UKCD — D2 — AMA

[UKWildcatz]

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Hey all,

I used these forums a lot when I was applying and I want to give back to the community. Ask me anything!

I’ll try my best to answer!

Go Cats!

 

[predent2151]

What do the students who are at the top of your class do differently than the rest of students. Do they just study more? Work harder? Or are they just naturally smarter? Any advice for how to manage the workload like a general schedule of how you managed it would be nice to see. Thanks!

 

[UKWildcatz]

What do the students who are at the top of your class do differently than the rest of students. Do they just study more? Work harder? Or are they just naturally smarter? Any advice for how to manage the workload like a general schedule of how you managed it would be nice to see. Thanks!

There is no one-size fits all when it comes to a cohort. Every student tends to a top achiever whether or not they show it. Time management is key. Are some naturally smarter? For sure. You’ll see many top students that say they have photographic memory and then you’ll see other top students that study 12 hours on Saturday and Sunday, 4-6 hours after the 8:00am-5:00pm classes everyday. The majority do tend to take Friday evenings off to kick back to some Netflix or spend time with their SO.

Treat it like a job. Then treat it like it’s a job that demands unpaid overtime. That’s the best thing I can say.

 

[Symphonies]

There is no one-size fits all when it comes to a cohort. Every student tends to a top achiever whether or not they show it. Time management is key. Are some naturally smarter? For sure. You’ll see many top students that say they have photographic memory and then you’ll see other top students that study 12 hours on Saturday and Sunday, 4-6 hours after the 8:00am-5:00pm classes everyday. The majority do tend to take Friday evenings off to kick back to some Netflix or spend time with their SO.

Treat it like a job. Then treat it like it’s a job that demands unpaid overtime. That’s the best thing I can say.

Do you see any differences in how much people struggle based on their undergrad (state school vs top?) in terms of preparedness and worth ethic maybe?

Do any of the dental students interact with the medical school/nursing/other health profession students, or is everyone pretty secluded from each other?

 

[UKWildcatz]

Do you see any differences in how much people struggle based on their undergrad (state school vs top?) in terms of preparedness and worth ethic maybe?

Do any of the dental students interact with the medical school/nursing/other health profession students, or is everyone pretty secluded from each other?

Great question! As far my experiences go, I have not been able to put a correlation with what school they went to and their performance in DS. In fact, I have seen top achievers from schools I have never heard of (small colleges).

Preparedness would fall into the category of what courses they took previously, some have had significant exposure in higher academics such as a Masters or PhD, and some have very little. Is that what you meant? Otherwise, nothing really prepares you for the amount of work involved in dental school. It’s beyond anything you’ve ever had. We had about 31 credits in the Fall and 29 in the Spring I believe.

Interaction with other professions is highly encouraged and incorporated. In fact, 3 things that I can tell you how they implement this: (1) In October of D1, you will take a road trip to an underserved location in rural Kentucky and place sealants in children. Yes, you will be treating patients and having clinic exposure early. You will practice this in August and September on each other, become competent, and then place them in children in October. It’s a service for the community and an invaluable experience. (2) On this trip, you will have nursing students, physical therapy students, and social work students accompany you. You will work as an inter-professional team in providing children with oral care and overall health literacy. (3) Our Urgent Care Clinic has many professionals that play a role in treating the patient so they come in for dental-related issues but have a comprehensive checkup to ensure optimal health.

You will have more opportunities within the first year to work with other disciplines besides what I mentioned.

 

[Symphonies]

Great question! As far my experiences go, I have not been able to put a correlation with what school they went to and their performance in DS. In fact, I have seen top achievers from schools I have never heard of (small colleges).

Preparedness would fall into the category of what courses they took previously, some have had significant exposure in higher academics such as a Masters or PhD, and some have very little. Is that what you meant? Otherwise, nothing really prepares you for the amount of work involved in dental school. It’s beyond anything you’ve ever had. We had about 31 credits in the Fall and 29 in the Spring I believe.

Interaction with other professions is highly encouraged and incorporated. In fact, 3 things that I can tell you how they implement this: (1) In October of D1, you will take a road trip to an underserved location in rural Kentucky and place sealants in children. Yes, you will be treating patients and having clinic exposure early. You will practice this in August and September on each other, become competent, and then place them in children in October. It’s a service for the community and an invaluable experience. (2) On this trip, you will have nursing students, physical therapy students, and social work students accompany you. You will work as an inter-professional team in providing children with oral care and overall health literacy. (3) Our Urgent Care Clinic has many professionals that play a role in treating the patient so they come in for dental-related issues but have a comprehensive checkup to ensure optimal health.

