Uop

[SamTak]

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I heard during their interviews, they bring out a goat and a knife, and ask you to sacrifice it for the UOP Gods. And if you don't do it... well, let's just say that you won't be going to dental school for a LONG TIME... and somehow you get Herpes. I swear... that's a true story I made up.

yea, i heard that too, it happens 100%, 60% of the time.

 

[SubugataiDDS]

Just a question, but why would you, or anyone for that matter, want to go to UOP? Their tuition is like 50 grand a year, not including fees that will/can easily bump that up to 75. Is your GPA really that low?

yeah, but during your 4th year at UoP (sarcasm), you can start making $$$ and paying back your loans and saving up some money to purchase a house and a new dental office in the near future!! 👍

On a separate note, I wonder what the stress there is like though. 4-year was unimaginable from what I've read...but 3? Apparently I didn't know there is more than 24 hours in a day. Anyone care to emphasize?

I do know that UoP's dental program can be stressful since it's on a quarter system. But they don't teach you all the didactic courses or I should say, the miscellaneous dental-related courses that other 4 year dental program teaches you. Like bio-statistic, dental material, etc. Hence that's how they can cram their progam into a 3 year dental program.

 

[djeffreyt]

i don't understand the low gpa thing. wouldn't those schools (UOP and NYU) give acceptance to applicants with over 3.5 first anyway?

I think the original poster of that statement rescinded his comment about people who apply to UOP must have low GPAs. We get about 3300 applications a year, and the GPAs range greatly. There are as many people in the 3.0 to 3.5 range as 3.5 to the 4.0 range in all of our classes here. And of course there are a few lower numbers here and there as well.

K90 emphasized the issue of our tuition being the main factor for why s/he wouldn't attend...but tuition only plays a portion of the reasons people choose this school. There's lots of other reasons:

1. It's 3 years
2. It's known for clinical excellence
3. It's known for its humanistic approach to educating students
4. It's in San Francisco, as opposed to Nebraska (not that there is anything wrong with Nebraska if that's your cup of tea...it's just not many of our applicants' cups of tea)
5. It's known for its social atmosphere
6. It's known that students graduating from the school have very low loan default rates
7. It's known for losing very few students through the years because of a system of tutors and catching students before they fall too far.

I have my personal reasons for why I chose UOP as well. I also had a pretty good GPA coming in, not that it really matters. In 3 years, no one will ask me what GPA I had in college or dental school.

 

[K90]

I think the original poster of that statement rescinded his comment about people who apply to UOP must have low GPAs. We get about 3300 applications a year, and the GPAs range greatly. There are as many people in the 3.0 to 3.5 range as 3.5 to the 4.0 range in all of our classes here. And of course there are a few lower numbers here and there as well.

K90 emphasized the issue of our tuition being the main factor for why s/he wouldn't attend...but tuition only plays a portion of the reasons people choose this school. There's lots of other reasons:

1. It's 3 years
2. It's known for clinical excellence
3. It's known for its humanistic approach to educating students
4. It's in San Francisco, as opposed to Nebraska (not that there is anything wrong with Nebraska if that's your cup of tea...it's just not many of our applicants' cups of tea)
5. It's known for its social atmosphere
6. It's known that students graduating from the school have very low loan default rates
7. It's known for losing very few students through the years because of a system of tutors and catching students before they fall too far.

I have my personal reasons for why I chose UOP as well. I also had a pretty good GPA coming in, not that it really matters. In 3 years, no one will ask me what GPA I had in college or dental school.

I revised that post when I found out it was a 3-yr DDS, and it has since become my top priority school.

And yes, people will not ask you what GPA you graduated with, unless of course you are planning on post-graduate. But I do want to know what your GPA/Dat was at the time of application...🙂

 

[Ohbohkman]

What? No ways! UoP's dental school admissions office already calling people to notify them of interview invites? 😱

Cuz I applied to UoP's dental program two years ago, and they didn't start giving out interview invites until September.

But in my case back then, they only invited me for an interview in December, and that was already too late.

