Some advice again!

Started by 09mileproof
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09mileproof

09mileproof

Full Member
5+ Year Member
Hi everybody! Time ago you helped me to figure out my way to dental school, and after two years here I am, about to graduate from CC and transferring to a four-year university to complete my Bachelor's. I've managed straight As so far, working around 30/32 hours per week.Here is the thing. At first, I wanted to major in Biology, but I see nothing interesting with this major, neither Biology-related majors. However, I feel passionate about those engineering majors...especially Biomedical. I'm a 100% math person, but dental school is where I want to be and I know how important is GPA to achieve that, considering the difficulty level of Engineering. I know this sounds crazy, but I also know if I don't have a certain passion for my future major, I won't feel motivated to work hard. Would Biomedical Engineering be a good path for dental school? Suggestions are welcomed.
 
You're doing great! Biomedical engineering is fine, people come from all kinds of backgrounds, business, psychology, etc. At the end of the day if you can get a good score on the DAT and maintain a good GPA you will get your foot through the door.
 
Dr.AlxTak said:
You're doing great! Biomedical engineering is fine, people come from all kinds of backgrounds, business, psychology, etc. At the end of the day if you can get a good score on the DAT and maintain a good GPA you will get your foot through the door.
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I did my BS in Chemical Engineering and got accepted to two schools so far. It’s possible, just have good ECs to go with it bc your gpa will most likely be lower than others.
 
Dr.AlxTak said:
You're doing great! Biomedical engineering is fine, people come from all kinds of backgrounds, business, psychology, etc. At the end of the day if you can get a good score on the DAT and maintain a good GPA you will get your foot through the door.
Click to expand...
Thank you for your encouraging words. I appreciate them. 🙂
 
09mileproof said:
Hi everybody! Time ago you helped me to figure out my way to dental school, and after two years here I am, about to graduate from CC and transferring to a four-year university to complete my Bachelor's. I've managed straight As so far, working around 30/32 hours per week.Here is the thing. At first, I wanted to major in Biology, but I see nothing interesting with this major, neither Biology-related majors. However, I feel passionate about those engineering majors...especially Biomedical. I'm a 100% math person, but dental school is where I want to be and I know how important is GPA to achieve that, considering the difficulty level of Engineering. I know this sounds crazy, but I also know if I don't have a certain passion for my future major, I won't feel motivated to work hard. Would Biomedical Engineering be a good path for dental school? Suggestions are welcomed.
Click to expand...
If you're set on dentistry, scrap the engineering. There's no benefit of risking a GPA drop (colleges are harder than CC's) just b/c you "like math". If getting into dental school isn't enough to motivate you to work hard, I can't see how loving math would motivate you to take the same exact prereqs bio majors would be taking ALONG with engineering courses. You're still going to have to take bio, stats, micro, ochem, genchem, and like anatomy or something. Why stack math on it? You're just shrinking available free time (which you can use for buffing your app with shadowing, volunteering, research, or just enjoying life in general). Like if you aced year 1 of biomedical engineering with some hard engineering courses and like 18 hours of classes a week, I would say knock yourself out. But you haven't done that- your only experience at the moment is the community college courses which could be as hard as university or could be way easier.

If doing math somehow fulfills your existence, then just be a bio major and take a math course or 2 on the side. Don't go into biomedical engineering where you have like way more courses on top of the prereqs, realize you can't handle it, then try scrambling into a major or worse: denting your GPA right after acing community college courses. People will think "hmm looks like those A's in CC didn't mean much- must have been easy fluff courses if he/she aced those but got b's and c's on a university schedule".

I sound blunt but this is what I would say to someone if they wanted the highest chance of getting into school. Don't lower your chances of your ultimate goal to satisfy your love of math. Because if you ace those math classes and you get b's in prereqs, it's way worse than someone who just had an easy schedule and 3.9+'d their time in college. Also I'll mention this: there's engineers in medical and dental schools that aren't top dog because you will soon come to find it's literally memorization for almost all of your preclinical courses. Knowing derivatives or integrals won't mean crud when they give you like 1-2k ppt slides and say hey memorize these facts. The level of critical thinking required is almost none.
 
I mean if you really enjoy math, you could always do a major with the smallest requirements and audit your math and biomedical engineering courses, so that you take them without a grade, and your GPA doesn’t tank.
 
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