Hi there I’m a senior in high school. I got in to St John’s with full scholarship I’m only going there for my bachelor degree and planning to Go for dental school to NYU and become a dentist but I need to take DAT( dentist admission test). Could anyone tell me what required courses I must take in college to be able to take DAT test successfully. Thank you.
We can always use a good dentist…take a look at this:
and since St Johns doesn’t have a dental school, you can’t go there to get your doctorate, but don’t plan on a single dental school(e.g. NYU) at this point. All US dental schools are superb, and all are really, really tough to get into…
and in terms of preparing for the DAT take a look here:
https://www.ada.org/en/education-careers/dental-admission-test/test-preparation
A bit of personal advice; when the time arrives invest in a formal DAT prep course-it’s money well spent. No need to think about that for a couple of years, and your fellow students at St Johns will give you advice on which one they think is best(as the students who are a couple of years ahead of you, too).
Congratulations on your scholarship, and good luck with your classes-enjoy the adventure that is college!
Thank you so much but question do you personally recommend St. John’s courses as a good prep to prepare for DAT since it is private school and maybe it does has better professors or at least resources for me to do good in dat?
I didn’t attend St Johns, so can’ t personally recommend the school. That said, St Johns is a well-respected college; if you do well on your courses there you’ll be fine.
Regarding the DAT; everyone I know who took that exam and the MCAT-100%- took a formal review course before taking the exam. College courses will give you the substance of the subject matter, but a review course will give you information on how to take the test. The people at St John’s pre-health advising will be able to give you more information, and your best source of recommendations will be your fellow students-the ones a year or two ahead are going through the dental school application process.
There are specific classes you must take as pre-reqs for all dental schools. Usually gen chem, organic chem, bio, physics, calc, plus a few others. Colleges do NOT teach DAT-specific prep. That is up to you. As @oldlaw states, most students invest money and time into DAT test prep. My D did an 8 week online DAT boot camp, 2 to 4 hours 6 days a week.
Your DAT score and GPA are the initial screeners on your dental school application.You want to be sure to have an excellent score on the first round because you only get three tries on the test. Don’t waste one try just “to see how you do”. That’s what practice tests are for.
The best dental school to attend is the cheapest one you get into. Remember, about 12000 students apply for 5500 spots. Every year. Most students apply to a dozen schools. Don’t get attached to a dream school.
There are more components to your application than the DAT; look online and at dental school websites. GPA, DAT, shadowing dentists, joining the pre-dent club at college, research, plus other ECs like athletics or fine arts.
Thank you so much for the feedbacks I really appreciate it. If you know by any chances would you recommend hunter college or St. John’s university because both of them I got full ride and I want to go to one of them but I don’t know which one to choose tbh because I need one with strong science courses.
Have you visited both schools? If not, it would be a good idea to do so, to see which school you like better. It’s pretty well accepted that students who are happy with their school do better in their classes. And these are two very different schools.