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true his stats are about top 5% among accepted applicants at some state schools. I googled dental statistics, and a TMDSAS one came up. For accepted statistics, 24-25 is about top 4% of the class of 2020. 26-30 is top 1%.
yea for the most part it does. there are definitely cases of it not happening (ppl wrecking MCAT not doing as hot in med school) but overall I would bet that being a good student in undergrad and having a DAT that's in top 10% of your acccepted class should be a sign you can at LEAST be top quarter if you work your ass off.
It likely does. Most ppl in the top of their class work the hardest and smartest. If you are working hard and its not translating, its time to change your methods. Its a game
You should definitely change methods if things aren't working. However, I was just reading a post on SDN MD where a student said they were working more than their peers, following study habits of successful people, changing them when they weren't working, and STILL couldn't be top quarter. Hope that does not happen to any of us here.
yes. if anyone is questioning this I can look for the matchrates. There was a thread that listed harvard 7/7, columbia 18/19, and penn 12/12.
Some people just aren't meant to be in the top 15% of your class
This is true. But we won't know who it will be until we're in dental school. That's why some people opt for the safe route like feralis and tyjacobs.
And it's not a gamble I'm willing to take. I believe in myself no matter where I go
eh you could say that about general dent or other specialties. A stronger argument would be the upward trend in specialist income and the downward trend in general incomes (as of recent data).
Medians reported by AAO are higher
actually he got it wrong. Median is 390 avg is 460
True. I didn't bring it up at other school interviews and ended up declining penn in the long run anyways.
LOL you're right. And the other posters are shonen protagonists
Didn't make it to the NBA? You didn't want it bro.
Would you say in your experience that high stats correlated with d school performance? Did you know people who put in effort decently efficiently and still failed to achieve?
Fair point 🙂
Why are you asking this to someone who's studying for the MCAT to go to med school
To be fair lots of d schools nowadays still have average GPAs at like 3.5 and DATs of like 19-20. Assuming a decently normal distribution, 50% of the class would have 3.5 or less and maybe top 25% would be kids with 3.75+. I think the kids who were the top of their class would be in the minority at d school. It's pretty safe to say that competition will always be less than the med school counterparts.
LOL their profile doesn't appear anymore (can't see if premed,dent, etc). Damn I need to post on the dental board and ask them how DAT/GPA correlates if at all. Would give a tiny bit of piece of mind.
I feel you man. We'll find out soon!
Hey hold on now, alright let's settle this once and for all: I was getting cold feet as I sometimes with huge life decisions. But, I decided that my heart just really isn't in the med field even though the schools are quite a bit cheaper, and there are tons of specialties that bring in the big $$. So, I'm just going with dental school after all. It's got the lifestyle factor, plus its where my heart is, so why not eh?
Well why would it not? Forget about your competition. If you are able to, as a student, get very high grades and have good study habits in undergrad, why would that all of the sudden crumble apart in dental school? Forget about everyone else, when you go into a test it's only you competing with you. If you put in the time, you will do fine.
can you elaborate on that?
I'm applying this summer. I currently have a 3.90 and hope to maintain it by the end of the semester as well (3.91 science). What I'm trying to say is that I thought I was doing well off, and thought about applying to Harvard. However, I constantly forget there are people with much better stats than me (op) and sometimes I think I don't have a chance at applying to said schools. DATs to be taken end of June.
Not really. See post ^
There are some people though who work even harder than everyone else, sacrificing all time on weekends and friday nights. Not many people can be on with few breaks. It's probably worth it though
Sure, those people exist. What a miserable existence though.
I see where you are coming from, but if working hard and seen as a gunner for 4 years gives you a completely different future for 50 years, one could see it's worth the sacrifice. I'm not in that position to choose yet, but as long as you're not completely antisocial or socially awkward with professors, I don't see why you would be disliked. Work is relative: we are already working more than average undergrad students and many of our peers.
I think negativity and doubt are very detrimental and a lot of people would benefit from the power of positive thinking. Sure, we are not all equal in intelligence, but there are many people who can outperform the more intelligent simply through persistance.
Of course you should work hard and put extra time into your studies when you can. I'm an advocate for that. I thought we were both talking about something more extreme...like studying 15 hours/day, 7 days per week to "compete" against classmates.
For sure. But let's say you're an OMFS residency director evaluating applicants (since I think that is the context of this thread). One applicant has to put twice the amount of time into everything he/she does to produce the same test scores as another top applicant. This person's work ethic may be more honorable, but ultimately, wouldn't you think the other applicant is likely to have the higher potential (intelligence), and wouldn't you choose based on potential? OMFS residency is supposed to be significantly harder and more time consuming than dental school--you might question the first applicant's ability to survive the residency.
If they were equal, it'd probably come down to which one is more personable 🙂
Yea For sure it's valuable to enjoy yourself and not work 15 hour days haha. However with your point on evaluators, I don't quite see it. So you're saying someone dumber than someone else can't work hard to overcome their lower IQ or whatnot to be on an even playing field? What about someone with less resources who needs to work harder to be equal to someone born with a silver spoon? If you're picking based on potential (if it was possible of course) you would be denying a lot of capable people opportunities. Thank goodness they don't do that in real life or else if you started out less intelligent than someone else, you would never be able to do anything about it because you're not judged by merits but by potential.
