Guess who gets the $hit end of the stick. Medium intelligence Canadians who decide to do undergrad in the states (me). They may not be competing against domestic applicants, but guess who they ARE competing against.
Reasons why UBC Dental Program entrance averages are low:
1. Expensive school (50k/year tuition), waitlist moves a lot. Probably one of the most expensive schools in Canada. The facility is brand new and one of the best in Canada.
2. PBL program - turn off for a lot of students, need I say more. Someone told me that there was a student who dropped out of UBC dental program and went to Boston U to start dental school all over again. Not sure if it is true, could be rumour.
3. In addition to dental courses, the first two years is combined with medical students. so you have to study a lot of not so interesting information.
4. Preclinical Operative dentistry (simulation drilling etc) starts in spring of second year (someone correct me if I am wrong). Too late in my opinion. A lot of other dental schools (both Canadian and US) have Preclinical operative dentistry courses in first year. This allows them to develop good dexterity and prepares them well for 3rd and 4th years. Whereas at UBC starts operative dentistry in spring (Feb) of second year and then students work on patients in 3rd year fall. Not enough practice to get ready for clinical years.
5. Oh, did I mention PBL? From my experience of talking to other students, PBL is really great for medical students, but not so much for dental students. Most of the time, general dentistry is all about skill and patient communication. Still requires brain, but not as much as medicine.
overall, students tend to choose other canadian schools over UBC. Those who stay back in vancouver, probably have other good reasons for going to UBC (family, love for the city, school facility etc..)
The dental school interview system is different in Canada. It is designed to be non-biased. Also, the interviews are blind. The interviewers do not know anything about the applicant except their name. The interview questions are situational/behavioural based. So it is kind of competitive. hence, a lot of students with good stats rely on US schools as a back-up.
Oh, as for the grading system in Canada, like other have said, it is not easy to get over 90%. Don't know why that is. could be because a lot of students take 5 or 6 science courses per semester. Also, sometimes, classes get curved. I did my undergrad at a canadian school. for one of the classes I received 83% and my transcript showed a B. For one of the classes I got 94.5% and that showed up as an A, not A+ like it usually is. And there were several other classes that got curved if the class average was high.
So there is no real advantage or disadvantage of attending a canadian school in terms of achieving a high GPA. Sure an A- is 80%, but the class averages are also a lot lower. If the class average is high, sometimes, professors do end up using a higher scale.
patchjoe, don't worry too much about the system and the unfairness you might think you have. Just apply to both Canada and US and see what happens. A lot of US dental schools have good facilities/programs (some better than canadian schools) and they will make you a good dentist in the end.
Purely based on the program design, if I had a choice between UBC and other schools like UPitt, bu, tufts, toronto, uwo, u of manitoba etc..I would pick the other school. But then again, there are a lot of other factors to consider when one has to pick a dental school.
questions, comments, arguements?
if I made any factual errors, please feel free to correct me and my bad for that.