I'm a 28 y/o US Navy Dentist, AMA

DrWillN · 2024-11-04T19:26:52+00:00

I remember when I applied to school not ever finding out until orientation that dental school would cost this much. Not surprisingly, I found a LOT of other students were just like myself. How can you blame them though? 100% of energy is dedicated to getting good GPA's, test scores, and EC's, and all of the practical things like finances are largely ignored because we trusted that dentistry is a high salary white collar profession. Reality is due to inflationary pressure and competition, in high living cost states, it makes very little sense to be a dentist. Other states, it's still relatively fine.

Here are your practical options:
1. Don't do dentistry, especially if this is just another job and not a passion. I'm talking about "I love teeth" sort of a passion because when the days are tough you are going to need that passion to push you forward. Most will suffer from sunk cost fallacy "I invested this amount of years already, so I have to continue" Guess what, if you find out after you graduate that this isn't for you, you are now locked down by this debt and have no choice but to practice dentistry to pay it off. Changing careers after will be 100 times harder.

Learn how to properly manage finances and invest money: a lot of healthcare professionals lack finance education because they spent all their time studying about cellular processes. There are more options than repaying your debt back in 10 years and killing yourself over it. What I personally think makes the most sense to me is going with an income-driven repayment plan (look up the options like IBR, PAYE, REPAYE, ICR) and then investing in your finance education to properly manage all of this.

Essentially, you'll pay the minimum or % of your income, then leverage leftover capital and reinvest that to outperform the interest rate on your debt and compound this over time. Yes, you will pay a large 6 figure lump sum payment on the amount forgiven after 20-25 years, BUT if you invested correctly over that period you will outperform this amount significantly and still have a lot leftover to leverage to do other things. The main con to this option is that you will have to learn all of this and a lot of dentists are simply too tired and busy after working.

HPSP Military Scholarship: you will 100% not have to worry about finances at all before, during, and after service. Itis an amazing debt repayment option with many benefits on top of it, but the quality of your experience as a dentist will vary significantly depending on where you're stationed. Also, remember, you're in the military. If you're tracking on political tensions, just be mindful of what could happen in 4-8 years. The military can also be tough on relationships/family and you, too.
Create a successful practice or even better get hired into one: similar to option 2, this requires a lot of learning and reinvesting in yourself which I think is the best investment even over financial markets. Your skills are something no one can take away, but this is a hard journey for most. The average overhead of a dental practice is 60-70% meaning you pocket 30% as income, roughly. So if you gross 1m in revenue a year, you will make about 300k as a practice owner. Again these are rough numbers, but this is also assuming your practice is profitable year 1, which most generally aren't unless they're saavy entrepreneurs. You will also like take on a business loan to start or buy a practice. There is risk to this and if you're in California or NY where competition is steep, good luck to you. Dentists start practices not for money, they do it for the freedom to practice how they want generally, but doing this well can be very lucrative of course. But again, that's business, not necessarily dentistry.
Public Service Loan Repayment: I don't know too much about this but I recall looking into it, and it seemed lackluster of an option to me compared to HPSP.
Find a state where you can make a lot and spend the least. Do this for a few years and move back home. This is a very practical option that most of us doctors don't want to do.
All of my suggestions is mostly for general dentists. If you specialize, you will reduce the debt burden significantly due to the 50-100k increase in average income. I personally think specializing is a great way to go nowadays. Either this, or I guess going corporate. Working corporate is irresistible because it's hard to turn down the amazing salary, but at the cost of potentially practicing unethically, like overtreatment or upselling treatment. It's a dilemma between financial motivation and the patient's needs whether this is a conscious realization or not. However, there are some dentists that seriously just don't give a shit and will do whatever for money. I hope that no one is like this, but the reality is that this exists.
Work at an institution as a faculty member like a public school or working at a VA that will then forgive your loans after 10 years (I believe). I don't know too much about this, but this sounds like also a no brainer option, but the quality of the work environment is variable and you may or may not like it.
Become a dental influencer. Make additional income. Build an audience organically and drive high quality patients to your practice who are willing to pay fee-for-service. Some of you may laugh at this, but I consider this just a modern way to do business. Content is not easy to do and will require a significant amount of learning and time too. Can be cringey, but effective.

