Timeline of events until applying

[LVKE]

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Hi SDN,

I am a junior at Indiana University hoping to apply this upcoming summer of 2016. I've worked at an orthodontist for 250+ hours, shadowed there for an additional 200+ hours, as well as shadowing 14 hours with an oral surgeon, 20 hours with a periodontist, and am going to spend thanksgiving and Christmas break at a general practice for my general hours. As far as volunteering goes, I've volunteered around 25 hours at a non profit spay/neuter clinic in town assisting pets after surgeries and am going to take a volunteer trip to New Orleans (7 days of volunteering) helping clean disaster victim's homes and whatnot. I've held a job since sophomore Fall in a chemistry lab and am still employed, doing mostly dish work at first and ultimately leading up to now where I'm preparing most of their buffers and other things the graduate students need for their studies. I am going to try and take a research for credit course this upcoming Spring. As far as manual dexterity skills, I'm enrolled in fundamental 3D studio currently, have taken piano 101, and am going to take Sculpture I next semester. Currently GPA is a 3.741 and science gpa slightly higher than that (I believe, I don't have the number on me currently). I have not yet taken the DAT, but plan on beginning the DATBootcamp next spring until I'm ultimately done with the semester in May and spend the last 2-3 weeks hitting the books hard and take the exam a few days before the June 1st release of the application.

Whew, that was a lot, so let me get down to my questions:

1. How am I doing academic/volunteer/shadowing wise? (Where to improve, advice, etc)

2. What all do I need to do between now and June (besides taking the DAT)?

Thank you to anyone who responds,

LVKE

 

[kholley25]

1. Shadowing hours are highly above average (~100 is solid for most applicants). I'd definitely get in more general dentist hours if you can as dental schools teach you to become a gen. dentist and you may be asked about the hour disparity in interviews. GPA is solid; keep it at 3.5 science, 3.6 overall to be competitive. Shoot for a 20 or higher AA on your DAT (I personally recommend using Chad's Videos, DAT Bootcamp, and DAT Destroyer in that order).

2. Advice: Establish connections to those professors/dentists/etc. that you want to write your recommend letters. Keep your grades up. Practice PAT strategies early (practice makes perfect - Bootcamp is great for this). Volunteer when you have time. But most importantly, RELAX! You seem to be highly competitive as it is now; just keep up the good work and it will pay off.

Good luck!

 

[LVKE]

1. Shadowing hours are highly above average (~100 is solid for most applicants). I'd definitely get in more general dentist hours if you can as dental schools teach you to become a gen. dentist and you may be asked about the hour disparity in interviews. GPA is solid; keep it at 3.5 science, 3.6 overall to be competitive. Shoot for a 20 or higher AA on your DAT (I personally recommend using Chad's Videos, DAT Bootcamp, and DAT Destroyer in that order).

2. Advice: Establish connections to those professors/dentists/etc. that you want to write your recommend letters. Keep your grades up. Practice PAT strategies early (practice makes perfect - Bootcamp is great for this). Volunteer when you have time. But most importantly, RELAX! You seem to be highly competitive as it is now; just keep up the good work and it will pay off.

Good luck!

Thank you for the quick response. As for the shadowing, it's an estimate (and probably an underestimate to be honest). Senior year in high school I was her intern (an orthodontist) and shadowed 2 hours a day, then she hired me to run sterilization in the summers. I'm going to have at least 100+ general hours (per IUDS recommendation), so I hope they see my large spread of hours in different specialties as simply me investigating what each field is like. For example, not going to lie I thought periodontics was something I'd HATE to watch, but after shadowing a perio who operated on me I've come to actually enjoy watching his work. So this was the reason I've spent several hours in various fields, just to discover what possibilities I enjoy watching.

As for the letters, I'm going to have 3 dentist letters: my orthodontist (and boss), my periodontist (I've shadowed and been operated on), and an oral surgeon (I've shadowed and been operated on). Academic letters are in the works, I've got a Spanish professor who is in the process of writing my non-science letter, and am PRAYING my biology integrated physiology professor (who is also the director of biology at IU) will write me a letter after this semester for my first science letter. Then assuming (next semester) I can do research in the lab I work in, I'm aiming to get one from a prestigious research scientist.

Any other advice is also welcome, thank you Kholley25 🙂

 

[SableFire]

I don't know what others are going to say but I'd definitely only get one dentist letter. AADSAS only lets you upload four letter total and you academic ones are way more important than dental ones. Most schools from what I have seen want a science proffesor or two a non-science professor (sometimes) a volunteer supervisor/boss and a dentist. The schools that I applied to wanted 2 science and a volunteer/boss.