It's ridiculous how many of you think a "prestigious" name on your CV is a golden ticket to the specialty program of your choice. Seriously. If I were a moderator I'd ban anyone who keeps pushing this utter nonsense. Seriously
The things I wish I can ban people for....
Unfortunately we need to let people speak their minds. Even if it is completely wrong, as long as they are professional about it.
You can absolutely Match out of any school! You can absolutely Match out of any school! Maybe if I say it twice it'll get into some of your heads. My lowly state school had a 100% Match rate for pedo, ortho, pros, endo, and perio and a 75% Match rate for surgery. How hard is it to realize it's the applicant that matters, not the freakin' name of their school?! Program Directors care about what YOU have done, not your school!
So, go to the cheapest school you get into. Do any of you truly comprehend the likely $200,000+ price difference between a solid state school and an Ivy? It's a literal crap ton of money! Do you know what you can do with a quarter of a million dollars?!
Great, Big Hoss is all agitated now and needs to relax and take a nap.
Big Hoss
Mr. Savage is absolutely correct.
There are people in every dental school who's academic performance is nothing short of unbelievable. But self-selection is huge too. Some may think they aren't competitive enoigh, so they don't bother applying. Some apply despite having no realistic chance of matching based on academics. Some apply despite having zero extracurricular on their CV. Some people just want to be top of the class, with no interest in specializing.
So you see folks, if you REALLY want to specialize then work hard, do all the right things, and you will. If not, do a GPR and try again. And if you still can't match, try and get an internship (if going for OMFS). If you STILL can't match, chances are going to a different school would not have changed a thing.
Nope. Because p/f curriculum and ranking not being a big factor in those schools, competitive classmates =/= lowering your chances. That's why Columbia had 18/19 OMFS matches (prob a lot of peds and orthos and other specialties too) and penn had 12/12.
The bolded statement is definitely false LOL. If you put equal work in a med based curriculum, you would be so much more prepared for the CBSE than if you put in that amount of work into a dental biomedical sciences curriculum.
Finally, your last paragraph I don't agree either. If OMFS median is 390 and dental OWNERS is 180 (less now I believe and on a continual decline), within like 3-4 years you would earn it back and then start outearning. And please let's keep the discussion on medians, NOT outliers (every predent thinks they are "good businesspeople".
I will say I half agree with your CBSE statement. It's not all about the quantitative effort placed. But the curriculum at some of the feeder schools ARE more medically oriented, and the CBSE is very medically oriented. I think many people REALLY underestimate this exam. Knowing details and understanding concepts are not necessarily the same. It is NOTHING like the DAT, which is alot of memorization and strategy. CBSE had alot more critical thinking involved, and many who performed well on class exams find the CBSE very different.
But if your school is either not medically oriented, or if you find you can incorporate the knowledge you've learned to overcome that obstacle and still score high, then at that point I find that school attended does not matter.
I do disagree about your statement on dental owner income. Just because the income lists as $180K does not mean that is how much a dentist makes. That information is not reliable, and I do not know of any reliable statistics regarding practice owners median net revenue. The reason for this is because many practices are incorporated. The owner is an employee and takes a "salary," and this can mitigate income tax liability. In fact it is in the dentists best interest to minimize their reported salary.
Other factors to consider are overhead, collections, payroll, etc. When it comes to the remaining revenue, much more can be written off. Maximizing on tax deductions (legally and ethically) is very beneficial in this field because dentistry has lots of expenisive equipment. This equipment has a value and a "life-span," and you can write off the depreciation based on a schedule and reduce liability. There are of course many many more factors involved in business, but ultimately the point I am trying to illustrate is that total earnings are not so transparent.