Starting 4th year - need advice! Residency, private practice?

[I Brush My Teeth]

I'm starting my 4th year and have always kept my grades up incase I wanted to specialize or do a GPR/AEGD. Im in the top 20-25% of my class and know I definitely want to go into general. Applications are already open so I wanted to make a decision ASAP.

I will have 500k+ loans upon graduation, and would like to learn invisalign, implants, botox, and veneers etc. --> would it be more beneficial for me to go through the residency route? I've had a hard time coming to terms with taking a significant pay cut with the amount of loans I have.

I have been talking to a DSO recruiter and in the area I would like to be in, the avg start is 150-180k and they will require one weekend of CE per month, my choice - they offer invisalign, endo, botox courses for free. My question is, for my situation, what would you guys do?

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[Grinz]

You gotta decide for yourself. Don’t let people on the internet decide your fate. If you’re not passionate about doing a post grad residency then you are going to be very disappointed. Also you need to know what you want out of the program because if you don’t know that then there is a good chance you will be disappointed with your experience. Either way you are going to have to pay a LOT of money in CE (residency or not) to learn what you want to learn and become excellent at it.

 

[zriceman]

Do a year of private practice with the DSO and see if being a GP is still for you. If it's not then you can consider specializing and you should have a better idea of what to specialize after 1 year of experience.

 

[Big Time Hoosier]

I will have 500k+ loans upon graduation

Specializing can add on another $200,000+. You really comfortable owning $700,000+ in student loans? Your annual INTEREST alone will be pushing $50,000. You’ll never touch the principle. And then the tax bomb will rain down on you...

Big Hoss

 

[Awisdomtooth]

If you are living in a state that is offering a great GPR or AEGD program, I would definitely suggest applying for those residencies. If there is no such a good program in your area, do a combination of private practice and DSO. This will give you the benefit of experiencing both environments. People say many negative stuff about DSOs, however spending 2 days a week in those offices actually might be beneficial . Just don’t let the office manager dictate any tx plans to you. Meanwhile, you can also focus on CE courses for invisalign and etc. just my 2 cents
( Hopefully job market will be better for you in 2021 upon graduation)

 

[LaughingGas]

I am going to give you unpopular vote and recommend you to do GPR/AEGD. If you find a good GPR/AEGD, you will be trained to do full mouth cases, surgical procedures, molar endos. Your interests such as invisalign, botox and veeners are cosmetic procedures. I might be wrong but after COVID, not sure how the market for cosmetic procedures will be for a while. If that is true, patients will invest more on endo, extraction including surgical. Also cosmetic procedures depends highly on patient demographics.
Additionally, depending which states, the licensing process might take up to three months, that's a lost three months of experience.
One of the mistakes I made as new grad was taking CEs that didn't bring ROI. It's great that the DSOs can give you free CEs, but surgical procedures and molar endos imo it is not something you can learn by taking weekend CE courses. I rather learn it in GPR or AEGD under supervision and have repetition until I felt comfortable.

 

[allDAT]

Try and do a good AEGD or GPR (some are not very good). If you can learn to place implants well, you’ll be better off in the long run. Learning to place implants well via CE is difficult because it’s expensive in both the cost of the course and time away from practice.

 

[vk223]

Sounds to me that you want to work as a general dentist. Most AEGD/GPR programs do not offer invisalign/veneer/implants that you are interested in. Some has very limited implant experience. If you take a good amount of CE and with practice you will learn a lot in those areas. If I'm you I'd accept the offer for 1st year take some CE and see how you feel like. Just my 2 cents.

 

[dentistrydmd]

I would pay off those loans asap and live within your means. Once you are able to make a dent in them to around 250k then I would consider specializing.