Specializing

[dancer17]

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Hi everyone! I was recently accepted to dental school - I'm very happy!
Now i'm starting to think ahead about 4 years of dental school, and I was wondering when is the timeline to apply for residency- 3rd or 4th year? I'm not sure if I want to specialize, so how should I go about the first year of dental school - shadow? Or will it be okay if i decide 3rd year once rotations start up? Because I realize I should be doing extracurricular activities/research that will correspond with my speciality so when I apply to programs, they see I have the experience/passion. How important is research for programs such as peds, endo, perio, etc? And since boards are pass/fail, in dental school are grades the most important?

 

[bing12]

you wont know until you hit clinic , and then you still prob wont know. There are some ppl that figure it out after a few years after graduation.

- Just do the best you can do, and reevaluate when the time is appropriate( 3rd year).

 

[480640]

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[Orthothai]

What you can know in dental school is :
- The type of professional life associated with each specialties. Level of stress, work organisation, type of schedule, average revenue, professional development profile.
For example I am finishing a master of ortho. In Dental school ( in France) I knew close to nothing to orthodontic but it was evident that it was less stressful than most of the rest of dentistry, with a stable activity , not so manual with the main part done during the treatment plan phase. More a brain kind of practice than a manual/artistic one like prosthetic, or manual/stress like surgery or perio.
- What kind of activity you like. As a GP you have to do everything but as a specialist you narrow your field so pick something where you show better aptitude than the rest.

After unfortunately you can not know until you finish your specialty and start practicing.

For the part on how to get into one I cannot help you as I did not trained in the US.