Hey guys,
I am a first year dental student at UCSF. Last year when I was applying to dental school, there were many answers to questions that were either left unanswered or misinterpreted by me as well as other applicants I came in contact with. Most of those misinterpretations came from previous belief on the "traditions" and "name" that many dental schools carry. When applying to dental school, I usually heard, ucsf UCLA harvard uconn and penn are good for specializing but are poor clinical schools, where as UOP and Loma Linda are great clinical schools. Because of these "stereotypes" that these schools carry one comes to make their decisions on what school to attend based them as opposed to objective analysis of each individual school. I finally decided on UCSF and based on the "stereotype" that UCSF carries I expected an average clinical experience while attending here. To my pleasant surprise I had been completely midguided. Much like the UOP counterparts we started doing work with the highspeed drill during the 2nd week of orientation! We have also began working in the clinic learning to do dental analysis on each other. I am sure many other dental schools are also like this and I recommend that those students applying to dental school do not base their decisions on what the school is "traditionally" known for because although I have not attended all the school,I believe most students will experience pretty similar things that I am. So dont be hung up on the "name" or "stereotype" just look at each school objectively by asking the students that attend there what you feel is most important to you.