UWO vs U of A dentistry?

[Acceptme]

I am torn on making a decision between u of a and uwo dentistry. any thoughts, opinions, or input regarding the class atmosphere, curriculum, and/or anything would help me A LOT! 

[howdowhatdo]

On 6/30/2021 at 10:22 PM, Acceptme said:

I am torn on making a decision between u of a and uwo dentistry. any thoughts, opinions, or input regarding the class atmosphere, curriculum, and/or anything would help me A LOT! 

Hey!

I also really struggled with this decision! I was accepted to both, and ultimately went ahead with UWO. 

I did ualberta for my undergrad, and was looking to get away and start a brand new adventure (as cheesy and lame as that sounds) and wanted to move away for school. UWO provided that opportunity for me. Additionally, I love that UWO gets into dentistry right away, whereas Ualberta has a bit more of a focus on medicine for the first couple of years from what I have been told. Also, so far our 2025 class with UWO has gotten together over zoom a few times to hangout and it seems like such a bright, welcoming and fun community to be apart of.

I've also heard that students have a lot more independence at UWO and with clinicals there really is a "if you're the one who finds a case, you're the one who works on it" mentality (of course profs are there to help if you get stuck and are there to observe and guide you). This really appealed to me because they seem to have a focus on learning by doing, which is how I learn best! 

If you want to chat more at all, feel free to message me!

[Take_Your_Time]

UofA has a shiny new curriculum that's been in the works for the past couple of years that was implemented in my first year. We're getting the dentistry somewhat earlier compared to previous curriculum. So you would have done wax ups, tooth anatomy, and an introduction to occlusion by the time you reach the winter break of 1st year. You'll start drilling and learning about operative among other things once you go back in January. I think the original plan was to get us seeing patients a lot earlier but COVID messed that up. The 1st years going into 2nd year will be a better indicator of what to expect for clinical experiences. You'll definitely be in clinic a lot more with assisting and other clinical activities compared to the anecdotal 2 times within the span of the first 2 years I've heard from previous years. Whether what they've changed is on par or behind compared to other dental schools, you'll have to ask other people at different schools. 

For the med, you'll still be taking some lectures with the med students but not to the same extent as previous years. Some of the content will be in-house with dentistry faculty to draw the relevance for why you would need to know these medical concepts within the dentistry context. Before that, the dental students in the first two years took most if not all of the med classes with the med students along with their tests, bell ringer anatomy exams, etc. The med questions for the most part are fair and tend to be vetted by the course coordinator and any anatomy you do run into will be things like cardiology, cranial nerves, and respiration rather than looking at feet or repro. 

Key thing about exams here is that they group all the classes into one big course that will go over the span of 2-4 months. So you don't have to worry about a ludicrous amount of midterms and a multitude of finals as this gets compressed into 1 or 2 midterms and 1 final for that course along with whatever sim lab, OSCE assessments, presentations, etc. get tacked on. So your cardiology, oral maxillofacial anatomy, physiological development, perio, occlusion, dental materials, operative, and whatever else you happened to learn for that designated course gets crammed into 1 exam...for better or for worse depending how you look at the filled glass. 

As for class, the numbers are in the range of about 30-32ish. In sim lab, instructor to student ratio is about 1:8 at the very worst depending on who's around and available. With AP students, class size gets bumped up to 40. Everyone's real friendly and excited to get to know everyone at the beginning of the year but you tend to settle into your groups once the year progresses. But such is life in any other program. Class vibe will vary from year to year but I can say my class looks out for each other for the most part.   

If you or anyone else has questions about the UofA, feel free to shoot a message.