school rankings

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skylab

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hello
anybody can give me information regarding dental school rankings.
thankyou.
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skylab said:
hello
anybody can give me information regarding dental school rankings.
thankyou.
Click to expand...

There is no ranking system. Just go to the cheapest place and you'll be fine.
 
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toofache32 said:
There is no ranking system. Just go to the cheapest place and you'll be fine.
Click to expand...
Way to revive this gem of a six year old thread. Is this possibly THE original "school ranking" thread, the one that started them all?
 
Maryland is #2.
 
I heard Maryland was #3 according to 2006 US News
 
i thought uop was number one...dont they rank it by amount of years it takes?

:p
 
Dental schools are not ranked, but they should be. The factors taken into account in med school rankings would go a long way if applied to dental schools. It is always amazing to me that dental schools have gotten away with not being ranked yet dentistry is consistently in the top tier of careers. What are the dental schools afraid of? Truth and consequences.
 
the thing is, different dental schools utilizes different methods of teaching dentistry. Some schools have strong didactics (high board scores) but weaker clinical training while other schools specifically train students to become experts clinically while they may not necessarily score the highest on the national boards. Some schools focus on placing as high of a percentage of students into specialty programs while other schools design their curriculum to train their students to be GP's. How would you rank one school from another?
 
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helico said:
Break Down:

Smartest students - UCLA #1
Time - UOP #1
Want to specialize? - UCLA #1, Columbia #2
Clinical training - Well, either you've got "it" or you don't
Didatic training - Battle between Columbia, UCLA, UCONN for #1
Most pissed off students - UCONN #1 (according to sd.net)

Any additions?
Click to expand...

:laugh:
 
INFNITE said:
the thing is, different dental schools utilizes different methods of teaching dentistry. Some schools have strong didactics (high board scores) but weaker clinical training while other schools specifically train students to become experts clinically while they may not necessarily score the highest on the national boards. Some schools focus on placing as high of a percentage of students into specialty programs while other schools design their curriculum to train their students to be GP's. How would you rank one school from another?
Click to expand...

I have heard this line of reasoning before in support of schools that consistently rank in the low tier of board scores and other areas, and I just don't buy it. To say that dental schools structure their curriculums more strongly in didactics or clinical training doesn't make any sense to me. It makes much more sense to form a curriculum that is well-rounded, preparing a student for excellence in both the classroom and the clinic. Why would any professional school inherently lower student peformance in a particular area by predetermined low expectations?

As long as thousands of students are dropping thousands of dollars on tuition, then dental schools should be fair game to be ranked. In short, too much money is at stake for them not to be. Dental schools should be working together more readily, and we all know they don't, which is one of the reasons why it is so difficult to transfer in dental school.

As to how they could be ranked, I have my own suggestions:

1) Percentage of entering students graduating in 4 years; student attrition rate

2) NDBE I and II scores; says something about classroom preparation

3) Student Morale; what do students think of their school; woud they encourage others to apply and attend

4) Admnistrative Proficiency; are people actually working or just showing up for coffee; how long does it take to get paperwork done through the administration

5) Faculty and Administrative Accord: are they on the same page or speaking different languages leaving students in the middle to interprete

Students are owed a source of evaluating a dental school before they pay tuition and attend to help avoid any disastrous outcomes that could be readily avoided. I repeat: What are the dental schools afraid of?
 
I agree with MaxAnn. Journalists are likely to get it wrong, but such data should be collected and published to public to see how each school is doing. The schools don't have to be ranked but we should be able to access that sort of information (and rank the schools by ourselves or something).
 
The rankings were discontinued because there was a lot of behind the scenes dealings to get schools bumped up in rank, yes meaning money changing hands and other things of the sort.
 
aphistis said:
"Being graded for millions of readers by a group of journalists who don't know the first bloody thing about dental education" springs to mind.
Click to expand...

If the journalists aren't schooled on how dental school works then why not explain it to them? I just think it is a very weak argument to suggest that there is no need for some sort of ranking. Students are ranked, but the ins and outs of dental school are too complex for journalists to comprehend? I just disagree with that notion.

