Predents website

[Hemorrage]

---

Members don't see this ad.

Hi everyone, seeing as pre-dents.com is down i was planning on building a predent's platform myself (very similar to mdapplicants.com). I just wanted to gauge the initial interest that you guys might have on the website in general. Is it something that would be useful/used? Based on the responses you guys give me i'll decide whether or not i'll invest my time in this (most likely going to be done over upcoming winter break)

Just some background on myself:
Although i've listed myself as pre-med i'm still exploring both dentistry and medicine before i decide whats right for me and i always found predents.com very useful in studying my prospects for specific schools and so forth. I am in undergrad but work part time as a web developer (specifically backend programming with django/python so forth.)

 

[ShneekyBiznaz]

Ofcourse! Haven't you seen the threads for predents.com being down? Everyone is complaining their asses off! Please get a website up ASAP!!!!

 

[Hemorrage]

Ofcourse! Haven't you seen the threads for predents.com being down? Everyone is complaining their asses off! Please get a website up ASAP!!!!

I would love to, however, i need a bit of information regarding how dental school admissions work. I'm very familiar with the med school process but only recently became interested in dentistry after getting a root canal. Can someone summarize the application process/DAT etc? Is it very similar to the med school process? Also what kinds of features would you like to see incorporated? Here are some of the ones i've been thinking of:

1. Limiting registration to .edu addresses to allow for accurate data
2. Account based model which will allow for multiple application cycles which all have their own respective GPAs, DAT scores, etc.
3. Interactive search to allow filtering by undergraduate institution, applied school, cycle, etc.

 

[UCSFx2017]

Do it. No ads. Clean.

 

[steveymcdubs]

x

 

[Walshy]

Hemorrage, if you need some help I'm the president of my school's predental society who is self-taught in computer science (java, php, jquery, css, html).

 

[Hemorrage]

Do it. No ads. Clean.

I'm not looking to make a profit on anything but if the site gets a ton of traffic i'll have to put up some text ads to pay the server costs- nothing is final though.

Hemorrage, if you need some help I'm the president of my school's predental society who is self-taught in computer science (java, php, jquery, css, html).

Sounds good, i'll let you know once i get started if i need help

If anyone has any more ideas please post them

 

[rocky90]

I would recommend not to use .edu addresses as lots of student who have graduated might not have it and a few other would not like to reveal their real identity...just my thought.
Also it would help to have gpa, rejections, acceptance, date application completed interview received just as in the acceptance rejections section. Pre-dent also had a section on statistics for each individual school.
It is an awesome idea and I am sure everyone would really appreciate your help with it. If you need any information or help from our side please let us know.

Thanks

 

[Hemorrage]

I would recommend not to use .edu addresses as lots of student who have graduated might not have it and a few other would not like to reveal their real identity...just my thought.
Also it would help to have gpa, rejections, acceptance, date application completed interview received just as in the acceptance rejections section. Pre-dent also had a section on statistics for each individual school.
It is an awesome idea and I am sure everyone would really appreciate your help with it. If you need any information or help from our side please let us know.

Thanks

Right.. thought i do agree with your idea, the emails won't be revealed to anyone publicly so it wouldn't really matter regardless. The reason why i think .edu addresses should be used is because they are limited, you can't just make an infinite amount of them as you can with gmail accounts, etc. People tend to clutter websites like mdapplicants.com with fake data. I want to have a base of accurate data everyone can look at.. If the majority feels that .edu addresses are a no-no then i won't go that way.

 

[mmmsteakdinners]

I graduated last year and lost access to my .edu access. Two people in my interviews are married and are in their 30s and I'm sure don't have access to .edu emails. This is why it's a bad idea and unnecessary

 

[sacapuntas]

I graduated last year and lost access to my .edu access. Two people in my interviews are married and are in their 30s and I'm sure don't have access to .edu emails. This is why it's a bad idea and unnecessary

Most schools give .edu alumni addresses for life...all 3 undergrads I have been a part of still let me use my email if I want to.

