The biggest pros I wrote down during my interview were
- They house every dental specialty in their dental college (only school that does that)
- The clinic is undergoing a current renovation = state of the art equipment for when we are there
- You get clinic time at the end of D1 (this was a big one for me)
- You don't have to book your own patients
- Never an issue to find a patients to suit your needs, usually. Iowa has a really strong patient base
- Each student is assigned their own chair, so you don't have to fight that out
Editing to add my blog post I made when I interviewed, this is the good stuff I remembered coming fresh off my interview. Hopefully it's of some use to someone interviewing.
Now that I’m just about a week past my interview at the University of Iowa, I figured I would give a quick recap.
Firstly, every single person there is amazingly nice. I can’t even count how many times on our tour we had faculty stop us and say hi, ask us questions, or sell us on the school. They all seemed to be genuine and I would love working with them!
Secondly, the dental school is going through as massive renovation, as is a lot of campus. I believe the student giving our tour had said that the dental school, itself, was getting a $65 million renovation. The clinics are going to be brand new and the equipment will be state of the art. Huge selling point.
Along the same lines, it was highly emphasized how Iowa’s dental students get hands on patient contact during their D1 year - that’s huge. It also seemed during the tour that there were tons of patients in the clinic and there really isn’t a shortage. Another awesome fact is that you don’t have to find your own patients, they are booked for you by the front desk staff. Plus, our student tour guide said that they are awesome about working with you to help you get requirements that you need and schedule lots of consults.
As far as the interview itself, it was not as high stress as SDN made it seem. I believe they are modifying their interview methodology so it isn’t as cold and impersonal. It was about 20 minutes and the first half was filled with structured questions that the interviewer couldn’t clarify or expand on. However, the second half of the interview was filled with questions they decided to ask - it was much more conversational. It was still stressful, but that’s probably because it was my first interview of the cycle. However, I feel like they sincerely want to get a feel of how you are as a person.
The university does seem to encourage research amongst it’s students, which came as no surprise to me. If I remember correctly, nearly 1/3 of their dental students do research at some point during dental school. They do offer some attractive grants - including stipends. Which makes it tempting, if not just to offset a little bit of the high costs of dental school. It seems super flexible in that you can research in whatever topic, whatever specialty (they are the only school with every dental specialty - so huge point for anyone wanting to consider specializing)
As a whole, I love the school and could picture myself there, but as an in state resident, I’m tempted to see what else is out there.
In short, I feel like the U of Iowa gets largely overlooked, so anyone looking to apply to dental school should give it a closer look! It really is a great program and turns out amazing clinical dentists, plus specialists. Also, Iowa City is a pretty cool place to live.
