Don't get fooled by a new sim clinic and typodonts and brand spanking new chairs. Your ultimate training will result from education in the classroom, depth/breadth and redundancy of clinical experience, and instruction by faculty during clinic.
I highly doubt a talented professor, especially one involved in cutting edge research, will come to LECOM to teach. Just like in the corporate world, where startup companies only attract the unemployed Fortune 500 rejects who need a darn job to pay their mortgage, the same will occur at LECOM. Add to this the PBL model meaning minimum faculty.
Since they don't have enough patients for clinic, you are forced to go off site to shadow a dentist which you can essentially do as a predent lol. I highly doubt a dentist will allow an unqualified LECOM student to go to work on his patients thereby risking a potential malpractice lawsuit. You will basically be a dental assistant which you can already do as a predent. So ******ed.
Thus, ultimately your training cannot be good and you'll have to do a GPR for sure. Note that not everyone can get accepted into a GPR program. You still have to apply and the selection will be based on GPA, reputation of school, ECs, etc. In fact, I worked at a clinic last year with 3 GPR residents. About 60 people applied for this program each year -- I know this because I was the one responsible for shredding all the apps after the review process. I peeked at everyone's resume, transcript, 2x2 photos, etc. And trust me there were a lot of impressive candidates from the Ivies and other reputable schools who applied, most of whom were rejected.