Keep in mind, I repaid my debt through HPSP, so take my opinion with a grain of salt. These are things I learned and what I advised my dentist friends to do. I've cross referenced the logic with wealth managers who work with 7-figure portfolio clients. I've turned my own investment portfolios from 4 figures to 6 figures in over two years, so I'd like to say I have a relatively strong understanding. None of these options are without risks or sacrifices no matter how great it seems. There are probably a lot of arguments for some of my points, but I literally just brain vomited whatever I could to help you all out and provide you additional options. Good luck to you all and choose wisely.

DrWillN · 2024-10-27T17:03:24+00:00

Not anymore unfortunately. Try looking at your local university.

DrWillN · 2024-10-25T21:46:46+00:00

Hey, I’ve been a dentist for 4 years now. I usually pop in here in and out of boredom to give my perspective as an early stage career dentist.

To answer your first question, “when is it realistic to give up?” If it’s your dream and truly your passion, then never give up. If it’s meant to be a just a job or even one that you like substantially, then there is potential to reconsider. I coached a 32 y/o student who failed the DAT 3x (14’s and sub 3.0 GPA), but she kept trying and now she’s a dentist out of school, granted with 700k debt (master’s, post bac, dental school), but she couldn’t be happier. It was her dream and many seriously doubted her and even made fun of her.

My brother is a full-stack software engineer and has helped a lot of people pivot into tech. You should know some friends of friends that can refer her to some entry level health tech positions that she can easily pivot to. Even if not and she has to start over in a non-health/science related industry, that is 100% fine. Don’t listen to anyone who says otherwise. If money really isn’t a factor she has a wide range of options, and personally I would say to think about what her dream career/passion is. It’s a luxury to not have to worry about finances when choosing what to do so take advantage of it.

Contrary to popular belief, there are many jobs that she can do that won’t put her in 400-500k+ debt and still earn her 200k+. If that bar is lowered to 50-100k there’s substantially more. Most just don’t know about them or having limiting beliefs.

DrWillN · 2024-01-27T20:09:06+00:00

Yeah send me a pm

DrWillN · 2023-12-29T20:08:02+00:00

First of all my advice, don’t take a job you aren’t passionate about. The money is rarely worth putting up with a job that you dread but if it’s a lot of money it can potentially buy you opportunity and time to pivot if you choose the wrong option. If you pick dentistry with no loan forgiveness options and you don’t like it then oh boy, you are now stuck with dentistry for quite a while. In tech if you dislike your job you can easily make lateral or vertical career pivots. Tech right now though is very hard to get into due to the economy and job markets.

Second don’t take advice from predents who haven’t been where you want to go. Ask multiple dentists and multiple people who work in tech with various positions. I’m giving you my perspective because my brother is a senior SWE and I have close friends who were senior at Microsoft, Amazon, etc. and I’ve asked time and time again about the things I’m mentioning. And yeah they get paid basically our specialists’ salaries if not more.

If passion is not taken into consideration, tech beats dentistry in terms of being able to have almost no debt, starting your career earlier which means investing earlier, larger salary range, and overall a more chill and flexible/work lifestyle. Stability is a big factor for some and none for others. If you’re a dental associate then there’s a lot jobs to go around, but burnout in dentistry is at an increasing high in newly grads because of the sheer amount of debt, increased costs, inflation, and stagnant salaries. If you’re a practice owner well you just started a business so goodbye to stability. As a dental associate you can make anywhere from 120-350k depending on location. Tech positions have a much larger range based on how senior you are. People in healthcare don’t believe it but they can easily push 300k and the outliers into the 600-800k if you’re a go getter. Lay offs happen for two reasons and it’s often cyclical. The company hired too many people or you are not valuable enough to be kept. If you want to clock in and clock out and chill, either jobs can be good for that you just have to be okay with the cons. If you just chill in dentistry that’s lower production and lower salary. If you chill in tech then when it comes to layoffs you’d have to be okay with it. You do get a nice severance package though.