You will have more opportunities within the first year to work with other disciplines besides what I mentioned.

Yeah, that's what I meant, thanks for the insight!!

 

[DentalDegree3]

Great question! As far my experiences go, I have not been able to put a correlation with what school they went to and their performance in DS. In fact, I have seen top achievers from schools I have never heard of (small colleges).

Preparedness would fall into the category of what courses they took previously, some have had significant exposure in higher academics such as a Masters or PhD, and some have very little. Is that what you meant? Otherwise, nothing really prepares you for the amount of work involved in dental school. It’s beyond anything you’ve ever had. We had about 31 credits in the Fall and 29 in the Spring I believe.

Interaction with other professions is highly encouraged and incorporated. In fact, 3 things that I can tell you how they implement this: (1) In October of D1, you will take a road trip to an underserved location in rural Kentucky and place sealants in children. Yes, you will be treating patients and having clinic exposure early. You will practice this in August and September on each other, become competent, and then place them in children in October. It’s a service for the community and an invaluable experience. (2) On this trip, you will have nursing students, physical therapy students, and social work students accompany you. You will work as an inter-professional team in providing children with oral care and overall health literacy. (3) Our Urgent Care Clinic has many professionals that play a role in treating the patient so they come in for dental-related issues but have a comprehensive checkup to ensure optimal health.

You will have more opportunities within the first year to work with other disciplines besides what I mentioned.

Sounds like you get a lot of experience early on. When do you start clinic? Are there a lot cases you lose experience out on due to specialities there? What are the labs like? Do you share classes with other non-dental students?

 

[deleted891901]

What is a typical D1 day? Now that you've gone through D1, what are things that you wished you would have known before starting or learned earlier?

Thanks!

 

[UKWildcatz]

Sounds like you get a lot of experience early on. When do you start clinic? Are there a lot cases you lose experience out on due to specialities there? What are the labs like? Do you share classes with other non-dental students?

We start clinic in the beginning of D2. This is very early. I believe most schools start D3. We pack on a heavy course load in the beginning and, from what I’ve seen, we sort of compact 2 years into 1. I’ve taken courses where some of my friends in other schools will take their second year as a D2. Do we lose out on experience because of other specialties? I’m not sure. We rotate into different specialties and I’ve seen dental students perform extractions with a supervising OS. I’ve seen students perform RCTs as well. We do a lot of Perio work as students, put in crowns (we print digital crowns and same day crowns), and we will do at least 2 implants before we graduate. I’ve been told that doing implants as students is currently unheard of.

We have dental anatomy lab with waxing, operative lab which is all your “drilling” which is a year-long course, occlusion lab with the articulator learning all about a patient’s occlusion and fitting them for biteguards and such, and then we have anatomy lab with cadavers shared by other medical students.

Classes are not joined with other non-dental students. The only time I was with medical students was in the cadaver lab and they were in a different group. A lot of the basic sciences are the same between medical and dental students so I would see them studying the same thing, but we did not share the same class (just the same Prof).

What is a typical D1 day? Now that you've gone through D1, what are things that you wished you would have known before starting or learned earlier?

Thanks!

I would advise that if you are early into college and definitely set on dentistry, take as many courses that you know you would take in dental school again. If you are taking a graduate program or post-bacc, do the same. Anatomy, Histology, Physiology, Microbiology, Immunology, etc. These are all those upper-level courses that having a foundation on is very useful. It definitely cuts down on studying time when all you need to do is “refresh”. So most of those things are what I believe everyone would agree they wish they learned earlier if they had not taken it.

I’m not sure there are anything real critical that I wish I had known prior to starting dental school. It would have been nice to had some practice/experience with waxing and indirect vision when using the handpieces and drilling, but you’ll have time to practice those during simlab.

A typical day is 8:00am-5:00pm. You have your one hour lunch. Depends on the scheduling, but usually you have your labs in the afternoon from 1-5:00pm and your lectures are in the morning.

 

[doktorinprogres]

Can you share some study methods/scheduling that worked for you? Also a relative idea of where you stand in the class?

 

[AppalachianDentalBoy]

What are the best and worst things about your school?

 

[health987]

Do most students study at home or on campus?


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[wittledentist]

+1 on the studying methods. Do you keep reviewing info everyday or look over it last minute? And do you just review ppt slides or supplement textbook as well?

 

[UKWildcatz]

Can you share some study methods/scheduling that worked for you? Also a relative idea of where you stand in the class?

