I am currently a 1st year dental student at USC and I truly do not understand why USC gets all this hate here on SDN. I promise you guys all these negative posts are far from reality. Losing its accreditation huh?get a life guys and stop spreading rumors. USC was the first dental school in the west and will NEVER lose it's accreditation. Hell yeah USC dentists have the best reputation in So Cal, that is why I chose to come here!!!
Here is my honest opinion about USC:
Clinical: It truly is EXCELLENT clinically. I have friends that attend different dental schools and we are always updating each other about what we are doing. As a first year, I have definitely worked a lot more on my manual dexterity and working with the hand piece than my friends at other schools. We were working with the hand piece on the first day of school, and started working on the maxillary quadrants (with a mirror) a few days later. Our professors so far have been outstanding, and the faculty and TAs have been extremely helpful and approachable. Most (if not all) of my class says that our amalgam professor was the most passionate and dedicated professor we have ever had. As far as all the rumors about not having enough patients go, they are simply not true. USC is in downtown, there are more than enough patients. From the recent graduating class only one student did not graduate on time, and it was because of a personal matter. Keep in mind there is 144 of us in each class!! According to a survey from the academic affairs office 98% of the graduating students said during there last year that they would recommend USC to their close relatives/friends that are pursuing dentistry. If all the negative rumors on SDN were true, that percentage would be drastically lower.
PBL: Although it is not for everyone, PBL is the best learning method for me. All our cases are real medical cases that are extremely interesting and stimulating. I have had about 8 cases so far and I truly have learned a whole lot about the basic medical sciences from those cases. PBL is actually one of the main reasons why I picked SC and it has been a great experience. Being in lectures all day just sounds so boring and torturous to me. The PBL pedagogy keeps us engaged in the case and makes remembering things so much easier (for me). The only problem I see with PBL is that it is extremely time consuming (we have to do a lot of research on our own to decipher the case and understand what is going on) and is just not for everyone. If you feel that you need lectures to feed you all the information, and do not like the challenge of dissecting a medical case to understand all the aspects of it, pbl is just not for you. USC, for the most part, has been pretty good with accepting the right people for PBL. A lot of people in my class have their MS degrees, we even have an MD in our class. It would be perfect if USC moves towards a hybrid between both PBL and traditional lectures. I think that that would be the ideal teaching method for everyone.
I really do not understand where all the hate is coming from. My time at USC has been amazing so far, and although there are a couple of complainers (like at every other school) everyone in my class seems to be really enjoying their dental journey so far. All of us on here are pursuing one of the very best professions out there, and no matter what school we go to we are working extremely hard to accomplish our goals. It is really pointless and very immature on sit behind our computers and bash on each other.
My advice to all the predents, is that do your research, and talk to students at the schools that your interested in. Do not believe everything that you read on SDN. Although a lot of the people on here are really helpful and are genuinely here to help, there are some that spread rumors for no reason. I apologize about this really long post, but I just felt terrible reading all the bad things that people are saying about my school, especially since most of it is just false. I really hope this was helpful and I am sorry if I bored you to death guys!!!