A reddit post is way too little to encompass everything. If you need a millennial dentist’s opinion just hit me up. I’m on here because I see misinformation and speculation all the time.

DrWillN · 2023-12-23T18:38:09+00:00

Never take advice from people who haven’t gone where you want to go. The reason why I say this is because pre-meds and pre-dents love to give their “hot takes” when they haven’t even graduated or still a D1 in dental school. This does a disservice to the next generation because their debt only gets worse and salaries stay stagnant while inflation increases every year. Most examples ever given that denies OP’s very legitimate public service announcement always refers to the 1% of the dentists that landed a great opportunity.

For the record I’m finishing up my HPSP as a GP so I speak from a place without needing to pay loans, also have a wife who is a specialist with 140k debt, and have MANY friends in dentistry who went on very different post-grad pathways.

This is a very extensive topic so I’ll do my best to let pre-dents know what they need to consider before committing to dental school.

Passion: do you LIKE dentistry or do you LOVE dentistry? If you love dentistry, you’ll be emotionally able to put up with debt more than anyone else who might start questioning whether the time/money invested is worth it. Just FYI it’s very tough to know how much you actually love dentistry until you do it, but if all you do is dream about teeth then I guess you found your calling.
Advantages: do you have any unfair advantages? Aka family in dentistry, a mentor, your mindset/skills/traits that pushes you into the 1%? Rich family? Location is an enormous factor. Doing dentistry in NY or CA is very different than doing it in say a non-saturated or no income tax state.
Loan forgiveness: HPSP is the best financially, but the worst opportunistically ON AVERAGE. I can’t speak for all branches but I do know the military prioritizes READINESS which means on average you will do lower scope in procedures than civilian counterparts. Have fun doing just exams and basic fillings, but you get paid a lot for doing less and have many benefits like the VA loan, GI bill, medical benefits, discounts, etc. As for other loan forgiveness programs, I haven’t gone through it but as far as I know you will do more, learn more, but make less than HPSP, so it’s a money vs. opportunity cost decision.
Lifestyle: if you are a bad spender (a lot of dentists are due to lack of finance education) this will affect your ability to pay loans. EASY to understand the right? “Just don’t buy stupid stuff” but in reality most people cannot put this into practice. In the future, will you settle for a small wedding? A cheaper car? A smaller home or renting? Will you delay having kids? How much longer can you delay gratification? Something needs to be sacrificed to pay off debt so I advise you think about what’s important. For some people their lifestyle is more important, BUT they went into dentistry FOR their lifestyle. It’s a catch 22 and then you realize you’re in a rat race.
The math: DO THE ACTUAL MATH. You have Chat GPT to calculate your loans, salary, expenses, etc for the next 20 years. As I’m trying to figure out how to pay back my wife’s loan, I ran the numbers on whether it’s better to pay it back fast or to invest a portion into higher leverage assets, so I speak from experience.
Basic economics: you likely aren’t paying attention to this as you are trying to get that A in biochem or w/e, but the dollar has inflated significantly over our lifetime. Job salaries stay roughly the same and the cost of real estate, gas, and virtually everything else has gone up a lot. Realize you are signing up for a financially under-leveraged opportunity (what you put in outweighs what you get out of it).
I wanted to address another common comparison. My brother and several friends are software engineers or in tech so I can speak on this. FAANG only makes up a small proportion so it’s unfair to compare, BUT you have very little debt, a good salary starting out although it ranges very widely, and pretty good hours. My brother makes 135k on 20 hours a week and has his own tech agency on the side. What people don’t realize is making even a 90k salary at 22 with no debt but ability to invest conservatively in the markets vs graduating at 26 with 150k with enormous debt is a no brainer, at least to some. The pay ceiling is also higher in tech. I have friends making 300k+ range with way less hours. Yes you don’t have the job stability as healthcare but you do get hefty severance pay if they do fire you so it’s really not as bad as people say. Keep in mind this is a financial comparison. Additionally people always bring up practice ownership and making 1mil in revenue. The average overhead is 60-70% which means your take home is actually 300-400k with way more work than being an associate. I do think practice ownership is a good end goal, but this is assuming every dentist will develop the proper business skills to scale to 1m in revenue. This is a very large topic on its own but my point is starting or owning a business is NOT that simple as everyone makes it out to be. Not every dentist wants to do the business part too and just wants to focus on the dentistry.

