UC Davis Pre-Health Professions Conference

Being local to San Francisco, about a month ago I was fortunate enough to attend the 13th Annual Pre-Medical and Pre-Health Professions National Conference over the weekend of October 10th. "What's a Pre-Health Professions conference," I hear you ask? A pre-health professions conference is a gathering of like-minded pre-health students, including pre-dental students of course, to attend a variety of different keynote speeches, panels, workshops, exhibitions and more. All of these are aimed at giving the budding dentist information that will not only help them decide if the profession is a right fit for them, but also to give useful information about the application process, what to expect, and how to get the most out of pre-dental activities. The remainder of this post will give a brief synopsis of my experience at the conference will provide some other little tips along the way for those thinking about attending next year.

After registration and breakfast, which was provided, I attended the main conference speeches. These were delivered by many esteemed members of the health-professions and although heavily focused on speaking to pre-medical students, I felt that there points were still applicable to dentistry.

However, after the main conference speeches were over, the real pre-dental really fun began. The two keynote speeches, presented by Dr. Friedrichsen, Dean of Western University's dental school, and Dr. Featherstone, Dean of UCSF School of Dentistry, were both informative and inspirational. Both had the general overarching theme of describing how the role of dentists is changing as healthcare becomes more integrated. The primary focus of this is that as future dentists, we will not be working in isolation. Instead, we will be working as a part of a larger healthcare team, aimed at providing a holistic approach to both healthcare and dentistry simultaneously. I would definitely recommend attending the keynote speeches in the future.

Immediately following the keynote addresses were a series of panels. First was a panel of members from admissions committees from dental schools around the country. Attending this panel was great way to get the perspectives from many different schools on what makes a successful applicant and how to best go about applying. Although there is far too much information for me to mention here, a few of the biggest mistakes that they said that dental school applicants make when submitting their applications are in not completely proof reading their personal statements and applying late in the cycle. The consensus of the panel was that having grammatical and spelling errors in a personal statements say a lot about the applicant. It says that they either lack the attention to detail that dental schools are looking for in future dentists, or worse still, that the applicant simply does not care enough to compile a contentious and thoughtful submission. Either way, if you want to get accepted you can not fall into either of these two categories. Dental school applications also open for submission on June 1st. The panel made it clear that even if you submit on the first day admissions open, it will be some number of weeks before your application is complete, which are usually held up waiting for letters of recommendation. Therefore, if you submit your application even three months after applications open, say around the beginning of September, by the time your application has been processed and reviewed, it is probably already into December. With rolling admissions this places you at a great disadvantage because not only are you now competing against a larger pool of applicants, some schools have already accepted half of their class (UCSF admits half of their incoming class in December)!. Although it is long, below is a video of the 2013 dental admissions panel.

Following the panels I had lunch, which was also provided, and then spent the remainder of my day attending workshops and the exhibition. The workshops were a fantastic way to get information about more detailed topics within dentistry and applying to dental school. They are also an excellent time to have your questions answered by people who definitely know that they're talking about. In all, the workshops were engaging, useful, and interesting and I would definitely recommend that you attend them if you come to the conference next year. In addition, make sure you set aside some time to attend the exhibition. Here you have the opportunity to talk to multiple schools directly, one after the other, and have any questions you have answered. Often I was able to talk not only to admissions staff, but also to students from the schools. In my opinion these are very valuable opportunities.

In summary, I found that the conference was both engaging and interesting. I also was sure to take notes which I'm sure will serve as an invaluable resource on the long road to dental school. A word of advice though, make sure to plan your day in advance: there are so many great workshops to attend that fitting them all in without a plan would be impossible. To give you an idea of what the workshops entailed, check out page 142 - 149 of the 2015 program.