I would highly recommend prioritizing your GPA over all else, as that's the most difficult, and expensive, to improve upon if you start to move in a less optimal direction. Ideally, doing well in your classes would also allow you to do well on the DAT.
In addition, focusing on your classes, and participating as fully as possible in activities like office hours, will help you get fantastic letters of recommendation from your professors for dental school. (If your school has any type of career center, often they have a letter service, where professors can submit letters that can be saved for later use.) Ideally, I would recommend asking for letters shortly after finishing the class with an amazing grade and relationship with the professor. The professor can then write the letter when you are most memorable to them, and submit the letter to the letter service to be kept for later use.
Conversely, if no letter service is available, it looks like Interfolio allows us to collect confidential letters for free:
How do I collect and send my letters? | Help for Medical and Dental School Applicants | Support
I would recommend asking all of your professors, after excelling in their classes and participating in office hours, for confidential letters that you can save. Just before applying, you can assess which professor you had the best relationship with, ask them to update the date and contact information (if necessary) on their letter, and use that updated letter in your application. (Or use the letters to help your school's pre-health committee compose their committee letter, if that's how your school does things.)
Furthermore, you can also set up a study group for each of your courses, and make sure that the students struggling during professor office hours, and the professor, are aware of it. These efforts would likely translate to leadership experiences for your application, and also demonstrate teaching experience and ability, which professional schools seem to value in their applicants. I would think your professors would appreciate your efforts to help your fellow students as well, which would be reflected in their recommendations.
Hopefully, excelling in your classes and participating as fully as possible won't take up all of your time, and you can also work on the volunteering and shadowing aspects of your application.
I would aim for the shadowing requirements of the school with the highest minimums, say, 200 hours with five different general practice dentists, in a variety of care settings (private practice, community clinic, homeless clinic, etc.) to make sure you have as many of your bases covered as possible when you ultimately apply. This is something that can be done during the summers, too, except you're planning on taking classes then, which are often far more accelerated and involve more of your free time. Non-academic summers could also be used for research, working, or gaining volunteer hours, so you might want to re-evaluate cramming in all the classes you can during your summers.
As one prominent career-changer on the medical side has frequently commented:
"The light at the end of this tunnel is a train. It's *****ic to rush to get through the journey quicker, when the journey itself is much of the value/fun. The goal isn't to get to a career first. One guy gets there at 30, another at 35 -- so what? Heck, I will have had two careers in the time some had one -- what do I win? Nothing, because it's not a race."
The need to be a physician as young as possible
Other than shadowing, I would spend the bulk of your time volunteering with underserved communities. Healthcare professions seem to value compassion and service, especially to those with the greatest levels of need.
However, as I mentioned, volunteering, shadowing, working, and research can all be easily accomplished after graduating, whereas the GPA, letters of recommendation from instructors, and, to a slightly lesser extent, DAT score, will be more difficult, time intensive, and costly to improve upon if there's a deficiency when you're done with your undergraduate experience and the prerequisites, and preparing to apply.
Here's a wonderful dissertation by
@DrMidlife, a successful reapplicant, for what to focus on in a medical school application:
DrMidlife's reapplication dissertation
In addition, here's what admissions officials at medical schools value most highly:
A Compilation of Essential SDN Wisdom
I would recommend focusing on the "Highest Importance" row, above all else.
While I understand that you're currently focused on dental, and not medical, I think these resources help considerably in assessing what your highest impact activities are at any stage of the process.
As I mentioned, while you're taking classes, grades, office hours, and letters of recommendation are likely most important. Consistent volunteering in underserved communities can be started with 1-2 hours per week, on a weekend, in a variety of settings. At the end of your three years, if you spent 40 weeks doing this each year, you'll have 120-240 of consistent, volunteer hours to apply with, in addition to, hopefully, some leadership experiences resulting from long-term commitments with your volunteer organizations.
However, right now, I think the most important thing to remember is that any grade that's not a 4.0 is a step away from dental school, and any office hour missed is a missed opportunity to interact meaningfully with a potential academic letter author.
The EMS experience might not be the best use of your time, as medical school admissions officials don't seem to consider it very highly:
"EMT/paramedic experience is ok , but does not replace shadowing or volunteering." [
What are my chances?]
"EMT is a glorified cab driver. And no, it's not service."
[
My post on the NonTrad forum wasn't getting any replies so I am bringing my peasant butt here]
In addition, EMS work isn't really a dental-related experience, so it's probably going to be viewed even less favorably by dental admissions officials.
In your case, shadowing at the dental clinic up to the highest minimum requirement for shadowing hours (say 200 hours), and then spending the rest of your time volunteering at said clinic, might be the best use of any free time you have away from classes, office hours, and taking care of yourself.
Volunteering at the dental clinic will also help you get a stellar recommendation from the dentist(s) you may shadow there.
Medical officials seem to consider shadowing as a minimum requirement to be met. However, since shadowing is mostly for the benefit of the applicant, to get a better sense of the career, and so it's definitely not viewed as favorably as volunteering or other types of community service, which are focused primarily for the benefit of others. So I would recommend meeting the minimum requirements for shadowing, and then focus the rest of your free time on volunteering or other service-oriented opportunities. (Like Americorps, which is "paid volunteering." I believe there are many paid summer research programs that you could also participate in.)
Most importantly, do not lie, cheat, steal, or otherwise engage in any behavior that could cause you to be officially sanctioned or charged with a crime. Permanent records of poor behavior like these are often application killers, and take many, many years, to recover from to a point where one can expect to have a competitive application. In addition, you might also have difficulty getting licensed as a professional, or getting clinical privileges during training. Thus, I would recommend not taking such a very significant risk.
I hope that helps
Good luck in your efforts.
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Edit: Wow. That turned out to be far longer than I had anticipated.
TLDR:
- Don't lie, cheat, steal, or engage in behaviors that could cause any type of official, permanent sanctioning, as this can often be a rather permanent application killer.
- Focus on one step at a time, and focus on the activities that are likely to be of most importance, based on the evidence. At the prerequisite stage, that is likely excelling at classes, and getting excellent grades and letters of recommendation. Deficiencies in extracurricular activities can be easily remedied once the prerequisites are done. A poor GPA or a poor DAT score are often much more difficult, costly, and time consuming to remedy.
- Trying to rush things can make for a weaker overall application, or a more challenging experience in ultimately gaining acceptance. The consensus seems to be that life should not be viewed as a race, so the road to healthcare professional should not be viewed as one, either.
