FAQ Group: Dental School Admissions

Fulfilling all these categories will put you and your application in a very good standing. Being solid in all of these categories will make you an extremely strong applicant anywhere.

• Coursework
  • Gives the admissions officers an idea about the difficulty of your classes, types of classes, and diversity of classes.
• Course Load Sufficiency
  • Maintaining a dense course load throughout college is very important. This shows dental schools that you can perform strongly in very intense and demanding situations.
• GPA
  • A numerical value calculated based on your performance in classes. Several versions of your GPA are evaluated. Mainly a science GPA and total GPA.
• DAT
  • Standardized testing score helps balance the inconsistency in GPAs across hundreds of schools.
• Letter of Recommendation
  • 2 Science Curriculum letters of recommendation
  • 1 Other letter of recommendation
  • You can submit more, but some schools may only review 3 out of however many you have.
  • It is better to have 3 very strong ones rather than 5 moderately strong letters.
• Personal Statement
  • A high quality personal statement can show a lot about you and your personality. This is a great place to show to admissions officers that you are passionate about becoming a dentist.
• Extra-Curricular activities
  • Community service is a great way to show admissions that you are doing other things than just studying. Contributions to the community go a long way especially when they know you are busy doing everything else mentioned in this list.
• Leadership
  • Having leadership positions in organizations shows your ability to manage others and lead a team. This is vital to becoming a dentist as dentists who own private practices are the boss and are the leaders of a dental team.
• Dental Experience
  • It is important to have some shadowing hours. Minimum recommended is 40+ hours; strong candidates have 100+ hours.  I would recommend doing as much as you can. Spending as much time in a dental environment as possible will really help you feel confident in your decision to pursue a career in dentistry and give you an idea about the daily nature of the profession.
  • My dental experience is the reason why I know dentistry is the career for me. An answer to the question “Why Dentistry” is much stronger when you have experiences that tell your story for you. This is a great way to perfect your personal statement.
• Dexterity
  • Proving you have fine motor skills is vital. Pick up a hobby that involves complicated and precise movements. Hobbies like painting, sculpting, or playing an instrument not only show fine motor skills, but they also show admissions officers that you have developed an artistic edge over other dental students.
  • My hobby has been soldering and repairing small electronics. To me, it is like performing surgeries. Very precise movements in very tight areas are needed to perform the repairs and built electronics. Research may open up opportunities to perform surgeries on animals for various reasons. I later took on the role of performing catheterization surgeries on rats by implanting a catheter into their jugular vein. Although practicing challenges like these may be difficult to do at first, it is a great way to develop dexterity skills in a stressful environment.

1 or 2 C’s will not hinder your application much. Depending on the difficulty of the class, a C can be considered acceptable.

Your application’s delivery time can vary significantly depending on when you submit. If you submit during the peak of the cycle (typically the end of June/early July) the processing time on your application could be 3 or 4 weeks long. During this time period, your transcripts will be compared to the grades entered on the AADSAS application. This can take a significant amount of time especially during the peak of the application season.

AADSAS only mails out applications on Fridays and mailing can take up to a week for schools located on the west coast (AADSAS is located on the east coast). Applicants use these Friday mailing dates to compare application submission times. These are commonly referred to as “batches” with the first batch being the 3rd Friday of June and each following batch mailing 7-days after the last. This batch delivery system is frequently used by applicants and seems to be based on similar status changes occurring at the same time on the AADSAS website. From my experience, pre-dental students from the same batch typically get an interview invite at the same time. There are exceptions to this. For example, my friend and I who were both in batch 3 interviewed nearly 6 months apart for one school.

Once dental schools have your application in hand, the processing time can vary and take up to a month to acknowledge your application has been received. In the meantime, fill out any available secondary applications. If you have not heard back from a dental school a month after your application is mailed out, I would recommend confirming with the school that they have received it.

For this reason I like to approximate that some schools fall under a 3-6 week window while other schools fall under a 6-8 week window. It is best to have the mindset that all of your desired dental schools will review your application no earlier than 8 weeks after filling out your application. This way, you give yourself a specific goal that will prevent your applications completion from dragging on for weeks or months longer than it should!

Dental schools do take into consideration how packed you were during each quarter/semester. They know that taking less classes correlates to higher grades. Be ready to explain to them why you had to take less courses at any time through ought your education. They are NOT looking for an excuse! Creatively explain to them your reasoning (e.g. involvement, volunteering, working, etc).

There are a few factors that need to be considered in order to come to a conclusion

• Of the 6 years, are any of them attended at a community college? If so how many?
• Are you picking up a second major or a minor? (assuming you have been staying the extra years to take biology and chemistry courses)
• Have you had a full course load throughout college?
• Is your GPA demonstrating hard work throughout the six years or an escalating performance?