WAMC - Low gpa, decent DAT

[Jazzman96]

Date of submission: 7/3/2020
Overall GPA: 3.11
Science GPA: 3.00
Bio-Chem-Physics GPA: 3.02
DAT score (include AA and all sections):
PAT: 17 QR: 22 RC: 24 BIO: 20 GC: 20 OC: 21 TS: 20 AA: 21
State of Residence: California resident

Undergrad Attended: UCR
Major: Biology
Minor:
Minority? No
Reapplicant? No
Nontrad? No

Shadowing Experience: 100 Hours shadowing, general dentist, periodontist, and orthodontist.
Volunteering Experience: 80 hours Crisis Text Line, 40 hours hospital volunteering, 30 hours done doing community cleanups around my school.

Employment:
Some front office secretary work at my dentist - checking in patients, scheduling, taking payments etc. - 50 hours
Administrative Assistant at UCR Business Services: Organizing mail routes, front desk work, etc.

Research: N/A
Other Extracurriculars: Multiple leadership positions in a fraternity (organizing budgets, events, helping out with philanthropy event organization). Not sure if I should include this.
Relevant Honors or Awards: Very upward trending GPA from my early years with Dean's Honor List my last quarter.
LOR type and strength: My LOR from my dentist is very strong, I've known her for many years now and had a great relationship. My LOR from my professors one is good, the others are average LOR's.
Misc Info/Things not stated elsewhere:
I had a couple of big personal things come up through my college career (relating to mental health of loved ones) that had an effect on my grades, but once I was able to get through that my grades shot up. Should I discuss this on my app?

Post Bacc: I don't believe I'm willing to go into additional debt for a post-bacc, it's just not a possibility for me at the moment. I'm taking classes at CC instead.
School list:

Please include a list of schools you are interested in applying to! It is much easier for users to help you when you have taken the time to construct your own school list first!

I currently have all prereqs schools ask for except some that ask for A&P. Corona really messed up my schedule of taking those classes like my DAT getting rescheduled multiple times and classes getting cancelled.

Schools that require A&P:

AT Still AZ + MO
Indiana U
Midwestern AZ + Illinois
UNLV


Schools that don't require A&P:

Boston University
LECOM
Loma Linda - My dentist is an alum from Loma Linda, and taught there as well. I don't know if that gives me any advantage but I thought I'd mention it.
Roseman - I lived in Utah for 10 years and have strong ties there, so this school would be a good OOS school for me. They also consider GPA of your last 30 semester (45 quarter units for me), which I trend very well in (about 3.55-6).
Temple
Touro
Tufts
Buffalo
UOP
Western CA: I am close in range to the stats this school has, and am close to the school which would be ideal as well.

I chose these schools based of the ADEA Dental Explorer and whether or not they were partial to OOS students, and requirements. If you have any suggestions like taking off a school or adding a school based on my stats, please feel free to let me know. Thank you for your help

EDIT: Is it even worth applying this cycle for me?

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[S_Diamond_DDS]

You can plan to take A & P and then take them if you need to, this should not be a major criteria as to which schools you will apply for. That’s good that you show an upward trend, continue to improve that upward trend closer to 4.0 with the CC classes each quarter and you stand a better chance. Update the good CC grades you get in the academic updates. Your list has a solid number if you apply to 13+ schools. I’m suprised by some of the picks being oos friendly, compare to an older adea guide maybe? Indiana, lecom, temple, touro, and buffalo were not OOS friendly when I applied. I think AT stills recommend much more volunteer hours, might do some old sdn searches to see how you match up. I notice you left off some of the private schools with larger class sizes, nyu, usc, detroit mercy, etc. With your stats, these would be appropriate safety schools.

 

[0Mik3cho]

You can plan to take A & P and then take them if you need to, this should not be a major criteria as to which schools you will apply for.

If a school does not require a certain prerequisite and I listed it as "plan to take", is there a chance that they will expect me to take that class as a condition for acceptance?

 

[S_Diamond_DDS]

If a school does not require a certain prerequisite and I listed it as "plan to take", is there a chance that they will expect me to take that class as a condition for acceptance?

No.

 

[Jazzman96]

You can plan to take A & P and then take them if you need to, this should not be a major criteria as to which schools you will apply for. That’s good that you show an upward trend, continue to improve that upward trend closer to 4.0 with the CC classes each quarter and you stand a better chance. Update the good CC grades you get in the academic updates. Your list has a solid number if you apply to 13+ schools. I’m suprised by some of the picks being oos friendly, compare to an older adea guide maybe? Indiana, lecom, temple, touro, and buffalo were not OOS friendly when I applied. I think AT stills recommend much more volunteer hours, might do some old sdn searches to see how you match up. I notice you left off some of the private schools with larger class sizes, nyu, usc, detroit mercy, etc. With your stats, these would be appropriate safety schools.

Thanks for the heads up on classes. I'll definitely put them as planned and take them this year regardless. I'll double check older threads on here about the OOS friendly schools and see what I can do.

 

[S_Diamond_DDS]

Thanks for the heads up on classes. I'll definitely put them as planned and take them this year regardless. I'll double check older threads on here about the OOS friendly schools and see what I can do.

Wait were you not using the most recent “adea guide to dental schools“? I thought that’s what you meant by adea explorer. Here’s an old copy, go to pages 47-49 and look at the column for each school “origin of out of state enrollees”:

 

[Jazzman96]

Wait were you not using the most recent “adea guide to dental schools“? I thought that’s what you meant by adea explorer. Here’s an old copy, go to pages 47-49 and look at the column for each school “origin of out of state enrollees”:

Oh yeah no I was using the explorer not the guide, this is very helpful! I'll take a look

 

[MountainManOutdoor]

Do they not offer the new/updated version online/via ebook? Odd. Hope I'm just overlooking it.

Wait were you not using the most recent “adea guide to dental schools“? I thought that’s what you meant by adea explorer. Here’s an old copy, go to pages 47-49 and look at the column for each school “origin of out of state enrollees”:

 

[S_Diamond_DDS]

Do they not offer the new/updated version online/via ebook? Odd. Hope I'm just overlooking it.

Yes, there are more recent guides/explorers out there. Google the “ADEA guide to dental schools” and you’ll find a much more recent guide. The reason I sent him an old one is simply to compare the data from the new guide to an older one. You do this to ensure the schools you picked from the newest guide are actually out of state friendly. Comparing guides shows that schools did not select an unusually high number of students from a particular state in just that one year (outlier in the data). These numbers tend not to change much from year to year.