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Tufts Vs BU
Started by trule01
Tufts has a better pre doc program. BU doesn't have enough clinic chairs for everyone. 80 total for 200 students. Not sure about tufts, but it's definitely a problem at bu.
Thank you for your reply! I heard of horror stories about BU and wanted an up to date info.
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No school has a chair for every single student. Tufts actually has 205 students and BU has 115. I spoke with a Tufts dean last week and he said the school expanded their predoc program too fast and is thus having issues with chair time. Both schools fight for the same patient population, and so they both have pretty similar issues on this. I will point out that BU is less accessible by Boston's public transportation, so more patients may favor Tufts out of convenience.
EDIT: I should also point out that Tufts is very much a clinical school, where as BU has both clinical strengths as well as academic/research. Something to keep in mind while you make your decision!
Are you factoring in the advanced standing students that they take every year?
Thank you for this! are you looking into Tufts yourself?
The advanced standing they educate separately from the predocs.
You're welcome. I am considering both Tufts and BU. I have been a DA at tufts for sometime now.
Cool! If you end up picking tufts, we will be classmates! I actually deposited the 1.5K this morning to tufts and dropped my BU seat. Keep it touch! 🙂
I'll be going to tufts as well!
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Yes they have classroom based classes separately, but clinic floors are still shared with d3 d4 and AS students.
Hello Classmate! 😀
Good point!
Patient pool is not really an issue. Students do plenty of work and graduate on time and even earlier.
Majority of masshealth patients come to BU to get treated and from what I know, the cost of treatment is alot cheaper than Tufts, so patients come to BU. The reason I see BU having less patient than Tufts is that BU doesn't advertise. We get to do lot of cool things, pre-doc levels get to place implants now (depending on level of difficulty), learn digital dentistry and many more. But at the end, I am BU student, so I am biased.
Majority of masshealth patients come to BU to get treated and from what I know, the cost of treatment is alot cheaper than Tufts, so patients come to BU. The reason I see BU having less patient than Tufts is that BU doesn't advertise. We get to do lot of cool things, pre-doc levels get to place implants now (depending on level of difficulty), learn digital dentistry and many more. But at the end, I am BU student, so I am biased.
So is the general consensus that the same individual would be better suited to specialize out of BU?
From what I've heard, it seems that BU isn't better suited for anything.
Specializing is more on you, not the school (except ivy of course).
Right of course it's in my interest to succeed in courses and clinic but also to take advantage of possible resources. It seems like BU has more opportunities for research, they have a fairly new implantology course where students place implants, APEX gives you a chance work with a specialist and also the smaller class size means faculty might get to know you better for LORs.
Seems like BU has a rough reputation on here but a lot of the comments seem dated or are referencing dated discussions so it's hard to tell what the current situation is.
the implantology course, good luck finding a ideal case for them to let you place it. and if you do find that ideal case, remember mass health patients have mass health for a reason. sure its great to experience placing one, but will you really be ready to place them after one or two as a pre-doc? you do know APEX just means you are shadowing for a summer right? you already shadowed as a predent, why do you want to do it again as a dental student? smaller class size??? whats small to you? cause 120 isnt small to me. and once you get into clinic you mix with around 80 AS students. so looking at 400 students for 80 chairs in the clinic starting d3 year. LORs are easy to get at any school. you just become buddy buddy with one of the profs.
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i would say they are trying to figure out ways to make it better, but they are not solving the problem which is over-crowding. too much money to be loss if they cut down the class sizes. im speaking about pre doc and specialty.
So you would recommend Tufts over BU? One student I spoke to said they are placing implants and the implantology course is great. APEX seems like it could go either way. The same student said they did APEX in Boston and had time for research and studying for the boards which they took afterward. When I said smaller I meant smaller than Tufts. I believe you mean 200 students for 80 chairs, which is the same size as Tufts starting out. Does Tufts have more chairs?
what did you end up choosing?
I would choose tufts. Yeah you can place implants. Implantology course is just a course. You need experience in it in order to really understand it. I mean 400. You have to take into account 3rd Years 4th years AS 1 AS2
Tufts is having major problems with patients. A lot of third and fourth years are just standing around with nothing to do- they expanded the class size way too quickly (especially international), pretty much intense greed to maximize tuition income for the school occurred and now we are super stressed about if we'll have enough patients to graduate on time. Cant speak for BU.
Greed runs bu as well.
Curious about this as i'm considering attending Tufts next year..
BU has a much smaller class size, much higher admissions stats (more competitive), sounds like the better choice to me.
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Can you elaborate on this?
