WAMC 2025-2026 Cycle

[gregor5]

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[Mr.Smile12]

As you have noticed, your non-clinical community service seems random, but you're trying to show some consistency by committing to one opportunity for a longer period of time. I tend to ignore activities with fewer than 50 hours.

Your clinical experience hours are also relatively low as you have mixed different opportunities (animal shelter/vet assistant, standardized patients) that don't directly help you (unless you were helping with dental work with the vet, so... there's some credit there). It's hard to discern a strong commitment to dentistry from the profile given.

Tough to say this, but it's great you have a master's degree, but it adds marginal value to your application except perhaps some delicate hand skills for fine manual dexterity but not clear with procedures that involve it. Research doesn't mean much for dental schools.

What is your purpose as a dentist? Sure, you came from a disadvantaged environment but how is that relevant to your goals as a dentist? I know you walked away from vet med, so how would you address this change?

 

[gregor5]

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[macsak]

1. Date of submission: Preparing for the 2025-2026 Cycle
2. Undergraduate Overall GPA: 3.86 (Post Bacc GPA is a 3.9 in a biology MA program)
3. Undergrad Science GPA: 3.84
4. Undergrad Bio-Chem-Physics GPA: 3.92
5. DAT score (include AA and all sections): AA:23, TS: 22, Chem: 22, OChem: 23, Bio: 22, RC: 26, PAT: 21, QR: 20
6. State of Residence: New York
7. Undergrad Attended: Public school in upstate New York
8. Major: Biomedical Sciences
9. Minor: N/A
10. Minority? No (Considered a financially disadvantaged student)
11. Reapplicant? No
12. Nontrad? Sort of. Explained below.
13. Shadowing Experience: ~100 with one general dentist. ~25 hours shadowing specialties (endo and oral surgery). Also did per diem DA work with the former general dentist and got ~25 hours out of that.
14. Volunteering Experience: ~20 hours doing a community development project for a club I did as an undergraduate. ~10 hours at a food bank (hoping to do 40-50 hours there), ~10 hours delivering food to seniors (again, hoping to do 40-50 hours there), ~100 hours volunteering at an animal shelter. Projected: 30 hours as volunteer DA in an underserved area (doing this in March).
15. Employment: ~800 hours as hotel front desk agent. ~500 hours as a mobile veterinary assistant. ~800 hours as a hospital veterinary assistant. ~100 hours of warehouse work. ~1000 hours as a clinical standardized patient
16. Research: Projected: 1000 hours doing molecular biology research for my master’s program. I have a poster presentation out of this lab. ~30 hours doing a one-semester chemistry lab research experience in undergrad.
17. Other Extracurriculars: President of my undergraduate biology club, and vice president and treasurer of my undergraduate environmental club. ~80 hours as biology lecture TA as an undergraduate. I have lots of veterinary hours and I will explain this below.
18. Have you volunteered/shadowed/attended events at any dental schools? No.
19. Relevant Honors or Awards: 7 Dean’s List awards. Graduated college 1 semester early.
20. LOR type and strength: Research prof: Strong; 2 other science professors average-strong General Dentist: Very strong.
21. Misc Info/Things not stated elsewhere/Red Flags: So I was pre-veterinary medicine for a good portion of my undergraduate career. I applied to and was accepted to veterinary school during the 2023-2024 cycle. When I was waitlisted at the school I applied to I started getting dental hours and loved it so much more than veterinary medicine. After I got off the waitlist I declined my offer and decided to do a one-year master’s program to get some research experience and get my extracurriculars in order for dental school. I’m worried about how this is going to look to admissions.
22. School list:
23. Stony Brook
24. Buffalo
25. Ivies? (I don’t know if my DAT score is good enough, but I know they like research and I’ll have lots of that).
26. Pittsburgh
27. LECOM
28. Rutgers
29. Roseman (Their three-year program is appealing to me).
30. I know my list is kind of short but I’ll be limited on funds by the time I apply. I want to do general dentistry but would like a school that has strong summer research fellowships. Reasonable tuition is very important to me as well.
31. I’m curious if any aspects of my application can be approved. Considering my situation I don’t know if I need more shadowing/volunteering hours (which is going to be hard considering my master’s program commitment - I'm in the lab full time and take classes too). Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

• School list:
• Stony Brook- great choice
• Buffalo- great choice
• Rutgers- great choice
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• Ivies? (I don’t know if my DAT score is good enough, but I know they like research and I’ll have lots of that).- does not go with 2 of the reasons below (reasonable tuition and general dentistry focus), if you have limited funds to apply, i think you could choose other schools
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• Pittsburgh- decent choice
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• LECOM
• Roseman (Their three-year program is appealing to me).
• i don't like your safety schools because they don't make much sense to me geographically, plus i think you might need more than 2...
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• I know my list is kind of short but I’ll be limited on funds by the time I apply. I want to do general dentistry but would like a school that has strong summer research fellowships. Reasonable tuition is very important to me as well.