Percentage of going to dental school

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Biofilm preventer

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Hey everybody. Im just curious as i am currently going through the application process and have realized that we have all come a long way

As a person that started out his college career in his first bio class and had the hopes to one day go to dental school. i have noticed that alot of my fellow peers have dropped or changed careers due to difficulty. so i was just wondering, does anybody know what is the percentage of people who start out predental that actually end up getting through all their prereqs, pass the dat, graduate college, and end up getting accepted into dental school?

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In 2018, There were 11298 applicants and 6163 of them enrolled. That's 54.55%. But most of these people have gone through the prerequisites and have taken the DAT as well.

There is no way of knowing how many people starting out as pre-dents make it, but i imagine the percentage is substantially lower than 54.55%. Not necessarily because it's hard (though it certainly is tedious), but because people tend to change their minds.
 
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on the first day of class in my gen chem lecture hall the teacher asked every pre-med to raise their hands. I'd guess about 150 out of 450 students raised their hands. I bet 7 end up as MD's. This at a big state school, Ivy would be a diff story.
 
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It would be hard to determine, but very low. Freshmen think it sounds so cool to say they are pre...med,dent,law ect. usually by 2nd to 3rd year they either realize they don't want to go to school that long, or they don't want to spend that much money, or that their grades are not competitive and they move on.

One kid at my undergrad was big on waving the premed flag around. He would bring it up early and often in every conversation. He even got a custom license plate on his car...his initials +MD...as a freshman. The kicker? when I asked him what he wanted to specialize in he said orthodontics. He was a sweet kid but totally clueless. He didn't make it.

Iggy
 
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Hey everybody. Im just curious as i am currently going through the application process and have realized that we have all come a long way

As a person that started out his college career in his first bio class and had the hopes to one day go to dental school. i have noticed that alot of my fellow peers have dropped or changed careers due to difficulty. so i was just wondering, does anybody know what is the percentage of people who start out predental that actually end up getting through all their prereqs, pass the dat, graduate college, and end up getting accepted into dental school?

4/12 biology majors at a small private university with dreams of being dentists. 8 years later, 1 is a physical therapist, 1 science teacher, 1 in med school, 1 dentist.

Very few people actually know what they wasnt to do when they start college. Most have a general idea - e.g. medical field or education - but don't figure it out until they've taken a few classes.

But as far as an actual percentage, seems like something that would be hard to actually calculate and also something that really doesn't matter
 
on the first day of class in my gen chem lecture hall the teacher asked every pre-med to raise their hands. I'd guess about 150 out of 450 students raised their hands. I bet 7 end up as MD's. This at a big state school, Ivy would be a diff story.
Sounds like UH in Dr. Botts class... lol
 
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My general biology class that I taught had about 200 pre-health students (out of 300) to begin, and by the end of the semester, only about 20 remain to be sure to continue. Every semester. This number reduces much slowly in later courses; having an exposure to a difficult course, they are more prepared.

Students do think that the path to medicine and dentistry are difficult but either they overestimate themselves or underestimate the workload.

In a very broad approximation, Every year we started out with 1000+ pre-health students and end up with less than 50 total med, dent, pharm, vet, etc students actually accepted to their professional schools.

Again, this is a very broad approximation out of one school.
 
There was a guy in my freshman college class, he was always sure he would become a dentist because it was his “life passion”. Haven’t seen him in years until I ran into him last week. I’m now a 3rd year DDS student, and he just started his first year of the dental hygiene program at my school.
 

I was curious about this too. I'll give you my personal experience OP. At my university, the intro bio class freshman yr had ~800 students (x2 for the total number of incoming bio majors/pre-meds). The professor asked how many were pre-med, 90% of students raised their hands (the rest were probably pre-dent/vet/pharm/etc. lol)

Now I'm a junior, and the number of pre-meds have dwindled down a lot. My school sends about 200 kids to med school, so out of the ~1400 students that started as pre-med, only 200 made it. I've noticed that the first wave of pre-med dropouts came with the intro bio and chem classes. These kids were straight up not cut out for science. The next wave came at organic chemistry, these kids stayed afloat, but couldn't handle the Diels Alder. If you survived past organic chem, then you end up on SDN.
 
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1 out of 7 for your school is high. I'd guess it was closer to 1 out 20+ at my large state school. Gen chem took the most out, followed by ochem.
 
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I was curious about this too. I'll give you my personal experience OP. At my university, the intro bio class freshman yr had ~800 students (x2 for the total number of incoming bio majors/pre-meds). The professor asked how many were pre-med, 90% of students raised their hands (the rest were probably pre-dent/vet/pharm/etc. lol)

Now I'm a junior, and the number of pre-meds have dwindled down a lot. My school sends about 200 kids to med school, so out of the ~1400 students that started as pre-med, only 200 made it. I've noticed that the first wave of pre-med dropouts came with the intro bio and chem classes. These kids were straight up not cut out for science. The next wave came at organic chemistry, these kids stayed afloat, but couldn't handle the Diels Alder. If you survived past organic chem, then you end up on SDN.

Lolol oh man the horrors of ochem...
Biochem was somewhat tough too
And here I am on sdn lolol

Chocopiezzz, you’ve made it :joyful:
Now onto the next stretch
 
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This is very hard to actually measure, but based on personal experience, approximately 15% actually stick with it. You can't let these statistics get to your head; just do the best you can do. Freshmen year is a good gauge of how you will do.
 
Yeah, if you can handle 3 stem classes at the same time and get all A's you should be all set.
 
Just FYI everybody, I am already accepted into a few dental schools. Just wanted to see what the percentage of those who survived the entire Pre-Dental track is.

seems to be from answers given that around 10-15% of all students who start out Pre-Dent in undergrad actually follow through with it... wow

I feel special
 
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