I took my DAT today. Scores were great. Test was reasonable. Happy with everything. Will post a breakdown, that might surprise a lot of you. Look for it tonight or tomorrow. I scored above 20!!!
BREAK DOWN POSTED
BREAK DOWN POSTED
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Congratulations!!
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Niiiiice
. Did ye score the sub par SDN 21 ? xDD (I hope you can tell i'm being very sarcastic)
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Niiiiice
My 21 definitely feels sub par on this forum haha... Funny because its an average of around 93 percentile. Lol
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You guys did do well! But avg accepted is like 19.9 (basically 20) lol. Competition is getting tougher ;(
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I fear that it means more and more people are looking into dentistry because of its title as the #1 and now #2 job in the country, and not because they have an inclination towards comforting people, along with a weird liking for teeth. I hope it only gets harder and harder, so that we will still have the good jobs we hoped for in our youth. I just hope those money hungry people stop trying to corporize dentistry! Eeek!
Well, to be honest dentistry is a profession where you just being a dentist is great and all, but understanding business is a key. The amount of private practice dentists there are, they need to know to market, hire, customer care (different from patient care), location of their practice. Some dentists lack that, and it hurts them. Corporatizing it helps them not have to do all the business side.
Title is just a title, just cause you're a doctor does not mean people will respect you. Or a celeb or anyone for that matter.
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Do you think if Dental Schools started helping students understand business and how to start and run a practice, that it would secure a better future for private practice? I really am worried that corporations will slowly start to try and take over to make more and more money, and eventually get laws passed to allow hygienists/assistants to do more and more work, without the supervision of a dentist on-site. I think that if you don't want to think about small business practice whatsoever, it would be better to be a hygienist. You don't have to worry about things going horribly wrong, and your job is simple and routine. Insurance for your practice, overhead, all that goes out the window, and you can still make a cushy 70-100k. You don't have to worry about 250k dollars for dental school, either! Not to mention the stressed of taking out a loan to start up a practice, or even buy one.
I will tell you first hand. I have grown up in a family with all medical professionals. Also, my dad is a pharmacist and highly successful business man. Dental schools may be able to teach students what to do but their students will not be the best at business at all. They may know theory but it is not going to translate well into practice. You have to live and experience business. They may be able to run a practice, but you got to be able to MARKET and provide customer service. There patient that just got 5 fillings but is sensitive on the 6th. Well some may charge for that seal, but you know what they paid a lot already. Ill provide a service and help this patient out, guess what?!?! they are now going to recommend you to others for customer care. Patient care is the quality of service and how well you did the job.
We have businesses small and big. We make the cooperate stores struggle cause we just make our prices lower. How do we make money? well you sell more volume. Also, In my opinion the free man will be better than corporate, because they won't have the stupid rules and regs. If you are successful, there is no worry about the overheads as much. The key with being private is not being satisfied and keep growing. The end game is you have to generate revenue where ever you are. You think dental schools don't realize that? They charge $$$$$ to generate revenue for themselves, but promote their fields aren't about money.
People think that because you're in health care making a lot is bad or frowned upon. But again, doesn't anyone in any profession want to make a lot of money. Personally, I am humble about it, but I still would like a great income.
Business aspects are a reason I want to be a dentist, I love healthcare and the services it provides. I also love business growing up and working in scratch to success establishments.
Dentistry combines two career goals for me.
Don't worry about corporate, worry about how you'll get the middle aged people who don't go to the dentist but needs to into your practice for their oral health, and your practice's well being.
as for being a hygienist, if you can't stand the heat stay out of the kitchen. Most of the people who want to do business don't truly understand that payroll and cost might cause you to down size that new house after a year, or cut back at home.
We have businesses small and big. We make the cooperate stores struggle cause we just make our prices lower. How do we make money? well you sell more volume. Also, In my opinion the free man will be better than corporate, because they won't have the stupid rules and regs. If you are successful, there is no worry about the overheads as much. The key with being private is not being satisfied and keep growing. The end game is you have to generate revenue where ever you are. You think dental schools don't realize that? They charge $$$$$ to generate revenue for themselves, but promote their fields aren't about money.
People think that because you're in health care making a lot is bad or frowned upon. But again, doesn't anyone in any profession want to make a lot of money. Personally, I am humble about it, but I still would like a great income.
Business aspects are a reason I want to be a dentist, I love healthcare and the services it provides. I also love business growing up and working in scratch to success establishments.
Dentistry combines two career goals for me.
Don't worry about corporate, worry about how you'll get the middle aged people who don't go to the dentist but needs to into your practice for their oral health, and your practice's well being.
as for being a hygienist, if you can't stand the heat stay out of the kitchen. Most of the people who want to do business don't truly understand that payroll and cost might cause you to down size that new house after a year, or cut back at home.
