What do dentist schools look for?

[DoctorJJJ]

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Im a freshman at a 4 year state school who has decided to switch from pre med track to pre dental track. Im still pretty new to everything surrounding dental school admissions, and my question is what is it that needs to be done/what do dental school admissions look for the most? I talking about in the context of GPA/Extracurricular/Volunteering/Shadowing/etc?

 

[artist2022]

Going off of your previous thread, it sort of seems like this switch has stemmed from having to retake your first "premed" class and people telling you to consider other career choices. Unfortunately, getting into dental* school is pretty competitive too. You'll have to keep your GPA as high as possible, score as well as you can on the DAT, be involved in volunteering and shadowing, and hopefully have other ECs that separate you from all the other applicants you'll be competing against.

But, since you're only a freshman, please go and shadow a general dentist for a little bit to see what it entails and make sure you won't be miserable if you had to do that kind of stuff for the rest of your life- don't be hasty in this switch. Orthodontists/OMFS/Pediatric Dentists/etc are all after you complete dental school and require their own kinds of crazy things to get in, and you're going to dental school to essentially be a general dentist. After shadowing, you may find that you don't like it as much as you thought you did and may decide to pursue something else instead 🙂 But, nonetheless, for any career in the healthcare field, you'll need to keep your grades up or else it'll be a tough road ahead for you.

 

[IdleKoala]

Obviously you will want to have the most competitive GPA possible, the higher the better, so make sure to prioritize your studies in college. Focus on understanding and retaining the material in your general biology and chemistry courses, as this will help you greatly help when studying for the DAT.

As far as extracurricular activities go, try to find stuff you enjoy to do. Play sports, join a predental society etc, try to gain some leadership experience if possible. Research is great as well. For volunteering, try to find a few organizations you enjoy serving at and start volunteering consistently, if you start now, you will have a lot of volunteer hours and gain a ton of experience by the time you apply.

Shadowing is also a great activity to start early. Try to shadow a few different specialists, but make sure to spend most of your time observing general dentistry.

Best of luck.

 

[DoctorJJJ]

Going off of your previous thread, it sort of seems like this switch has stemmed from having to retake your first "premed" class and people telling you to consider other career choices. Unfortunately, getting into dental* school is pretty competitive too. You'll have to keep your GPA as high as possible, score as well as you can on the DAT, be involved in volunteering and shadowing, and hopefully have other ECs that separate you from all the other applicants you'll be competing against.

But, since you're only a freshman, please go and shadow a general dentist for a little bit to see what it entails and make sure you won't be miserable if you had to do that kind of stuff for the rest of your life- don't be hasty in this switch. Orthodontists/OMFS/Pediatric Dentists/etc are all after you complete dental school and require their own kinds of crazy things to get in, and you're going to dental school to essentially be a general dentist. After shadowing, you may find that you don't like it as much as you thought you did and may decide to pursue something else instead 🙂 But, nonetheless, for any career in the healthcare field, you'll need to keep your grades up or else it'll be a tough road ahead for you.

Yeah I realize it looks like im trying to leave pre med based on having a subpar first semester but I was pretty indecisive within what I wanted to do in medicine and doing more research into specialties made me realize that nothing interested me. I was hoping to learn more about the dentistry field.

 

[deleted767916]

As someone one also had colleagues telling me to do one career or another, my biggest advice is finding what you genuinely enjoy and are passionate about. Switching because you have to retake classes is not a good reason anyway because like others have said dental school is still competitive and you need a good GPA. Extracurriculars are similar to medicine where they want to see leadership, research and volunteering is similar too. Almost all prehealth are similar in those regards, biggest difference is shadowing hours for the respective field.

I would say shadow a dentist, I shadowed a dentist and knew I wanted to be one despite everyone telling me to be a physician(opposite of you lol). I know plenty of people who re took classes to become a physician so if that's the big reason then just do that. If you shadowed a dentist and liked it then switch!