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I received a lot of good advice, helpful pointers and otherwise useful information from SDN and its members while I was applying to dental school, so I felt that I should give something back. I don't have too much money at the moment, so no donation. My DAT was good, but nothing out of the ordinary, so no amazing breakdown. Instead, I will share some of my own personal advice about pre-application and during the process itself. Hopefully some other people could add on, and maybe this will be useful to someone.
Before submitting your AADSAS application
Grades
This one is pretty simple: try to make an A in every class you take, whatever it takes to do that. Plenty of people still get into dental school without a stellar GPA, but it will certainly take more stress out of your life when you are applying and see that your GPA is above the average at most schools. Also, it is more important to make good grades in sciences courses and pre-reqs, because generally in those classes you are pitted against people who will be attending a graduate school and provide a good performance comparison.
The DAT
USE THE DAT BREAKDOWNS ON THIS WEBSITE. Don't get cocky because you have a 4.0 (see previous point) and try to take the DAT without using extra materials. The DAT is just as important as the GPA, and can make or break an applicant. Most people spend about 2 months during the summer (after you take o-chem 2) to study, then take it before school starts. I would recommend the summer after your sophomore year, but I took it during my junior year and it has worked out well, but I wouldn't recommend it.
Another piece of advice: use CrackPAT. I didn't, and I felt that my PAT score suffered significantly because of it. I know of plenty of people who used this program and felt that it was an accurate representation of the actual DAT, so take that for what it is worth.
This is more opinion now: I signed up for the Kaplan class out of fear, but I didn't think it helped all that much. The materials they give you online are useful if you have time to use them, but they essentially boil down to extra practice questions for each section, all of which you can find elsewhere at a much cheaper price than the Kaplan course. Again, many people take the class and find it useful, I didn't feel that way.
Extracurriculars
It looks very good to the ADCOM when you shadow early and often, but especially when you spread your shadowing among different specialties. Furthermore, at some interviews the interviewer will ask you about something interesting you learned while shadowing, so don't just go through the motions: only shadow with a dentist if you really want to learn something that day.
However, shadowing is only useful up to a point. You have to do other stuff too, to show that you are well-rounded, and also to show that you can do things outside of class while holding down a good GPA in your classes. In this case I would advise you to become heavily involved in 1 or at most 2 clubs or organizations that you are greatly interested in. If you are interested in your activities, you will enjoy what you are doing more, and if you get asked about it in an interview then it will show that you had positive experiences. Also, this gives you an opportunity to run for a leadership position, whatever that may be.
Personal Statement/Letters of Recommendation
LoR: ask for these early, cannot stress this enough. Don't be nervous to ask a professor, they get asked to do this all the time, I think it may be a part of the job (don't quote me on that). The key is to get to know the professor well beforehand, so that when you go to office hours and say "Professor so-and-so, can you write me a STRONG letter of recommendation?" they will smile and say "of course I will, wonderful student!" Otherwise they might just skirt around the fact that they don't know you well enough. So get to know your professors early, ask them for the LoRs early, avoid headaches later.
PS: this is the part of your application where you can have some fun, and make yourself truly stand out. For an example, when I was early on in college I had a horrendous GPA (2.95), and I thought about dropping out to become a brick mason. I wrote about that, along with other things that are a part of my personality, and they became great talking points at my interviews. The idea here is to give them an image of you that is interesting, that makes them want to take a second look at you in an interview. Don't be a statue, but don't be unprofessional. And whatever you do, don't commit major spelling mistakes, and don't go over the character limit.
Applying to Dental School
The ADEA Book
Use this resource, its relatively cheap compared to the money it saves you by allowing you to eliminate some dental schools based on their requirements, locations, demographics, etc. doc toothache usually has some fantastic breakdowns of this book, so you can use those if you wish. I used the book and marked off between 5-6 schools from my original list based on their OOS percentages, so I recommend it but it is a personal choice.
AADSAS application
The exact date may change, but generally it opens at the beginning of June each year. Before this date, you cannot create a profile, send in your transcripts, enter your grades or anything. All you can do is obtain a copy of your grades (for manual input) and finish your personal statement. Try to have your LoR writers ready to submit their scathing reviews by the first day, but you don't get into late territory until mid to late August.
