I agree, but I'm more inclined to not jumping into an SMP that quickly though it is definitely going to become a necessary step. The profile still seems to me like the OP has wandered around with searching for a good fit career. For dentistry to me (as an admissions dental/prehealth advisor), I would need an idea of resiliency, patience, and perseverance through hand skills because the fine motor skills element is still very essential. To that end, I need more information about being a "dental assistant" at a dental school, on shadowing, on how phlebotomy helps give me insight (for and against dentistry... we need good phlebotomists).
To get into an MS, I would need a lot more information about grades. The OP noted a drop in senior year grades/last semester of undergraduate. There probably are extenuating circumstances. Research potential is there even if the work is unpublished, but I would want to know about access to good advisors and the style of learning to succeed at that specific undergraduate program ("harder STEM school"?). Once you get into an SMP, you can't really dedicate 6 months to DAT study. And frankly (also from being a former test prep teacher/advisor), I don't think 6 months is really a worthwhile schedule unless you have to work full-time while studying. But then again, if the GPA inference is any indication, I don't see how that type of preparation is going to help get a 22+ without strict discipline and guidance/tutoring that one may actually need to pay for. And what may wind up being necessary is a complete relearn of prerequisite information as tested on the DAT. So then we're back to the question of retaking prereqs if that is also the issue noted on the transcripts, which is likely since the sGPA was expressed as near 3.0.
