I will have one rec letter from an ortho faculty while the rest are faculty that I am close to. I am taking the GRE soon and wanted to see how much of an impact it will make? I have been taking practice tests and been averaging 155-8 on verbal and 160+ on qr. Any advice would help!

 

[Lemillion]

You have the class rank to be a competitive applicant! Do the best you can on the GRE, write a strong personal statement and apply broadly. It is tempting to apply to only the most affordable ortho residencies but the tricky thing is that those are very competitive. One of my good friends from DS went to one of those programs and pretty much his whole residency class was #1-5.

My GRE was 152-verbal, 154-OR and 4.5-writing. I don't think any of the programs brought up my GRE score during the interviews. But programs are different and some may care strongly about the scores versus others who see it as an obstacle to overcome in order to apply for ortho (deters those who want to apply on a whim and see if they can get in last minute).

 

[ddsdmd2022]

Thank you! This makes me feel better. I am definitely applying broadly! I know how crazy competitive ortho is and I do not mind going anywhere. Do you have an idea of how many programs I should apply for? If you don't mind me asking, how many did you apply to and got interviews to?

 

[Lemillion]

Thank you! This makes me feel better. I am definitely applying broadly! I know how crazy competitive ortho is and I do not mind going anywhere. Do you have an idea of how many programs I should apply for? Varies on your comfort level! Some will apply to only 10 while others will apply to 50. My guess the average would be anywhere between 15-25 programs nowadays. If you look up the Ortho match threads from previous years, people will post their stats and how many programs they applied to.

If you don't mind me asking, how many did you apply to and got interviews to? I think 15 or so and received 5 interviews? 3 match and 2 non-match.