What to do during Gap Year?

[deleted767916]

Hello guys!

I would love if I could get any advice on what I should do during my gap year. I narrowed down what I would want to do to two activities: volunteering as a high-school advisor or being a dental assistant.

As an advisor I would volunteer my time as as Americorps Vista volunteer. I would help students from low-income communities apply and get into college. As a financial aid student I can sympathize with these students and willing to help them out. The only problem is I already have a lot of volunteering hours, like over 100 plus.

As a dental assistant, I would get more clinical hours in dentistry. I already have a lot of shadowing hours, around 200 ish, but I have very little clinical hours in dentistry. This would be a great way for me to get more clinical hours but I'm concerned about whether I can get a position since in many dentist require previous experience and in the state of Michigan an x-ray license is required and I don't know how I would acquire that.

Any other ideas are welcomed as well! I wanted to originally volunteer a dental clinic but I can't find any in my state.

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[deleted767916]

These are both full-time so I can't do a mixture of either one

 

[AppalachianDentalBoy]

Be a dental assistant and get paid. If you need to become an RDA to get a job I don't think the courses are that long. If you have the dough travel or just relax.

Brother you got a 24 why are you taking a gap year? with 100 hrs you have a fine app, are you trying to improve it?

 

[artist2022]

Brother you got a 24 why are you taking a gap year?

He might be graduating this year and since he didn't apply last cycle, he'd be applying this year and thus the earliest he can matriculate is next fall --> gap year.

 

[Cthuluhoop]

I'm not sure I'd become a registered dental assistant. In my area, it's still not easy to find a job even if you are registered with no experience, and those courses aren't exactly cheap. An x-ray certification on the other hand, isn't too hard to obtain, so if you could find a dentist who would give you a job just acquire one of those. Network with local dentists and see what you can find, some may be willing to take you on as they know you're an aspiring dentist. I wasn't able to find that dentist in my area, but they're out there

In my opinion, 100 hours of volunteering is not a significant amount. I would try to volunteer somewhere occasionally through your gap year, I volunteered at a food pantry in my gap year a couple times a week, as well as continuing with a program I had been volunteering with in undergrad. Even if it is full-time, you can find volunteering opportunities on the weekend you could commit too.

I volunteered and shadowed in my gap year, but I had some money saved from a side business so I just traveled aside from shadowing and volunteering.

 

[deleted767916]

I'm not sure I'd become a registered dental assistant. In my area, it's still not easy to find a job even if you are registered with no experience, and those courses aren't exactly cheap. An x-ray certification on the other hand, isn't too hard to obtain, so if you could find a dentist who would give you a job just acquire one of those. Network with local dentists and see what you can find, some may be willing to take you on as they know you're an aspiring dentist. I wasn't able to find that dentist in my area, but they're out there

In my opinion, 100 hours of volunteering is not a significant amount. I would try to volunteer somewhere occasionally through your gap year, I volunteered at a food pantry in my gap year a couple times a week, as well as continuing with a program I had been volunteering with in undergrad. Even if it is full-time, you can find volunteering opportunities on the weekend you could commit too.

I volunteered and shadowed in my gap year, but I had some money saved from a side business so I just traveled aside from shadowing and volunteering.

I'm sorry everyone, I meant 1000+ hours of volunteering which technically is 100+ lol

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[deleted767916]

Be a dental assistant and get paid. If you need to become an RDA to get a job I don't think the courses are that long. If you have the dough travel or just relax.

Brother you got a 24 why are you taking a gap year? with 100 hrs you have a fine app, are you trying to improve it?

Americorps give a striped of 1,200 a month approximately so it's kinda paid; but most jobs pay a lot more.

I heard dental schools just want to make sure you actually do something during your Gap year.

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[Cthuluhoop]

I stand corrected. In that case, that is a LOT of volunteering hours haha You weren't wrong about 100+

I would really try to find a dental assisting job and go into a lot of dental offices in your area and explain your situation. I wish I could have done that in my year off. Whether it helps you or not going into dental school can be argued, but more exposure to the field definitely can't hurt

The dental schools were all fine with my time off even though I didn't have a 9-5 job. They seemed to accept what I was doing (shadowing and volunteering) and I got into pretty good programs. They really only know what you've done up until you hit submit on your application, any planned actions aren't put on your application so it'll only come up in your interviews

 

[AppalachianDentalBoy]

I heard dental schools just want to make sure you actually do something during your Gap year.

I'll be traveling. Yolo. If your stats are good enough just do what you want rather than what's expected of you.

 

[baszilion]

By the looks of it you have a really strong application already, so I would relax and try to enjoy yourself! Do whatever you would like to do most, and feel confident that you're gonna get in regardless If it were me, I would opt for a regular job instead of the volunteering job to make $$ (gonna need a lot of that for dschool). If you could get a dental assistant job, that's all the better. I would say doing more isolated volunteering activities is the way to go instead of taking on a full-time volunteering position. You will still show dschools that you are devoted to community service, and its not like you're in need of more hours at this point. That said, if you love love love volunteering, by all means go for the financial advisor thing. It definitely won't hurt.

 

[IWCBTYJ]

Hello, so I'm currently doing the college advising job through Americorp as well, except mine is also through my undergraduate school. If you have any questions let me know (PM). Also, from my experience, working at this job really gave me such a new perspective and helped out greatly during interviews! (gives you things to talk about etc...)