Overwhelmed by school options and costs - need some help

[Piepiesuperpie]

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I'm feeling very unprepared for this upcoming application cycle. I'm looking my options for schools and then the tuitions and my list of schools-to-apply-to (created by fairly arbitrary means) just keeps getting longer. I have no family members who are dentists and I'm not apart of the pre-dental community at my school so I have very little exposure to the specific characteristics of dental school.

For those of you who do have experience with certain dental schools, I was hoping you could help me out or mentor me through the process.

Here's some quick and dirty bits about my stats:
- GPA: 3.98 (sGPA: 3.97)
- DAT: 24 (nothing below 20)
- Research hours: 400hrs in a psych lab, 500hrs in wet lab, amgen scholar over this summer which would be roughly 400hrs
- Volunteer & leadership: 150hrs
- Dental shadowing: 60hrs
- CA resident (green card, not citizen)

I really want to become a dentist and my main goal is to do it in the cheapest means possible without sacrificing the quality of my education. I can fairly painlessly filter through tuition costs and OOS admission rates, but I need some help evaluating the quality of the school and the curriculum. For example, I only recently learned that there are some schools (USC) who give you a lot of freedom by using a group learning model as opposed to the traditional classroom setting.

What are other school characteristics that I should look for?
How do schools differ in the quality of their facilities?
What are the scholarship options like?

 

[Ferneezy]

your state schools should be on the table. additionally, look at schools that grant in-state status even if you start OOS: places like buffalo, maryland, uconn, unlv, and probably some others.

the characteristics you should look for are those that are important to you. decide if you want traditional lecture curriculum vs pbl (what they do at usc, case, and harvard among others). decide if you want a ton of research opportunities or not. decide if you want to get as much clinical exposure as possible before being unleashed on the public.

i interviewed at nine programs and i witnessed all kinds of variation in what i perceived to be the "quality" of their facilities. at first, i erroneously thought newer = better, but i soon got over that and realized a brand new pre-clinic or EMR-connected iPads at every operatory didn't rank high on my decision list. if a school is accredited, regardless of the state of its facilities, it is equipped to teach you the basics for you to get your license. are intra-oral cameras and CAD/CAM nice toys while a student? i don't doubt they are, but if i never get to use them as a pre-doc i can gain proficiency with them in my first year of practice.

some schools seem to let scholarship money flow like wine. in my personal experience, umich makes it rain. with your stats, penn might offer a sizable award as well. search for a scholarship thread made in the last couple months.

one last thing, find doc toothaches threads or get an adea guide book. immensely helpful tools in this process.

actually this is the last thing, you might want to up your shadowing hours to a minimum of 100. some schools seem to have requirements approaching that number. good luck.

 

[ILLchief]

when looking at schools, everything about everything about the school comes into play. typically, people on here will preach look at the tuition and say go to the cheaper school. however, there are so many more factors that come into play such as curriculum (PBL vs. traditional), facilities (newer is nicer to play with), location (city vs. suburban vs. rural), etc. as Ferneezy stated, in the end each school will teach you the basics of dentistry to succeed in practice but it will come down to what you want in a school.

in terms of which schools to apply to... definitely include all your state schools. but also look at schools that are OOS-friendly (meaning schools that accept a good percentage of their class from out of state). including the private schools is also a good idea. however, looking at your GPA and DAT you shouldnt have a problem getting acceptances to any school.