I would think that with .edu only, you will cut your pool of data, but you will make it far more trustworthy. I would be for only allowing .edu address....you know, the way facebook was when I was a kid🙂

 

[mmmsteakdinners]

Ok, but I'm telling you that mine expires. So I can't use the site? I think it's stupid and will turn away more users than it will prevent people from creating 5 emails just to post fake profiles. I like to believe people have better things to do...

 

[Hemorrage]

I graduated last year and lost access to my .edu access. Two people in my interviews are married and are in their 30s and I'm sure don't have access to .edu emails. This is why it's a bad idea and unnecessary

Ok, but I'm telling you that mine expires. So I can't use the site? I think it's stupid and will turn away more users than it will prevent people from creating 5 emails just to post fake profiles. I like to believe people have better things to do...

Ok agreed then. EDU addresses won't be necessary, i'll just put some form of CAPTCHA system to force users to create valid accounts.

Keep the ideas coming guys. It seems that a fair number of people are interested so i'm going to be building this. Expect a beta version sometime early january.

 

[ushaseos]

Berkeley took away my .edu email without warning and then wanted me to pay some inordinate amount and become a lifetime alumni member. It was kinda messed up,

Basically please allow us non edu folks a chance too!

 

[UltimateHombre]

First off, thanks so much for being willing to try and make another predental site. It was and will be a great resource for many, many predents.

I am also against the .edu thing as well. I think its a good idea to help protect the integrity of the data. However, I think the reality of people creating 5+ accounts to falsify the data is small and negligible. The applicant pool for predents is much, much smaller than premeds. And from my experiences, predents seem to be a lot less chill and not nearly as competitive as premeds (just an observation based on my experience). You also have to consider that the data is not that sound anyway, no offense. It is a self reported, self selected survey, directed from one single website, where there is no official way to verify scores, GPA, interviews, etc.

Having said that, here are things i liked about the last predents:
- Significant statistics from every school including cost and number of instate/oos applicants and martriculants.
- Ability to see dates of interviews and profiles of applicants to all schools

Things that need improvement:
- Space for EC's needs more space, i like the mdapplicants profile section
- Interviews section should be more detailed: date applied, date interviewed, date accepted (the info was there, but the layout was terrible)

Ideas for new features:
- Search feature by: dental schools, undergrad schools, stats, and users
- Section for personal thoughts about the schools they interviewed at
- Personal messaging feature
- Tutorial on how to best navigate the site (it took me awhile to figure out everything that predents could do and how to access it)
- Possible live chat room, so people could always get fast feedback to easy questions
- Link back to SDN from predent site. Ex: I find a user on predents, but they don't have the same user name on SDN. I can't contact that person for questions/help/feedback etc.
- Profile picture?

Overall a new site needs to be much more user friendly. The different features should be easily found and accessible. Good luck!!

 

[Hemorrage]

First off, thanks so much for being willing to try and make another predental site. It was and will be a great resource for many, many predents.

I am also against the .edu thing as well. I think its a good idea to help protect the integrity of the data. However, I think the reality of people creating 5+ accounts to falsify the data is small and negligible. The applicant pool for predents is much, much smaller than premeds. And from my experiences, predents seem to be a lot less chill and not nearly as competitive as premeds (just an observation based on my experience). You also have to consider that the data is not that sound anyway, no offense. It is a self reported, self selected survey, directed from one single website, where there is no official way to verify scores, GPA, interviews, etc.

Having said that, here are things i liked about the last predents:
- Significant statistics from every school including cost and number of instate/oos applicants and martriculants.
- Ability to see dates of interviews and profiles of applicants to all schools

Things that need improvement:
- Space for EC's needs more space, i like the mdapplicants profile section
- Interviews section should be more detailed: date applied, date interviewed, date accepted (the info was there, but the layout was terrible)

Ideas for new features:
- Search feature by: dental schools, undergrad schools, stats, and users
- Section for personal thoughts about the schools they interviewed at
- Personal messaging feature
- Tutorial on how to best navigate the site (it took me awhile to figure out everything that predents could do and how to access it)
- Possible live chat room, so people could always get fast feedback to easy questions
- Link back to SDN from predent site. Ex: I find a user on predents, but they don't have the same user name on SDN. I can't contact that person for questions/help/feedback etc.
- Profile picture?

