1) Get a high GPA. Pref. a 4.0 obviously.
2) Find the easiest professors. There are NO hard classes, only jerk professors who sometimes love to fail entire classes. Yes, you can challenge yourself, but in the long run, the risk outweighs the reward. I.E. You get screwed by a professor, your gpa is a 3.0 and you end up fuming at the world that have good grades due to easy professors. Guess what? Noone cares and you're not going to end up in grad school unless you do well in the rest of your classes. The whole goal is getting a high gpa/dat no matter what. Period.
3)Do extracurriculars or something extra. Join community service or some clubs. If you want to aim at "high" schools, then look into doing some extra extra like going to the olympics, creating a club, etc.
4)Find a dentist to shadow. Not obscene amounts but around 100 should be fine.
5)Most importantly, have fun. It's undergrad. Go live life outside of your textbook. Dental school isn't that hard to get into provided you have a ~3.4 and somewhat decent DAT. People make it out to be some grand endeavour, but the reality with a good gpa and the advice given above, it will be a [Edit: a definate route to success] to get into med/pharm/dental school. ;p
I found out number 2 the hard way. Now my classes arent based on whats interesting to me unfortunately. They are completly based off of what rate my professors says is easy or hard. I had two classes that I will never forget.
Class 1: Professor decided to change his standardization because he felt that the class was too curved. Over half the kids in his class ended with a C.
Class 2: Final is 100% of your grade. 40 questions. Multiple choice. Choose the INCORRECT answers. Each question is a brief word. ie: Renal System: And there will be 4 choices each about a paragraph long and there will be one word that will be changed to make the sentence frmo completly correct to incorrect. Ended up with a C in this class. Sucks because it was my physiology class.
A C in the class was a cumulative avg of a 38-47. Go figure I had 47. Below a 25 was failing 25-37 was a D. So technically if you put A for every answer, you get a 25 which would end up as a D. Over a 70 was an A.
Now I used rate my professors only and my gpa is about a 3.4 for the past 2-3 semesters.
Other tips outside my rant:
Follow the above guidlines. Most of the time if you go to your administration office and ask for the alumni list you can find a list of dentists in your area. After that just call and say, Hi I am currently attending _____ University, I would like to pursue a carreer in dentistry. Once they hear that you want to pursue their field and went to the same college 99% of the time they wont say no. Plus you have to shadow in order to get into dental school.
Next, like said, EC activities.
Pre med society.
Pre dental society if your school has one.
Red cross
Anything else that interested you.
Also like said, take time to relax. When I study ill never study for more than about 3 hours before forcing myself to take a 30 minute break or so.
