It’s the old prestige vs. pragmatism dilemma.
UCB pros:
Name brand school (wow factor)
flexibility (don’t have to commit to dental)
top tier grad schools
UCB cons:
it’s huge
expensive (OOS)
UoP pros:
5 years (2 undergrad, 3 grad) for a DDS
better teacher/faculty ratio
scholarship (18k per year undergrad)
program basically guarantees acceptance to dental school provided I don’t screw up
UoP cons:
No real prestige (Nobody where I live knows it)
I’m basically committing to dental from the get-go
If I wanted to be a dentist 100% I’d go to UoP, but I’m really not 100% sure. I’m about as sure as any high school student can be about a career choice, which is to say, not really. I have had quite a bit of exposure to dentistry (parent is a dentist) and I really like the lifestyle. However, I also enjoy engineering though, so I also want to explore that a bit as well.
The problem is that UCB’s SIR has to be in by this monday.
help…?
I’d go with the money. UoP is pretty well known on the West Coast. If you decide you don’t want to be a dentist how hard is it to change out of the program at UoP?
It wouldn’t be ideal to switch out. This is because the dental program has students take only the requirements for dental school and nothing else.
If you’re undecided, I would not choose a specialized program.
http://www.pacific.edu/Admission/Undergraduate/Applying/Pre-Dentistry/23-Curriculum.html indicates that UoP’s 2+3 accelerated dental program requires a 3.25 GPA, no grade lower than C-, and 18 or higher on the DAT to move into the DDS program.
As far as exploring engineering goes, were you admitted to your favorite engineering major in the CoE at UCB? If not, it is very difficult to get into engineering majors at UCB if one enters in a non-CoE division (although IEOR and EECS have similar L&S majors that are not as difficult, though they still require a high GPA for admission – ORMS 3.2, L&S CS 3.3). Engineering majors other than biomedical and maybe chemical may not have enough course overlap and free electives to also fit in the pre-dental courses easily.
I have a friend who’s a dentist down in LA, and he was telling me the UoP Dental School is pretty good. (He didn’t go there.)
I’m not sure prestige is a big issue when it comes to dental school.