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I'm sure you wrote an awesome PS dude!
i hope i wrote a good one. I love baking and compared baking and decorating cakes to dentistry.
And a few shadowing experiences. You'd have to read it for it to make sense what I am saying. I use key words that tie paragraphs.
1st paragraph is a satisfying dental experience, 2nd is how satisfying moments lead to motivation and creativity, like when i bake cakes. 3rd, cakes are mounds of flour to art, my teeth were so bad before and like a mound of flour was transformed. then talked about how my experiences led me into the want to be a dentist.
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I love baking and cooking too! It's not what I used as my PS though. Hoping my DAT scores get uploaded. It's been about 2 weeks now ;(
Its a weird take I took, but it is a genuine PS. I don't talk about baking the whole time like 5 lines max, but it gives some insight into who i am. The care I put into cakes is analogous to dental care. Must be careful and precise.
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Awesome stuff! Enjoy the immense amount of freedom being done with this test gives you lol. Maybe you won't even know what to do with it
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I agree 100% and think like you. I could have answered my own question and said no, I don't think dental schools care whether you will successfully open a practice or fall flat on your face. What they care about is making sure you graduate in 4 years and get licensed so that they can have a higher "success" rate than other dental schools. They don't want to see people leave halfway through. They want to make it as easy as possible to afford going there to make it seem like that 70k per year loan you just got will be paid off in no time once you get through dental school in 4 years!
I also agree that how you treat other people is more important that anything else. The whole reason I wanted to become a dentist was because of how great an experience I had getting my first root canal. Doing people good is the best business move you can make, because its wholesome and honest. Sure, you might not make as much money, but seeing people taken care of and not having to suffer is more important than anything else.
Thats the reason why I hate the corporations so much. This kind of goes along with insurance and esp. Medicaid, but when a businessman is running your practice for you and tells you what equipment you can use and how much of it you're allowed to use, when and where, will only lead to unhappy customers. There is no absolute in dentistry and while the corporations and insurance companies don't want to hand over the money, it only makes it harder on you on to actually take care of the patient. This is the healthcare side of it, and the guys in suits sitting a desks care nothing about this, only optimizing how much money they get out of it by not even knowing about teeth.
I also agree with you about expectations of new dentists and even pre-dents who care more about the money. Once we are out of school, we are(most people) going to be in debt. Not only that, but now we have to start up a practice or get hired as a junior dentist(most people). I know fully well going into it, I am not entitled to any kind of nice lifestyle. Most people think dentists have amazing, rich and lavish lifestyles, and thats just not the normal case. Just a note, I HATE entitlement.
I also agree that you aren't a bad person if you want to make a lot of money even if you're working in healthcare. Dentist work extremely hard to get to where they are, and are able to help people with literally some of the worst pain ever known. Its back-breaking work(LITERALLY), and it took hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt to get the education. It's NOT an easy thing to do, yet it's one of the most basic things to maintain our society.
I do frown upon people who want to go into any healthcare profession because they want to make a lot of money, I want to make that clear, but I think people who think badly of healthcare professionals just because they make more than them, or make more than most average civilians, are wrong for doing so. That is not the case. I think that using dentistry as a means to an end, only to get rich, is despicable, but I also really dislike the idea that a dentist's work should be free out of the kindness of their heart all of the time. The mindset of people who think they're entitled for free everything just because they are alive and didn't ask to be here is a big problem.
One thing I do want to say that I disagree with you is never being satisfied. While we are young, and never being satisfied seems to be a way to get ahead and be successful, by working your hardest and not giving up, there is such a thing as unsustainable growth. You only have so much time, and there are only so many people who can afford to get dental work done. When do you stop? When you are working Monday through Saturday, 12 hours a day? When you take the patients from every other dentist in town because your prices are so low that you caused insurance to only accept you? This idea of 'never being satisfied' and 'keep growing' is the same idea that starts corporations who buy out pharmacies, optometries, and now dentistries. Businessmen have this idea that they can take a cut of we work for by making it simpler, but really all they are doing is putting dentists against other dentists, using us a ploys to see which dentist will cave in low enough to make them the most profit.. I have seen this first hand! The first dentist that I shadowed through high school, the same one that inspired me to be a dentist, got sick of Medicare. Having a 10 year old in his office who needed a root canal, the insurance would NOT pay and kept fighting the bill. It took weeks and weeks and he eventually did the root canal for free because the girl was in so much pain. Yes, did the entire procedure and crown free of charge, and vowed to stop helping corrupt businessmen who want to take over dentistry for the sake of money. He doesn't take Medicare anymore, and even though I have Medicare and I have to go to another dentist now, I completely respect his decision. That made me realize that corporations like Aspen Dental and the like are what will end good healthcare entirely.
