In case you were wondering, I have a 4.0 gpa, 26 AA, I’m a SHPEP alumnus, I have maybe about 500 volunteering hours in 2 different volunteering settings (a daycare and an underserved high school). I also have led a small digital marketing agency (managing Facebook ad campaigns for local businesses) as well as running a small team with a website making science videos to help high school students in AP classes. The dentist who wrote my rec letter is very experienced (about 30 years teaching and practicing dentistry) and said my personal statement was “one of the best she’s ever read”. I think my rec letters from professors were fairly decent too. But who knows! I only have 70 shadowing hours. I also submitted my app in late September and took the DAT very late in November and scored a 18 on the PAT. I came across dentistry pretty late in the game. I didn’t even join a predent org until last semester. I haven’t received interview invites from San Antonio or Dallas. I have no idea what these admissions committees are looking for. Maybe I sold myself way too much. Maybe they just assume I’m going to get picked up somewhere else so they don’t even bother looking at my app. Maybe my essays aren’t even that good in retrospect. Maybe my professor wrote something negative intentionally in my rec letter. Maybe I interview way worse than I think. Maybe taking the DAT that late is just a death sentence regardless of what the rest of my application has. Maybe maybe maybe. I have NO idea. But that’s okay. I think it’s better to view this whole process more as a matching system to make sure we are good fits rather than a competition. We are obviously all good enough to be accepted into dental school in our own ways. Let’s just trust them to do their thing rather than try to justify why (or why not) we get interviewed/accepted. Because tbh no one really knows exactly what they’re thinking or exactly what they’re looking for in applicants except them!
