coop and dental school admissions

[inquirer007]

I'm a gr12 student currently thinking about his university choices as the date for applications is getting near. I'm sure many of you recall the deep thought and possible confusion... well maybe not. Anyways, i was thinking of going to Waterloo for life science (coop), maybe biology. I was wondering how the coop terms will affect the way the dental schools look at my course load and what not. The program has the following schedule:

 

year 1: school, school, off

year 2: school, work, school

year 3: work, school, work

year 4: school, work, work

year 5: school, school.

 

I know for example for schulich dentistry at western they say they take your highest 2 years, but these years must have a full course load. im guessing year 1,2, and 5 would qualify for that but im not too sure about year 3 and 4.

 

Anyone who knows how it works, your help is much appreciated.

[McMarauder]

hey, i did a co-op program, and consulted with Western dentistry admissions. They will just combine your academic terms together to make academic years.

[Ostracized]

I'm many years removed from the admission process but in my experience if you are dead set on going to dental school you want to make yourself an appealing candidate to as many schools as you can. Generally that means getting a very high GPA with a full course load during the academic year (not summer). You can call each dental school and enquire if they will consider you equally.

[inquirer007]

So mcmaurader are years 3 and 4 not used or would they also combine terms of different years? And thanks for the input ostracized, still thinking things over

[McMarauder]

they will take the school term from year 3, and combine it with the school term from year 4 to make 1 full year.

[McMarauder]

Call the schools to make sure. I remember there was a few that weren't going to combine some of my terms to make a full year (USask). However, I remember UofT and Western were willing to combine my work terms.

[inquirer007]

Will do,thanks a lot man

[McMarauder]

With regards to co-op, I would advise you to proceed with caution especially since dentistry is your ultimate goal. I really didn't know which route to take to get into dental school, and I took some pretty bad advice from an older sibling, whom I thought knew what they were talking about.

 

GPA is king, and being in a co-op program will make achieving a competitive GPA very difficult. Co-op programs tend to be tied with academically rigorous courses. Ontop of studying, you have to search for jobs, apply for jobs, and attend interviews. I had one week where I had 4 midterms and 5 job interviews. You can imagine how difficult that was to juggle.

 

The plus side of co-op is that you get to make money, gain skills in the real world that could be transferable to the dental setting such as professionalism, and communication skills. Furthermore, you can do placements related to dentistry in companies that make oral hygiene products or in dental research labs.

 

I have mixed feelings about the outcome of completing a co-op program. My GPA suffered as a result (lots of A-'s but getting A's and A+'s were near impossible). However, I was able to get into Melbourne dental school. Since then I have become very attached to Melbourne and Australia, to the point that I'm unlikely to return to Canada. Maybe co-op was a blessing in disguise.

 

What do you hope to gain from Co-op?

[inquirer007]

Thanks a lot for that helpful info man. And to answer your question I was thinking of doing coop for the reasons you just stated mainly to develop Professional skills/experience, since as of yet I don't have any work experience. I was thinking if trying to get a placement(s) related to dentistry just like you said, which I'm thinking would help in the interview. Also coop seems to be a good consideration to help if somehow I change my mind which I'm pretty sure is not happening but who knows what God has in store, the unexpected might happen.

[McMarauder]

There's other ways of developing those skills and gaining work experiences without being in a co-op program. The places that I worked for took non co-op students during the summer. If you want to do a bit of dental research, just contact the professors directly. They're usually very keen on taking interested undergraduate students for summer research projects.

 

Great work experience does not offset a sub-par GPA and it doesn't get you an interview. Your GPA and your DAT gets you an interview.