Everyone has different studying styles. What I did was use paper notecards, read the presentations at least once, go over the lectures and listen to them again, and double-down on concepts I felt were the most important. Create your own questions in your head and definitely go on Quizlet and type in your course. You’ll find many upperclassman have already done a lot of the work and is open for the public to view and “quiz” themselves. Scheduling, it all depends on priority. I’ll be honest, it’s always a sense of catch-up when you have so many classes at once. We don’t do blocks like most medical schools. I think some dental schools have adopted it, but not that many yet. So while med students are doing anatomy, you’ll be doing anatomy + 9 other classes and those include labs. You just end up learning to schedule what’s the most important exam coming up essentially.

What are the best and worst things about your school?

Hands down the best thing about our school is the small class size. Each cohort is around 65. You get to know the faculty and they get to know you. Everyone is super-friendly and the faculty does everything in their power to help you succeed. Everyone here feels blessed to be in such an environment and I feel that consistently motivates us to perform our best. And if you don’t, you keep trying and you practice. The mantra for dental school is practice, practice, practice.

Edit: Forgot to add what are some of the worst things. Well, some people don’t like the area because things kind of close early. So those looking for the big city party life won’t find that here. Currently, we have a lot of renovations going on so construction sounds are ongoing and a tad annoying. At least this is a temporary inconvenience. The plus side is that we are getting brand new suites, equipment, and our school was one in five schools selected to implement digital dentistry in the curriculum. So overall, I think things closing early from the Starbucks to the library would be the biggest I can think of.

Do most students study at home or on campus?


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It’s very split. Sometimes you may find yourself studying at home and other times you may find it better to go to the library. Just as sometimes group studying is helpful and sometimes they aren’t and you are better off studying solo. You’ll definitely be doing a lot of each type of scenario.

+1 on the studying methods. Do you keep reviewing info everyday or look over it last minute? And do you just review ppt slides or supplement textbook as well?

You don’t have time to review everything over everyday. A lot of classes you cannot just review last minute. Reading the textbooks is helpful and encouraged. The biggest thing was reviewing the lectures, listening to the audio (whether you records it or you used the lecture capture the school provides), and focusing on that. So if you find yourself being able to supplement the book with all that given and you have the time for it, that’s definitely the recipe to go with and. Professors always suggest for students to do exactly that.

 

[health987]

How’s Lexington?? I’m OOS and am curious about how Lexington is!


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[AppalachianDentalBoy]

What were your most important factors for choosing a dental school?

 

[UKWildcatz]

How’s Lexington?? I’m OOS and am curious about how Lexington is!


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The best way to explain Lexington is that it’s a flavor of everything. You have the small city life, areas full of restaurants and bars, the whole college vibe with live music and bands, and tons of community events and activities. There’s a big stadium nearby where they hold concerts and basketball games. People are excited that Justin Timberlake is coming this fall. UK is big on basketball if you didn’t know. They shut down major roads for the football games in the fall. Tickets are $5 I believe. Everything is within a short distance, things are very clean, and people are friendly. Traffic is not too bad, but it depends on the time and day and what roads you hit. Then a few miles away you have horse country and Keeneland and you can visit Bourbon distilleries and such. It’s really a big mixture of small city, suburban, and rural life.

What were your most important factors for choosing a dental school?

Location, cost of living, class size, and experience offered. If you are an in-state resident, the tuition is much cheaper. If you are out-of-state, it’s more expensive. They offer a lot of scholarships though to help offset that, and with that considered, at least the cost-of-living is very reasonable. Fellow classmates have nice big places for $500/mo. They also built brand new buildings across the dental building that students can wake up and just walk to class easily. Those are more expensive. I believe around $900-1000/mo. So depends on if you rather pay more and walk 2 minutes or pay less and walk 10-20 minutes (or drive or bike).

 

[IdleKoala]

How much free time do you realistically have for hobbies and relaxing, gym etc. while still studying effectively?

 

[UKWildcatz]

How much free time do you realistically have for hobbies and relaxing, gym etc. while still studying effectively?

There is a really nice gym accross the street. They have a big lobby with lots of tables, a couch, and a massage chair. There’s rock climbing, a track, racquetball, basketball, lots of machines and weights. It’s two floors and connected to another building that has more fitness rooms and an Olympic-size pool. So students easily go to the gym quite often during small breaks, go swimming, and re-energize their brains since it’s less than 5 minutes away. Hobbies? Probably not that much. You’ll probably be giving up quite a few. There will be lots of time you’ll be stressed and lose some sleep. That’s just how it goes unless you are very gifted. Otherwise, just like seeing results from exercise, you have to put the time in and sacrifice.

 

[cyro8]

After spending another year at the school, is there any way you can give us an update to how the school is doing and/or how you’re doing?