predental experience includes...???

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clam chowder

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obvious experience includes shadowing dentists and research.

what were some of your random experiences that you categorized as pre-dental?

how about these??
-many internships in hospitals - different settings
-volunteering w/non-profit orgs (not related to dentistry at all)
-co-chairing for school organizations (random orgs)
-teaching at an afterschool art program

😳
 
clam chowder said:
obvious experience includes shadowing dentists and research.

what were some of your random experiences that you categorized as pre-dental?

how about these??
-many internships in hospitals - different settings
-volunteering w/non-profit orgs (not related to dentistry at all)
-co-chairing for school organizations (random orgs)
-teaching at an afterschool art program

😳


yes, they all work. any sort of volunteering is good. school involvement is good. showing a genuine interest in something else (like art)... also... good.

i worked with habitat for humanity building homes, worked at various health fairs, and i will be a university tutor. also, active in pre-health honorary, and will shadow dentists this summer.
 
what you did does not matter one bit if you don't properly present them in your overall application. If stuff that you did is important to you, then incorporate it into your personal statement and expand on it, but only if it was significant to you or it demonstrates something about you, just listing them on that "state your extracurriculars" box realy doesn't mean anything as adcoms are swamped with applications to look at.

There is no present requirement for extracurriculars with schools (except some schools like UNLV require a shadowed-dentist letter).
 
clam chowder said:
obvious experience includes shadowing dentists and research.

what were some of your random experiences that you categorized as pre-dental?

how about these??
-many internships in hospitals - different settings
-volunteering w/non-profit orgs (not related to dentistry at all)
-co-chairing for school organizations (random orgs)
-teaching at an afterschool art program

😳
My experiences:
Internships in hospital- Not internships, but working- ER, ICU, lab, diagnostic imaging, pulmonary function lab, etc in addition to working with ambulance services;
Non-profit organizations- volunteer fire department; volunteer at local holocaust museum; exhibit technician at local children's museum; Habitat for humanity
School organizations- running for student government this fall; American Chemical Society and starting a chapter of the American Society of Microbiology this fall.

I think you teaching at the afterschool art program would make for excellent conversation during interviews. 🙂 Good luck.
 
when did this thread becoem experience sharing?? Ok I'll follow suite

Volunteering- none! Oh once I read to kids at a homeless shelter, but that was "community service", and definitely not voluntary.

Medical/Hospital work- none! I tried volunteering at the local hospital once, and we created more work by asking the nurses/doctors on what we can do since they had to take the time to invent some tasks to keep us occupied.

Internships- I don't do those. I had a traditional "hire your labor out to an employer" quote unquote 'job' once in my university dormitory. It was the easiest job ever. I was fired. After the fire department came and put out the fire. And still to this day the dorms at UCLA do not allow microwaves in the study lounges.

Shadowing- none! Do you need to shadow a human resources co-manager to know to get a feel for the profession?

Tutoring- nah. I applied for a tutoring job once, they looked at my transcript and sent me to the local Sylvan learning center as a customer.
 
mvs04 said:
when did this thread becoem experience sharing?? Ok I'll follow suite

Volunteering- none! Oh once I read to kids at a homeless shelter, but that was "community service", and definitely not voluntary.

Medical/Hospital work- none! I tried volunteering at the local hospital once, and we created more work by asking the nurses/doctors on what we can do since they had to take the time to invent some tasks to keep us occupied.

Internships- I don't do those. I had a traditional "hire your labor out to an employer" quote unquote 'job' once in my university dormitory. It was the easiest job ever. I was fired. After the fire department came and put out the fire. And still to this day the dorms at UCLA do not allow microwaves in the study lounges.

Shadowing- none! Do you need to shadow a human resources co-manager to know to get a feel for the profession?

Tutoring- nah. I applied for a tutoring job once, they looked at my transcript and sent me to the local Sylvan learning center as a customer.

:laugh:
 
Sometimes I think college students commit themselves to a career to early for one reason or another. When I hear of high school students saying, "oh I want to be a dentist when I grow up," I don't think that you can really make an informed decision about what you really will be happy with at that point in your life. Even some freshmen in college seem to be just picking a carreer soley by thier perception of that careers prestige or income.

I actually used my experiences in fields besides dentistry as a positive in my personal statement. I discussed the various occupations I have had over the years: car salesman, rancher, lumberjack, housing construction, retail clothing sales, forest fire fighter, emergency medical technitian, nurses aid, chemistry laboratory assistant. Then I used the experience I gained from each job to help me really understand what I want out of my ultimate carreer. Through this process of career exploration I have arrived at dentistry as my chosen profession. Experience leads to confidence in decision making.

So anyway, to the op, you can really include experiences that don't have anything directly correlated to dentistry.
 
msf41 said:
Sometimes I think college students commit themselves to a career to early for one reason or another. When I hear of high school students saying, "oh I want to be a dentist when I grow up," I don't think that you can really make an informed decision about what you really will be happy with at that point in your life. Even some freshmen in college seem to be just picking a carreer soley by thier perception of that careers prestige or income.

I actually used my experiences in fields besides dentistry as a positive in my personal statement. I discussed the various occupations I have had over the years: car salesman, rancher, lumberjack, housing construction, retail clothing sales, forest fire fighter, emergency medical technitian, nurses aid, chemistry laboratory assistant. Then I used the experience I gained from each job to help me really understand what I want out of my ultimate carreer. Through this process of career exploration I have arrived at dentistry as my chosen profession. Experience leads to confidence in decision making.

So anyway, to the op, you can really include experiences that don't have anything directly correlated to dentistry.



college is the ultimate expierence i think... try everything out (no talking about drugs), but try out politics classes, econ, science, art, see what you enjoy on an academic level and which you would be interested in applying yourself to doing later on.. sometimes we limit ourselves too much by not exploring stuff.
 
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