I also agree that how you treat other people is more important that anything else. The whole reason I wanted to become a dentist was because of how great an experience I had getting my first root canal. Doing people good is the best business move you can make, because its wholesome and honest. Sure, you might not make as much money, but seeing people taken care of and not having to suffer is more important than anything else.
Thats the reason why I hate the corporations so much. This kind of goes along with insurance and esp. Medicaid, but when a businessman is running your practice for you and tells you what equipment you can use and how much of it you're allowed to use, when and where, will only lead to unhappy customers. There is no absolute in dentistry and while the corporations and insurance companies don't want to hand over the money, it only makes it harder on you on to actually take care of the patient. This is the healthcare side of it, and the guys in suits sitting a desks care nothing about this, only optimizing how much money they get out of it by not even knowing about teeth.
I also agree with you about expectations of new dentists and even pre-dents who care more about the money. Once we are out of school, we are(most people) going to be in debt. Not only that, but now we have to start up a practice or get hired as a junior dentist(most people). I know fully well going into it, I am not entitled to any kind of nice lifestyle. Most people think dentists have amazing, rich and lavish lifestyles, and thats just not the normal case. Just a note, I HATE entitlement.
I also agree that you aren't a bad person if you want to make a lot of money even if you're working in healthcare. Dentist work extremely hard to get to where they are, and are able to help people with literally some of the worst pain ever known. Its back-breaking work(LITERALLY), and it took hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt to get the education. It's NOT an easy thing to do, yet it's one of the most basic things to maintain our society.
I do frown upon people who want to go into any healthcare profession because they want to make a lot of money, I want to make that clear, but I think people who think badly of healthcare professionals just because they make more than them, or make more than most average civilians, are wrong for doing so. That is not the case. I think that using dentistry as a means to an end, only to get rich, is despicable, but I also really dislike the idea that a dentist's work should be free out of the kindness of their heart all of the time. The mindset of people who think they're entitled for free everything just because they are alive and didn't ask to be here is a big problem.
One thing I do want to say that I disagree with you is never being satisfied. While we are young, and never being satisfied seems to be a way to get ahead and be successful, by working your hardest and not giving up, there is such a thing as unsustainable growth. You only have so much time, and there are only so many people who can afford to get dental work done. When do you stop? When you are working Monday through Saturday, 12 hours a day? When you take the patients from every other dentist in town because your prices are so low that you caused insurance to only accept you? This idea of 'never being satisfied' and 'keep growing' is the same idea that starts corporations who buy out pharmacies, optometries, and now dentistries. Businessmen have this idea that they can take a cut of we work for by making it simpler, but really all they are doing is putting dentists against other dentists, using us a ploys to see which dentist will cave in low enough to make them the most profit.. I have seen this first hand! The first dentist that I shadowed through high school, the same one that inspired me to be a dentist, got sick of Medicare. Having a 10 year old in his office who needed a root canal, the insurance would NOT pay and kept fighting the bill. It took weeks and weeks and he eventually did the root canal for free because the girl was in so much pain. Yes, did the entire procedure and crown free of charge, and vowed to stop helping corrupt businessmen who want to take over dentistry for the sake of money. He doesn't take Medicare anymore, and even though I have Medicare and I have to go to another dentist now, I completely respect his decision. That made me realize that corporations like Aspen Dental and the like are what will end good healthcare entirely.
The key to success in business is never being satisfied. By that i mean, you have to innovate, you have to keep drawing people in, change things. If you aren't willing to work 12 hours a day mon-sunday you're not cut out for REAL business. Only when you are deep into it can you cut back. It is the harsh truth. Extreme, but true. My dad had nothing worked 12/7 a every week and now he works less. but he is always finding new ways to improve, cause once you get complacent where you are, the next guy will swoop in and take what was yours. These are principles i have learned and backed by his success. if he wasn't successful i wouldn't give him credit, but hell, he knows what he talks about.
While dentist X works MTTHF, dentist X can be open MTWTHFS and be open longer. That is what makes competition. Competition is great for the consumer. As for the cooperations you speak of, they aren't your ever day people, and in fact it is a collection of people our groups that do this. Now again, being smart in location can help reduce effects of cooperate. Putting dentists against other dentists well, that again is business. And that is where you can choose to either stick your ground which is very much possible if you are willing to put those hours in and innovate and market, or you can join them. I don't think either of us are going to join.
I agree about the growth, but growth in a new area, can be achieved when an old area is maxed out. for example, you max out selling big towels, but find a was to supply a demand for hand towels. different product, but similar. sell hand towels is now your forte.
I am speaking from a business point of view here. not 100% my opinion, cause I'm not weighing both sides.
