applying to both meds and dents

[Guest lucky1]

I'm considering applying to both med and dent for next year - I applied to med this year and am unlikely to get in, and am considering broadening my horizons. There are things about both that attract me, and, let's face it, at some point you have to get going on your career! And yes, to the idealists out there, dentists help people too. My questions are:

 

Are files shared - in other words, would , for example Toronto be aware that I had applied to both their programs?

Is this looked upon as a negative by the faculties?

 

Thanks for any inputs.

[Guest jeff]

i did both as well.

[Guest EMHC]

As far as I know, if you applied in Britain, and if you indicated your first choice was medicine and second choice dentistry they would throw your application right out.

 

As for Canada, from the best of my knowledge, this is not the case.

[Guest 007]

Hi,

 

I don't think it would be a problem. After all, they often ask in interviews what your back up plan is, so I can't see how they can fault you for having one! Also, wouldn't it be essentially the same as applying to law school, nursing, or a graduate program at the same school? It has never come up that either of these were a problem.

 

Good luck!

007

[Guest Kirsteen]

Hi there,

 

Although honesty, many times, is the best policy, I'm not sure that divulging your dentistry back-up plan during a medical school interview is a good idea. Certainly, you would not wish to tell a lie, but offering the dentistry detail may scuttle the interviewers' perception of why you're entering the health care field to begin with.

 

Cheers,

Kirsteen

[Guest strider2004]

You must remember that in many places, medicine and dentistry have corssover faculty. That means that in your meds interview, you might actually be talking to a dentist. I've heard of students in their first year of dental school applying to medicine and being criticized by the interviewer for jumping ship.

 

That being said, if you've actually applied to medicine and dentistry (and law and physiotherapy and chiropractic) then you might want to reconsider what makes you happy and where you want to be in 10 years. This has everything to do with choosing a career for the right reasons because in four or five years time, most of your friends will be working and moving on with theirlives while you are still stuck in school, working hard with the end not in sight.

[Guest jeff]

as a past applicant to both streams, interviewer and student of both fields, i'd have to say honesty is the best policy. we all know the competitiveness of medicine and the need for a backup and dentistry is a great backup. that being said, i'd score you lower if you lied than if you told the truth.

 

when i was asked this question i said, in the big picture of things, medicine although my first choice as a career is just a job. if i don't get in, i have dentistry as a second choice career which different is just as good, perhaps even better in terms of lifestyle. so whatever happens will happen but i can guarantee that no matter what, i will be happy.

[Guest lucky1]

I can see being happy in both careers, for some of the same reasons, as well as for different reasons for each of meds and dents.But with so many smart, qualified, strong candidates applying to both programs, we all know that not all of us will have the luxury of choice, or of restricting our choices.

 

Does anyone know whether files are shared between the two faculties at each university? Would they necessarily know that you had applied to both?

Thanks.

[Guest jeff]

no they are not shared. i am 100% sure.

[Guest adlinner]

I'd like to offer two points of interest:

 

The medical interviewers at UWO, which have the other dentistry school in Ontario, use a closed-file format. That is they don't even know how many years of undergrad you've done unless you tell them. I can't imagine anyway (except out right deception about the applicant scoring process) by which they can take your other professional school applications into account at all.

I would also think that for open-file interviews the amount of bureaucracy and admin work that would require a secret policy for sharing applicant information between programs agreed upon by all interviewers (incl. various community members with only annual ties to the school) to match up applicant files between the 1600 applicants for EACH of the four to six professional schools at the university, carried out by office staff on top of their regular work (which already overburdens them) is a moon shot and a half! I believe these people just don't have the time to care - until they are met with it in the interview itself.

 

In the interview, I think all that is required is, as mentioned before, honesty and a sure sense of WHY you're applying to two schools. For what it's worth, I said at all interviews my back up is nursing because I like health care and that's where I want to spend my working life. The list of differences in the work done between medicine and nursing has swayed me to medicine, but if my preferences were slightly different I wouldn't hesitate to apply to nursing. I didn't apply concurrently, but I made it pretty clear if I wasn't successful at entry to medical school, that I'd apply right away to nursing because it was still so close to what I enjoy and would be good at that I'd still feel really lucky. Following, all the schools gave me an acceptance at one point or another. The point is, I think interfac rivalry is less important than making sure the interviewee knows what they really want to do.

[Guest thelaze]

I'd like to add that at U of T the Faculty of Denistry and the Faculty of Medicine are completely separate from each other, so there is no chance of having a faculty interviewer from dents show up in your interview. As well, I would be really surprised (and offended, as a previous meds interviewee) if there was any information sharing about applicants between the two faculties.

 

IMO, don't voluntarily offer up any information on back-up plans, but if they're asking specifically about a back-up plan, then you might as well tell them. Let them know that your first choice is meds, and tell them why.