I didn't use Interfolio, hopefully someone can expound on that point.
Once the application opens, you go the AADSAS portal, and make an account. You will use this account to submit the application and review school decisions for the rest of the cycle. There is a checklist that you go down and fill out, very similar to a resume.
The parts that take the longest are transcript verification and DAT score upload. To verify the transcript, you download a matching form (from AADSAS application) and send to your school to be attached to your transcript. The transcript is then sent to the central AADSAS office, which then distributes all of your information to your schools. The DAT score upload only requires you to enter your DENTPIN (from when you registered for the DAT) and birthdate. I believe that now if you checked at least one school when you were taking the DAT, then all schools can have access - you no longer need to pay extra.
You must type in your courses, abbreviations, grades, hours, type of course (science, non-science, english, etc), type in your personal statement, and provide a breakdown of your extracurriculars.
Before you submit, print out a copy of the application because some supplemental applications ask repeat or similar questions.
The fun part: if you used the ADEA book or doc toothache earlier, then you can mark off as many schools as possible (depending on your scores), because this application is expensive.
Once you have checked everything a few times over and you feel confident that you entered everything you could, press submit and commence the waiting game!
The Waiting Game
Honestly, the worst part of applying to dental school. At this point you are a senior and have senioritis, or you are out of school and jaded by the real world: no one wants to just wait around for 6 months or longer, but that is essentially what happens.
Practice your interviews. At colleges and civic centers, they usually offer mock interview courses: use these for practice, the interview is arguably the most important piece of the interview.
Which brings me to my next point: buy a nice suit or interview outfit so you can put everyone else to shame with your swag. But seriously, buy a nice, non-flamboyant outfit that is comfortable and fits you well, that way you can feel confident at the interview.
Nailing the Interview
SDN Interview FAQ
I can't recommend this enough. Schools tend to ask the same question multiple times, so you can get a general idea of what will be asked, or how you can prepare for the interview. There is a fine line between under prepared and over prepared, and it is up to each applicant to know when they have reached that sweet spot.
Interview day itself
Try to sleep as well as possible, then get to the school about 15 minutes early. You'll have a few minutes to meet the fellow interviewees. I always thought it was a useful exercise to try and psyche everyone out by making up interview questions and other terrible rumors about the school....
....just kidding. Go into the interview, BE CONFIDENT, try not to be nervous: they just want to get to know you.
General interview outline is like this:
-meet and greet with admissions officer and an icebreaker kind of thing
-powerpoint presentation about the school itself
-financial aid (the worst part)
-interviews (number and type depends on school, some are kinda funky like Michigan)
-tour of school
-lunch (the best part)
-Q&A with current students
Then that's it! You have just completed a dental school interview, congratulations!
Post-interview
Sending a letter of interest/letter of intent may be useful, the data to support it is ambiguous at best. I sent them and it didn't help my situation, but if it helps to ease your mind then go for it.
December 1st
Judgement Day
Not really, it is a lot of fanfare and the vast majority of applicants will come away disappointed. Some schools update at 12am, some don't update until 8am the next day, some drag out the process via phone call for many days, some use snail mail. My advice here is to avoid SDN unless you get accepted somewhere, then try to make as many pre-dents cry as you can through humble brags and false empathy 😀
After acceptance, the timeline starts rolling: you have a certain amount of days to make your first deposit. You can make a deposit at multiple schools until 4/1, when AADSAS notifies schools of how many seats an applicant is holding. So if you are waitlisted, April is the month of magic for you.
Post-December Interviews
I got into VCU in a post-December interview, never thought in a million years I would get in there, but it happens to tons of people every year. That's why I said the first day of acceptances is overrated - more people get waitlisted/rejected than get accepted, so try not to take it personally, and focus on post-December interviews. At this point, your chances are just as good to be accepted as they were pre-December.
Achieving Acceptance
Congrats! You're going to be a poor, overworked dental student for 4 years. Try to keep up your grades as well as possible (anything above a C is usually fine), and learn to do some interesting things. If at any point something changes (turning down a position, failing a course, getting arrested, etc.) CALL THE SCHOOL. Don't ask SDN, they will tell you the same thing.
Just be smart, enjoy your successes, and prepare for 4 more years of expanding your knowledge in real-world scientific applications.
