dragonj - My research advisor has been on the admissions committee for many years here at SUNY Buffalo This topic of categorizing difficult/prestigious undergrads for grad school admissions only came up b/c her son had been kinda upset about turning down an Ivy League school (Dartmouth, I think) to attend Boston College. Although he wants to attend law school, she was saying that Boston College is looked at in the same level as Harvard, and that when she explained the whole 1 through 6 scaling system they use here. Boston College is a prestigious Jesuit school (as is Georgetown) so I think it has a high caliber of students that attend there for undergrad. My apologies if you attended Harvard and BC, but I don't think without attending either one could you say that BC is not as hard as Harvard. Boston University is a completely different private school, and I don't know what it would get on the scale, although my guess would be a 5 as well.
Anyways, like I said, which undergrad you attended makes a very little dent on your overall admissions package. All things equal, it might give you a small edge. But if you are doing post-grad work and have tremendously raised your GPA and have strong letters of reccomendation from there, then I think that would count for a lot more than what college you decided to attend as a high school senior. My advisor did say that GPA is a much more heavilty weighted factor in this formula and is very important.
UConn's dental classes are very small, about 35 or so in each class. They are the state school of Connecticut, so keep in mind that they favor Connecticut residents first, then they hold a certain number of spots for New England residents (since there is no other state dental school in New England) and then they have some spots for other students. Students from other states do get in, but you should have some pretty impressive stats to be considered there.
Here is something I have only come to realize after being a dental student, so I'll share it with you. UConn consistently ranks very well on the Part I of the National Dental Board Exam. Their average is usually #1 or #2 in the nation. Harvard, whose dental classes also have about 35 students, is another dental school who usually ranks fairly well too. My school, SUNY Buffalo, was either 6th or 7th in the nation this year as well, although we have 90+ students in my class. Do you know what these three schools have in common? It's the "kind of education one needs to if they want to specialize" that you refer to. Their students take the medical school versions of the courses tested on the board exams (Gross, Histo, Physio, Micro, Path, and Biochem). The med school versions are often much more detailed and rigorous than is necessary for the Dental Boards, so the students are well prepared when it comes time for the boards and therefore score well. UConn, I believe, teaches its basic sciences through the organ-based system many med schools use. They are P/F, but they still keep track of their student's rank for post-grad application purposes, although they won't tell you the rank.
That doesn't mean that just because you attend UConn/Buffalo/Harvard, you can expect to score awesome on your Part I Boards. It's just more likely that you will have received more than adequate training - if you put the effor it - to be in a position to do so. But, you can still attend a dental school that maybe doesn't rank as high on Part I and still ace the Part I boards b/c you studied hard with the intention of wanting to do well. For specializing, it is up to you and the effort you put into it. Dental schools will not spoon feed you. When you apply to a specialty right out of dental school, the program often only sees your part I Board score (b/c you haven't taken Part II at the time of application), so that number can become important in establishing cutoffs for competitive programs. That's why there is an emphasis on scoring well on Part I for specializing. But like I said, it is not just about your Part I score, other factors come into play including your rank, GPA, letters of rec, experiences, extracurricular involvement, etc.
Does any of this make sense?
