At UNLV, our first semester had dental anatomy with some other sim lab projects to get you ready for general clinic. In the 2nd semester, you have an operative course that mainly deals with cutting the different kinds of tooth preps on the simulator. Summer semester, you have a crown and bridge class and a restorative class all in sim lab. Local anesthesia is also given summer semster. After the 1st semester, you also begin assisting in the clinic and by the end your 1st year, you are doing screenings on patients in the clinic.
I just started my second year and we are doing endo and simulated patient care in sim lab and we are in clinic twice a week. Many are already doing comprehensive exams, some restorations, prophys, and scaling and root planing. UNLV is definitley set up to get you into the clinic ASAP.
We do take one semster of Spanish (everyone got an A). As for specialties, there are plenty of opportunities to beef up your residency application--actually you are forced to do certain reasearch projects and community service activities that you can use for your application (for those of us that just want to be a general dentist, this is a bunch of crap).
Hope this helps