So, wall of text, I know. Hopefully this will answer a lot of the questions that are posted around. Anyone that wants to add things (specific interview advice, Interfolio process) please feel free.
Before submitting your AADSAS application
Grades
This one is pretty simple: try to make an A in every class you take, whatever it takes to do that. Plenty of people still get into dental school without a stellar GPA, but it will certainly take more stress out of your life when you are applying and see that your GPA is above the average at most schools. Also, it is more important to make good grades in sciences courses and pre-reqs, because generally in those classes you are pitted against people who will be attending a graduate school and provide a good performance comparison.
The DAT
USE THE DAT BREAKDOWNS ON THIS WEBSITE. Don't get cocky because you have a 4.0 (see previous point) and try to take the DAT without using extra materials. The DAT is just as important as the GPA, and can make or break an applicant. Most people spend about 2 months during the summer (after you take o-chem 2) to study, then take it before school starts. I would recommend the summer after your sophomore year, but I took it during my junior year and it has worked out well, but I wouldn't recommend it.
Another piece of advice: use CrackPAT. I didn't, and I felt that my PAT score suffered significantly because of it. I know of plenty of people who used this program and felt that it was an accurate representation of the actual DAT, so take that for what it is worth.
This is more opinion now: I signed up for the Kaplan class out of fear, but I didn't think it helped all that much. The materials they give you online are useful if you have time to use them, but they essentially boil down to extra practice questions for each section, all of which you can find elsewhere at a much cheaper price than the Kaplan course. Again, many people take the class and find it useful, I didn't feel that way.
Extracurriculars
It looks very good to the ADCOM when you shadow early and often, but especially when you spread your shadowing among different specialties. Furthermore, at some interviews the interviewer will ask you about something interesting you learned while shadowing, so don't just go through the motions: only shadow with a dentist if you really want to learn something that day.
However, shadowing is only useful up to a point. You have to do other stuff too, to show that you are well-rounded, and also to show that you can do things outside of class while holding down a good GPA in your classes. In this case I would advise you to become heavily involved in 1 or at most 2 clubs or organizations that you are greatly interested in. If you are interested in your activities, you will enjoy what you are doing more, and if you get asked about it in an interview then it will show that you had positive experiences. Also, this gives you an opportunity to run for a leadership position, whatever that may be.
Personal Statement/Letters of Recommendation
LoR: ask for these early, cannot stress this enough. Don't be nervous to ask a professor, they get asked to do this all the time, I think it may be a part of the job (don't quote me on that). The key is to get to know the professor well beforehand, so that when you go to office hours and say "Professor so-and-so, can you write me a STRONG letter of recommendation?" they will smile and say "of course I will, wonderful student!" Otherwise they might just skirt around the fact that they don't know you well enough. So get to know your professors early, ask them for the LoRs early, avoid headaches later.
PS: this is the part of your application where you can have some fun, and make yourself truly stand out. For an example, when I was early on in college I had a horrendous GPA (2.95), and I thought about dropping out to become a brick mason. I wrote about that, along with other things that are a part of my personality, and they became great talking points at my interviews. The idea here is to give them an image of you that is interesting, that makes them want to take a second look at you in an interview. Don't be a statue, but don't be unprofessional. And whatever you do, don't commit major spelling mistakes, and don't go over the character limit.
Applying to Dental School
The ADEA Book
Use this resource, its relatively cheap compared to the money it saves you by allowing you to eliminate some dental schools based on their requirements, locations, demographics, etc. doc toothache usually has some fantastic breakdowns of this book, so you can use those if you wish. I used the book and marked off between 5-6 schools from my original list based on their OOS percentages, so I recommend it but it is a personal choice.
AADSAS application
The exact date may change, but generally it opens at the beginning of June each year. Before this date, you cannot create a profile, send in your transcripts, enter your grades or anything. All you can do is obtain a copy of your grades (for manual input) and finish your personal statement. Try to have your LoR writers ready to submit their scathing reviews by the first day, but you don't get into late territory until mid to late August.
I didn't use Interfolio, hopefully someone can expound on that point.
Once the application opens, you go the AADSAS portal, and make an account. You will use this account to submit the application and review school decisions for the rest of the cycle. There is a checklist that you go down and fill out, very similar to a resume.
