U Of A: Useful Undergrad Courses To Take In Preparation For Dentistry?

[wonton_19]

Hello!

 

Winter semester is coming up and I thought it wouldn't hurt to ask— are there any University of Alberta dental students that can recommend some undergrad courses, other than the prerequisites, which would be helpful or give a good outline of the topics covered in the DDS program (mostly first year material)? I heard that a 300 level Biochemistry would be useful! I'm in my third year, though I'm not planning on completing a science degree.

 

Of course, I'm open to suggestions from anyone else as well!

 

Thanks in advance !   

[walterk]

anatomy and physiology will help more than all other courses by a country mile.

[cleanup]

Anatomy & Pharmacology.

[Dent2020]

U of A's combined MD/DDS faculty forces you to basically be a MD student in the first semester, so you should be taking coures to prepare you for those med classes, since you won't really remember enough to use it for the later dental classes in winter/intersession.

 

Honestly, don't take pharmacology; it is useless. I've taken it before in undergrad, and it wasn't worth it because you get a maximum of 10 hrs of testable lecture on it. I also did some biochemistry in undergrad, it was sort of helpful but still pretty useless in the grand scheme of all the other material you have to memorize. Besides the biochemistry they teach you is pretty basic. BIOCH 200 should be enough.

 

I'm doing the U of A's new curriculum for DDS and to me, the best undergrad courses would be physiology, anatomy, immunology, and especially MMI (medical microbiology and immunology) because your first 2 med blocks will be Foundations (basic bio sciences) and Triple I (infections, immunology, inflammation).