What to do....

[VenusFlyTrap]

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Hi guys...i'm hoping some of u will be able to ans my questions. So here goes nothing.....

I graduated 2 yrs ago with my Bachelor's in psych. I thought i wanted to be a Therapist. any who...I was working as a Dental assistant during my undergrad days. after I graduated I started working at a Psych hospital. I love my job and all but i missed the dental field. So i decided to take the pre-reqs and apply to D-school. I've applied for this cycle and will be retaking my DATs in about 2 weeks. the prob is this.... my GPA sux! I have a 2.97

In all my pre-reqs the lowest grade I had was a B-..... the reason my GPA is so low is because I bombed my freshmen yr. So I am trying to be realistic..... I've applied to 20 schools...yes I am crazy if that is wut ur wondering. I want this more than anything.

I want to know...can I take the courses I've taken in the past 2 yrs (bio, chem, Ochem, etc u know the deal) and put it towards some degree? If not which kind of Masters should I be looking into? I wish u all the very best in whatever it is that u are pursuing

 

[Nasem]

well... For one easy (but hard to get into) route is to do creighton pre-dental linkage program...
If I remember correctly, they take students with damanged undergrad GPA and put them into thier pre-dental post-bacc program. They will teach you all the pre-dental classes all over (general chemistries, organics, and biologies). It will be an intense 1 year, but if you keep a 3.5 GPA (in those classes) or higher, and score a 17 (or higher) in every section of the DAT, you'll be guaranteed a spot in thier dental school... no questions asked.

However, heres the catch, you have to have the DAT taken before you apply to them, thats one of thier requirements, go to thier website and read about it, you might be one of the lucky once who get accepted.

Another route you can do is, I know raising an undergrad GPA is not very easy, its very hard to actually raise your undergrad GPA, but.... If you can get that 2.9 to something like a 3.2 in the next 2 years you'll be in pretty good shape. Dental schools are getting VERY competitive these days, soon enough they'll probebly be just as competitive as medical schools, but meanwhile, I truly think a 3.2 GPA (with a nice upward trend in your last few years) and maybe a 19-20 DAT AA would get you in somewhere (esspecially if you keep applying to 20+ schools every cycle)

Another tip I can give you is, the best and fastest way to raise your GPA is by NOT by retaking a course, when you retake, it doesn't fully go into your GPA calculations, what they do is take the average of the 2 grades for the same class (which is not helpfull at all to increasing GPA).... Instead there are a TON (AND I MEAN TONS) of higher level biology / biochemistry classes you can take and if you can rock them inside out (meaning you get 3.5+) on every class, it will improve your undergrad GPA PLUS shows them a nice upward trend.

 

[VenusFlyTrap]

thank you for your reply