Originally posted by tinker bell
Applying to specialty will be just the same as applying to dental school from undergrad. If u come from a famous top school, you will get into top program.
So, I would say, it's brandname education, after all.
Not necessarily true. I really think the name of your school is a small factor when applying to specialize. For specialty applications, factors for admissions include your grades, rank, board scores, demonstrated interest in that specialty, research, extra-curricular/leadership involvement, letters of recommendation. Here's where your school might play a small role. There are two applicants, one from my school Buffalo, one from Penn. They are pretty much the same in all the factors I mentioned, the only difference is where they went to dental school. But the program director went to Penn, so he figures he'll interview the Penn guy. Or maybe the program director went to some other dental school, but had a resident from Buffalo in the program last year who is doing really well, so he choses to interview the Buffalo guy. Or he could have had a Buffalo resident he really didn't like, so he interviews the Penn guy. The point is, you have no idea what they're thinking at that point. If your stats are good enough, you will be able to specialize regardless of what school you went to. I don't think that a student with stellar credentials would get passed over for a less qualified student from a "brand name school" just because of the dental school he attended.
It's kinda like dental school admissions - who do you think the dental schools want? The 3.9 student from the state school with 25 DAT & stellar activities & letters of rec or the 3.0 from Princeton with 19 DAT. The name might be a factor for the second student to get noticed, but I really think the state school student will stand out more and get noticed, b/c of all the other things going for him.
Schools like Penn & Harvard encourage their students to specialize. At my school, there is no push to specialize, rather they want to graduate well-rounded general dentists. If a student decides to specializes, its because he wants to, not because the faculty encouraged it.
As far as what Tinkerbell posted about - 5 out of 8 UOP Oral Surgery residents were from UOP dental, that can be b/c UOP likes its dental students and knows them when they come to apply for specializing. The post-grad programs at my dental school aren't so kind, some departments have turned away our qualified & dedicated Buffalo graduates for students from other schools. Why they do this I have no clue, I think it's a stupid decision on their part. UCSF perio might have 2/3 from Harvard, but last year at my school only 2 students total applied to Perio. The year before no one applied to Perio and I don't know of anyone planning to do Perio in my class. Maybe no one from UCSF wanted to do perio that year so they took the Harvard students. Harvard must have more students applying to Perio if 2 of them ended up at the same program.
A Penn graduate attending a specialty program this fall told me that as a specialty applicant he felt like a small fish in a big pond b/c so many people apply to specialize. It was harder to stand out. He thought that coming from a school where so few students specialize, unlike Penn, could even be an advantage.
So I wouldn't let the name of the school interfere with your decision in choosing a dental school. However, I don't know about the whole accredited dental school issue b/c it actually might matter. I have seen in different places that part of the requirements to apply include "graduate of an accredited dental school" but never paid much attention b/c it didn't apply to me. I guess you could see how many student from Nova got into specialties in the years before it got accredited, that would probably be the only source available at this point. Or you can e-mail specialty programs now and just ask them what they'll think of UNLV's non-accredited status when it comes to applying for your year, b/c it is a good point for you to consider and they might not have thought about it in the last few years.