Overall a new site needs to be much more user friendly. The different features should be easily found and accessible. Good luck!!

After hearing everyones opinions i decided the site will not be .edu specific, hopefully this will ease many people's concerns.

Thanks for the excellent suggestions, i'm going to try and implement as many of these features in the initial release as possible. I may need to contact you in order to get some information about the general dental school application process sometime next month.

 

[pinpoint212]

Make it very user friendly and it will increase user base.
Create graphs of applicants of interviews, accepted, and rejected at each school.
Allow users to make their own profile and input their oGPA, sGPA, bcp, and DAT
Inform users of how many seats there are in every school.

 

[voager]

I don't know if you can come up with some kind of formula...(I will try my algorithm skills to see if I can do this and will let you know).... to calculate what schools you are competitive for....for example it can take your o and s GPA , DAT , residency, some other factors and calculate if you will have a chance (it might need an update every year according to new DS admission reports)

 

[Member902507]

I don't know if you can come up with some kind of formula...(I will try my algorithm skills to see if I can do this and will let you know).... to calculate what schools you are competitive for....for example it can take your o and s GPA , DAT , residency, some other factors and calculate if you will have a chance (it might need an update every year according to new DS admission reports)

Nice idea! I wish I were good at programming and all like this...I get excited when I program equations into my graphing calculator...haha

 

[RSalha17]

What do you guys think about putting an interview section in your profile, where you can give the date of your interview and a notes section to say how you thought the interview went? I think that the interview feedback on SDN is very useful, but I feel that some of the stuff is a bit outdated. It would be really helpful to see some notes from people who interviewed THIS cycle. For example, you could have Interview date Western U 11/1/12, and then a notes section where you choose to (or not to) give a little info about how your interview went, the schedule of the day, how smooth it was, a few questions that you were asked, and an overall summary about the whole day.

Again, I know we have the interview feedback on SDN, but it would be nice to see how individuals though of their interview based on their stats and how many other interviews that have had already, because someone who has had 5 interviews already may have a different take on the process than someone who is having their first interview.

Just my thoughts, thank you so much for your willingness to do this!!

 

[Hemorrage]

Make it very user friendly and it will increase user base.
Create graphs of applicants of interviews, accepted, and rejected at each school.
Allow users to make their own profile and input their oGPA, sGPA, bcp, and DAT
Inform users of how many seats there are in every school.

Yeah i think this would be a cool feature. I might utilize the google charts JS api to generate them on page load. This will only work if we have a good amount of data though- could take a couple of months.

I don't know if you can come up with some kind of formula...(I will try my algorithm skills to see if I can do this and will let you know).... to calculate what schools you are competitive for....for example it can take your o and s GPA , DAT , residency, some other factors and calculate if you will have a chance (it might need an update every year according to new DS admission reports)

If you can come up with a formula i will figure out how to implement it.

What do you guys think about putting an interview section in your profile, where you can give the date of your interview and a notes section to say how you thought the interview went? I think that the interview feedback on SDN is very useful, but I feel that some of the stuff is a bit outdated. It would be really helpful to see some notes from people who interviewed THIS cycle. For example, you could have Interview date Western U 11/1/12, and then a notes section where you choose to (or not to) give a little info about how your interview went, the schedule of the day, how smooth it was, a few questions that you were asked, and an overall summary about the whole day.

Again, I know we have the interview feedback on SDN, but it would be nice to see how individuals though of their interview based on their stats and how many other interviews that have had already, because someone who has had 5 interviews already may have a different take on the process than someone who is having their first interview.

Just my thoughts, thank you so much for your willingness to do this!!

Agreed! Thats exactly along the lines of what i was planning on doing. I know mdapplicants does a thing where if you interview/get accepted at a school you can write notes about how you felt. The way i'm planning on implementing the system is to give every "user" a profile where they can add an app cycle. Users will then be able to search and gather data both across app cycles and for specific app cycles.