If money was exchanged, and that's not hard to believe, the only solution that college educated people could come up with was to discontinue rankings?
 
who gives a damn about rankings anyway. Go to a dental school that suits you the best. If you wanna specialize, go to one that offers strong didactics and high match rates. If you wanna do GP, go to one that gives you the maximum clinical training. If you wanna get your license in a certain region of the country, then go to a dental school in that region. Make your own decisions. In the end, you'll get your DDS/DMD degree, and you'll become a dentist.
 
I think there should be a ranking for certain categories like NIH funding, NBDE scores, research published, and things like this that can be quantified. To look at all these factors and draw a conclusion as to which school is better on average is misleading because, certain ppl give more weight to specific factors. For example, I couldn't care less about the research aspect. Some may care about NBDE preparation as they may want to specialize and thus want a school that prepares them for that. How could I 4get cost...$$$$$$$$$$ There needs to be a ranking for the most expensive (NYU errrrrr). There needs to be a ranking for non-resident friendly schools, that is which allows you to change residency and after how long.

Point being, whoever is doing the ranking doesn't need to be a dentist as long as they stay with the number.
 
Here I found it at www.it'sanobrainer.com

1. Your number one choice upon acceptance
2. Number two choice upon acceptance
3. Number three choice upon acceptance

....The list goes on
 
MaxAnn said:
If the journalists aren't schooled on how dental school works then why not explain it to them? I just think it is a very weak argument to suggest that there is no need for some sort of ranking. Students are ranked, but the ins and outs of dental school are too complex for journalists to comprehend? I just disagree with that notion.
Click to expand...
But what do the schools gain by committing the time & effort necessary to do that? We're talking about an education system that frequently has trouble scratching out enough people to educate its students, let alone a bunch of irrelevant prying outsiders.

If money was exchanged, and that's not hard to believe, the only solution that college educated people could come up with was to discontinue rankings?
Click to expand...
I don't think that's such an unreasonable method of addressing a process that's both useless and demonstrably corrupt.
 
skylab said:
hello
anybody can give me information regarding dental school rankings.
thankyou.
Click to expand...

Ah, a message from 5.5 years ago. I will now attempt to send the following message back to the year 2000!

How is the Dreamcast? Pretty sweet, huh? Tell all your friends to get one. P.S. Don't buy a PS2.
 
aphistis said:
But what do the schools gain by committing the time & effort necessary to do that? We're talking about an education system that frequently has trouble scratching out enough people to educate its students, let alone a bunch of irrelevant prying outsiders.
Click to expand...

That's somewhat true, but both the applicants and the schools gain a lot by having such data.
The NBDE passing rate or specialty matching rate show which schools are doing a good job and which schools are not. A 90% success rate and a 50% success rate are a big difference.
And the effect on the dental schools would be that the good schools gain a lot and the bad ones lose a lot. The ranking system would create competitions among dental schools, and with the data on matching rate, funding and so on, the good ones would look more appealing to applicants. On the other hand, the lower ranked schools would have more incentives to improve.

And of course, what I just said would be under the assumption of having the right ranking system that fairly represents the quality of every dental school. But the point is not to have a perfectly accurate ranking system, but one that is most accurate as possible. It may be impossible to have the perfect ranking system with no flaws, but we should try to improve the system, not stop it.
U.S. News rankings on med schools and undergrad schools are definitely not perfect. It would be stupid to think that #1 ranked school in U.S news is definitely better than the #2 ranked school. But it's clear that #1 med school according to their ranking is in many aspects a better school than the #49 school. And again those data (NIH funding, match rate...etc) give a lot of good information to applicants. and applicants would be able to rank the schools on their own with the data presented.

(wow 5.5 years ago..that is a long time)
 
Sprgrover said:
How on earth did this thing get dug up?...
Click to expand...

Considering toofache has already made a joke thread about DDS vs. DMD . . . I'm guessing he thought it would be amusing to resurrect this old thread.
 
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