Canadian Dental Student At Pitt Dental. Ama!

[karnas23]

Hey guys, I'm a Canadian dental student (from Ontario to be specific), and I'm heading towards finishing my first year at the University of Pittsburgh school of Dental Medicine. I remember having a ton of questions before I started, so feel free to ask me anything

[shm]

Thanks for starting this kind of thread! It will be really helpful, especially to those who know how to search for these forums.
Here are some of my questions:
1. Do you feel well supported by your school? For example, are students, faculty, and admin considerate and helpful?
2. Did you find the move from Ontario to Pittsburgh difficult?(Assuming you stayed close to home during undergrad)
3. What do you like most and dislike most about your program so far?
4. Are the students' concerns heard and addressed in a timely manner?
 

[karnas23]

1. Yes for the most part faculty are great as well as the administration. There are 1 or 2 faculty who I've come across who are kind of *ssholes, but they are old, grumpy, and from a different generation. Mostly everyone else has been kind and supportive. 

2. No the move was super easy! I rented a van in Ontario and just drove my stuff down! It's also pretty straightforward to sign a lease, you just might need to send a copy of your passport. 

3. I love how all the dental specialties are integrated into the school. We get a lot of exposure to all departments and specialties of dentistry, which you don't often find at many other schools. I dislike the workload/class ranking system. The program is super stressful. If I were to do it again I would have gone to a P/F school like UPenn. Having class rankings and everything graded on 4.0 scale makes everything extremely stressful. Dental school is tough as shit, and we barely get any time off (only 1 month off in the summers)

4. Yes, generally faculty are open to concerns. They are also open to you coming to their office and talk to them. Again, the old grumpy profs will probably be annoyed if you do, but theres only a few of them.  

[prehealth101]

Hey! What bank did you end up going with for your loan? 

[rocky2289]

Hey Congratulations for getting into University of Pittsburgh school of Dental Medicine. If you don't mind, how were your stats in terms of GPA or DAT score when you got in? Did you do masters to get into the school? Thanks!

[karnas23]

On 6/3/2017 at 10:43 PM, prehealth101 said:

Hey! What bank did you end up going with for your loan? 

CIBC!

[karnas23]

On 6/6/2017 at 11:35 AM, rocky2289 said:

Hey Congratulations for getting into University of Pittsburgh school of Dental Medicine. If you don't mind, how were your stats in terms of GPA or DAT score when you got in? Did you do masters to get into the school? Thanks!

Hey, yes I did a Masters degree! There's more than a few people here with Masters degrees. GPA was 3.67 on OMSAS, but a little higher on AADSAS after being converted. 

[shm]

Thanks!

1. Do you/your classmates worry about the massive debt you will have to pay back once you finish?
2. Do most students from you school graduate and start working right away?
3. For those who do work right after graduation, do many choose corporate dentistry? And what are your, your classmates', and/or faculty members' thoughts on corporate dentistry? Personally, I feel like it's a bad idea, but I hear it's getting quite popular in the States.

[Coronaxtra]

Hey! Do you plan on practicing in the states or coming back to Ontario? Do you know anything about the incoming class of 2021 whether there are Canadians or a shift away from International students in general?

[Hockeytalk]

13 hours ago, shm said:

Thanks!

1. Do you/your classmates worry about the massive debt you will have to pay back once you finish?
3. For those who do work right after graduation, do many choose corporate dentistry? And what are your, your classmates', and/or faculty members' thoughts on corporate dentistry? Personally, I feel like it's a bad idea, but I hear it's getting quite popular in the States.

I just graduated from a US dental school

Currently OOS grads are paying ~5k per month for 10 years, but will refinance once they are making more money. IS grads are at ~3 - 3.5 k for 10 years. People accept it, no one really worries about it.

An important difference between Canadian and US grads is that Canadian grads working in Canadian can incorporate and pay off loans with a 15% corporate tax rate on the money they earn rather than pay ~47% income tax rate. I'm not sure exactly how this plays out for US grads but I have been told the deal is not as good for US grads incorporating the the US compared to paying off canadian loans in canada.

Some people are going into corporate dentistry. Not all corporate dental practices are bad. Some are great some are god awful and they get a bad rep and give corporate dentistry in general a bad name. There are some private practices that friends have applied to that have bad reputations because the new grads that work there constantly leave after 2 years. IMO its not fair to generalize corporate dentistry.

[markymark]

People always say that american dental schools are much easier to gain admission for. Is this one of the reasons you decided to go to pitt? did you attempt to gain admission to canadian dental schools? I want to be in dentistry but I dont think i have the marks for canada. 

[karnas23]

3 hours ago, markymark said:

People always say that american dental schools are much easier to gain admission for. Is this one of the reasons you decided to go to pitt? did you attempt to gain admission to canadian dental schools? I want to be in dentistry but I dont think i have the marks for canada. 

In general, yes American schools are easier to get into compared to Canadian schools, but that's not to say they are easy to get in to lol. You still need to have a relatively good GPA/DAT, good extracurrics, etc. I applied to American school because even though my GPA was relatively good, it wasn't near a 3.9 which is what the average for Canadian schools is moving toward. I also applied to American schools because I know I want to specialize, and there are way more opportunities for that here than in Canada. If i were you I would look into Australian schools, because the cost will be much lower to go there. The USD/CAD exchange right now is horrible and i'm going to be in a lot of debt. CAD/AUD is near par so you'll pay ~100k less. 

[karnas23]

On 6/7/2017 at 11:01 PM, Coronaxtra said:

Hey! Do you plan on practicing in the states or coming back to Ontario? Do you know anything about the incoming class of 2021 whether there are Canadians or a shift away from International students in general?

Yes, I plan on coming back! I'm not sure yet, but in our class of 2020 there are 5 Canadians/80, which is one of the highest in recent years.