The parts that take the longest are transcript verification and DAT score upload. To verify the transcript, you download a matching form (from AADSAS application) and send to your school to be attached to your transcript. The transcript is then sent to the central AADSAS office, which then distributes all of your information to your schools. The DAT score upload only requires you to enter your DENTPIN (from when you registered for the DAT) and birthdate. I believe that now if you checked at least one school when you were taking the DAT, then all schools can have access - you no longer need to pay extra.
You must type in your courses, abbreviations, grades, hours, type of course (science, non-science, english, etc), type in your personal statement, and provide a breakdown of your extracurriculars.
Before you submit, print out a copy of the application because some supplemental applications ask repeat or similar questions.
The fun part: if you used the ADEA book or doc toothache earlier, then you can mark off as many schools as possible (depending on your scores), because this application is expensive.
Once you have checked everything a few times over and you feel confident that you entered everything you could, press submit and commence the waiting game!
The Waiting Game
Honestly, the worst part of applying to dental school. At this point you are a senior and have senioritis, or you are out of school and jaded by the real world: no one wants to just wait around for 6 months or longer, but that is essentially what happens.
Practice your interviews. At colleges and civic centers, they usually offer mock interview courses: use these for practice, the interview is arguably the most important piece of the interview.
Which brings me to my next point: buy a nice suit or interview outfit so you can put everyone else to shame with your swag. But seriously, buy a nice, non-flamboyant outfit that is comfortable and fits you well, that way you can feel confident at the interview.
Nailing the Interview
SDN Interview FAQ
I can't recommend this enough. Schools tend to ask the same question multiple times, so you can get a general idea of what will be asked, or how you can prepare for the interview. There is a fine line between under prepared and over prepared, and it is up to each applicant to know when they have reached that sweet spot.
Interview day itself
Try to sleep as well as possible, then get to the school about 15 minutes early. You'll have a few minutes to meet the fellow interviewees. I always thought it was a useful exercise to try and psyche everyone out by making up interview questions and other terrible rumors about the school....
....just kidding. Go into the interview, BE CONFIDENT, try not to be nervous: they just want to get to know you.
General interview outline is like this:
-meet and greet with admissions officer and an icebreaker kind of thing
-powerpoint presentation about the school itself
-financial aid (the worst part)
-interviews (number and type depends on school, some are kinda funky like Michigan)
-tour of school
-lunch (the best part)
-Q&A with current students
Then that's it! You have just completed a dental school interview, congratulations!
Post-interview
Sending a letter of interest/letter of intent may be useful, the data to support it is ambiguous at best. I sent them and it didn't help my situation, but if it helps to ease your mind then go for it.
December 1st
Judgement Day
Not really, it is a lot of fanfare and the vast majority of applicants will come away disappointed. Some schools update at 12am, some don't update until 8am the next day, some drag out the process via phone call for many days, some use snail mail. My advice here is to avoid SDN unless you get accepted somewhere, then try to make as many pre-dents cry as you can through humble brags and false empathy 😀
After acceptance, the timeline starts rolling: you have a certain amount of days to make your first deposit. You can make a deposit at multiple schools until 4/1, when AADSAS notifies schools of how many seats an applicant is holding. So if you are waitlisted, April is the month of magic for you.
Post-December Interviews
I got into VCU in a post-December interview, never thought in a million years I would get in there, but it happens to tons of people every year. That's why I said the first day of acceptances is overrated - more people get waitlisted/rejected than get accepted, so try not to take it personally, and focus on post-December interviews. At this point, your chances are just as good to be accepted as they were pre-December.
Achieving Acceptance
Congrats! You're going to be a poor, overworked dental student for 4 years. Try to keep up your grades as well as possible (anything above a C is usually fine), and learn to do some interesting things. If at any point something changes (turning down a position, failing a course, getting arrested, etc.) CALL THE SCHOOL. Don't ask SDN, they will tell you the same thing.
Just be smart, enjoy your successes, and prepare for 4 more years of expanding your knowledge in real-world scientific applications.
So, wall of text, I know. Hopefully this will answer a lot of the questions that are posted around. Anyone that wants to add things (specific interview advice, Interfolio process) please feel free.
