Chances Of Getting Into Canadian/american Dental Schools

[jc38]

Hi everyone,

 

I am in my third year majoring in civil engineering at UBC and am interested in applying to dental school. I have taken most required bio/chem/biochem courses. 

 

My first question is how do you convert your average grade in percentage to GPA? I tried looking on the school websites on their methods since every school is different, but have had no luck so far. Does anyone have links to these pages? FYI my cumulative average is 82% and 85% if you take out my worst year (If you know what GPA this is roughly please let me know!)

 

Next, I know that it is extremely competitive to get into dental school. Looking at just my current GPA alone, do I have any chance of getting into an American/Canadian dental school? And if so, which ones? 

 

Lastly, do dental schools take into account how heavy of a course load someone has when looking at GPA? 

 

Thanks in advance

[Zaandrei.]

Use the OMSAS table; then check your desired schools' past entrance statistics

https://www.ouac.on.ca/docs/omsas/c_omsas_b.pdf

[Fakedoctor]

Assuming your a BC resident you'll have the best luck applying as an in province applicant to UBC and after that you can apply OOP to other schools but its more competitive as an OOP student.

 

American schools for the most part are much easier to get into then Canadian ones, so even if your grades and DAT scores are on the lower end for Canadian applicants you might still be a mid to upper tier US applicant. You might have to take the US DAT and school specific pre-reqs depending where you apply. The largest down side of the US is that its also helllllla expensive (300-400k). If your considering the US check out Case western reserve, U Detroit mercy, BU, Temple, NYU, Tufts and a bunch more I'm sure if you just google "Canadian friendly US dental schools" there will be a million SDN/premed101 forum posts about it.   

[jc38]

Assuming your a BC resident you'll have the best luck applying as an in province applicant to UBC and after that you can apply OOP to other schools but its more competitive as an OOP student.

 

American schools for the most part are much easier to get into then Canadian ones, so even if your grades and DAT scores are on the lower end for Canadian applicants you might still be a mid to upper tier US applicant. You might have to take the US DAT and school specific pre-reqs depending where you apply. The largest down side of the US is that its also helllllla expensive (300-400k). If your considering the US check out Case western reserve, U Detroit mercy, BU, Temple, NYU, Tufts and a bunch more I'm sure if you just google "Canadian friendly US dental schools" there will be a million SDN/premed101 forum posts about it.   

Yeah that's what I've noticed with the American dental schools. Much more expensive, but seem a bit easier to get in. 

 

Do you know if the American dental school GPA calculation is similar to Canadian? For example, according to this link (http://dental-schools.startclass.com/), the GPA for UCLA is 3.66. But according to the Canadian chart posted above, that is not even an 80% average for most Canadian schools..

 

I'm basically trying to see how my GPA stacks up against these American admissions averages.

 

 

Thanks

[Fakedoctor]

From what I understand it really differs from school to school based on the percentage to letter grade conversion for your school. For example at some schools a 83% would be considered a A- while other schools (like UWO) do not have half grades and anything above an 80 is considered to be A which equals a 4.0 and its because when you enter your grades into Aadsas you will input your letter grades and not percentage and in my case (UWO) the transcript actually comes with a percent to letter grade conversion chart on the back which makes things MUCH better since if no such chart is provided they will use their own chart which is super unfair. If you want to confirm what I'm saying go to the bottom of page 8 of this document and read under the heading "ADEA AADSAS Grade" and the last bullet on page 7 above the charts http://www.adea.org/uploadedFiles/ADEA/Content_Conversion/dental_education_pathways/Instructions/AADSAS_Instructions/2015-ADEA-AADSAS-Instructions.pdf

 

Sorry if doesn't make sense im on my phone waiting for the bus #brokepeopleproblems  

 

P.S. if you plan on applying to US med school AMCAS has the same policy