 

[yakuza]

What? No ways! UoP's dental school admissions office already calling people to notify them of interview invites? 😱

Cuz I applied to UoP's dental program two years ago, and they didn't start giving out interview invites until September.

But in my case back then, they only invited me for an interview in December, and that was already too late.

An interview in December was too late for...??

 

[yakuza]

Shttt

Does most of UoP's class get filled by december??

 

[djeffreyt]

In interview in december is fine. I think we figured this out once, and with the # of interviewees they have prior to December, they could not even fill a whole class if they gave a slot to each one...so an interview IN december (which I don't think usually happens since they stop interviewing during that month for break) is fine.

I think UOP is following in the footsteps of some of the other schools and starting to get the application reviewing and interview invites rolling sooner. In the last few years, other schools have started doing this earlier and Pacific is probably just following suit to make sure they get the students they want in for interviews.

 

[Ohbohkman]

An interview in December was too late for...??

They called me up in December two years ago for interviews in January or February.

That's basically too late, and those interviews were only for alternative list spaces.

 

[NewMexDent]

never mind

 

[KahunaDentist]

I am so surprised at the demeanor of Tanya on the phone, one of the people at the UOP dental school admissions office.

She's so rude and blunt.

I called to ask about admissions related questions, and she sounded like she had a severe attitude problem.

Really made my day. 😡

 

[Ohbohkman]

^^ Yeah, I agree that tanya can sound cocky sometimes. I wonder what happened to Janelle? She's more nice.

I even sometimes leave my name and phone number with her to have somebody from the admissions office call me back.

But nobody ever calls me back, even after 3 weeks have gone by. yeah, that's rude of them to do that.

 

[iJackTeeth]

.

 

[kimpchskills]

I don't know how quickly they gave out invites last year, but I was really surprised to hear back from them so quickly. I submitted to AADSAS June 2nd and they already had my DAT scores (which were pretty decent) so I guess that helped. I'm sure a lot more people will be hearing back soon.

 

[54807]

I am so surprised at the demeanor of Tanya on the phone, one of the people at the UOP dental school admissions office.

She's so rude and blunt.

I called to ask about admissions related questions, and she sounded like she had a severe attitude problem.

Really made my day. 😡

Woah. Put it in perspectice. You are one of a TON of applicants and they are trying to accomplish alot in very little time. Read your own application over once, then multiply that by 1000 and see how much time investment they have to do.

The admissions office is small and does a phenomenal job and you will see that if you get a chance to visit. You will get treated better here as an applicant than you will anywhere else.

"I called and left a message and they didn't call back" - Call them during business hours...you were probably the 50th voicemail and if they are like me, they just deleted it anyway.

Maybe her attitude problem is just mirroring yours. Or...she had a rough day and it came out as attitude. Afterall, she has to deal with people like me coming to ask questions all the time!

 

[JavadiCavity]

Just graduated from Pacific. It's a very nice program. Like anything, you'll get out of it what you put into it. Graduating in 3 years was the icing on the cake. Now that I'm in practice, I find the education I recieved there to be top notch. It's awesome when you feel ready to tackle almost any situation clinically the first week or two out of school.

As for debt, during my graduating classes exit interviews, we were told the average debt load per student for our class was about $260k. However, most of the students with families were knocking on $320k. But, the salary of my first job after graduating is $150k plus production bonuses--not bad.

If I could do it again, I wouldn't change a thing about where I went to school. I work with 2 recent graduates of two different schools. And, while we have similar training, I have more familiarity with many clinical procedures than do my associates, such as: rotary endo for post and ant teeth, surgical extractions (including partial bony impacted 3rds), implants, veneers, empress crowns, lava crowns(you would not believe how few people have experience with veneers and all porcelain prosthetics while in dental school), and more.

The schedule at UOP isn't too grueling. I always thought first year and 3rd year were a bit stressful, but they were never crazy hard. I'm sure most schools push their students as hard as they do at Pacific. Good luck to all you applying this cycle.

 

[rollredroll]

thanks for the post. it's nice to read things like that from graduates.