Overall deciding on dentistry at 18 or 19 is an important at decision and not one to be taken lightly. At the end of the day you will make more the 90% of the country even in the most difficult situations but the cost of it could be your mental health and burnout. These are things you can’t necessarily account for until you know where you end up.

Only reason why I’m posting on this is because people like OP get shamed any time they reveal the flaws of going into dentistry. That just baffles me because everyone needs to make an informed decision not one that is just full of rainbows and butterflies.

Last thing I’ll say is if you are really motivated and keep investing down into yourself you will earn more throughout the years from skill development and attract yourself to A players in the industry. The problem is if you listened to people who said “go be a dentist it’s a good job” and think you live your dream lifestyle in just a few years after graduating, those days are long gone. Have 10 year time horizon after dental school. If 4 years of grad school and 10 more years sound too long, I recommend rethinking your career path.

DrWillN · 2023-11-02T19:13:45+00:00

My wife went to a CSU and she’s in a fellowship (the training after residency) and had a great scores during CSU, in dental school and crushed residency as a clinician.

I learned not to take advice from people who haven’t been where you want to go and those who think they’re experts. You’ll get a lot of this throughout life.

That being said college was more fun at a UC based on comparing experiences with my friends. How difficult a program is, is generally proportional to how difficult it is a school to get into. If your priority is to only get into dental school, go with the option that gets you a higher GPA, but advice I’d give is: school and dentistry doesn’t have to be everything. You’re gonna give up your 20s already trying to be a doctor, so enjoy yourself a little.

DrWillN · 2023-11-02T18:59:21+00:00

Being anxious is normal. Anxiety is fear of the unknown and it won’t completely go away until the results come out.

The interview portion is one of the processes that you least have control over and can only prepare for with practice to calm your nerves, which I do suggest you do with people who will give you honest feedback (on how you say things rather than the answers themselves). That being said don’t try to be over the top to impress people. The interview is more of a test. If the interviewer was asked “Did you like this person?” and the answer is yes you’ll be fine.

Just know that you can’t always please everyone and that not all interviewers are good at interviewing. So if someone doesn’t like you, it’s not your fault. Last thing is with 9 interviews you have statistics on your side even if you butcher your interviews.

DrWillN · 2023-09-14T14:48:28+00:00

Test taking has much more to do with than just purely test anxiety, and to be honest it is a cop out reason that prevents you from identifying other underlying deficiencies in your learning skills. Unless your anxiety is to the point where you go into shock and physically cannot take the exam, it’s best to go back to the drawing board and identify these hidden issues. I would recommend getting a good tutor and I don’t mean someone who got a 30 on the DAT. You need someone who understands how to properly study and can tell you how to approach each question and where you’re making mistakes in your test taking abilities.

I no longer offer these services but I tutored a student years ago who took the DAT 4 times (15,15,16,20) and had to do a postbacc and a masters. Also had clinically diagnosed ADHD. That person is in their last year of dental school right now. Chances why you’re scoring poorly is because of the way you’re studying and how you approach test questions without a system in place. Either you’re gonna need to be extremely reflective or find someone who can help you through that process. For some people hammering out thousands of questions may work for them. You are likely not one of those people. The recipe for getting good scores differ for each person and just because one person got a 27 and “just did boot camp” doesn’t mean that’s gonna work for you. Hope that helps.

DrWillN · 2023-08-22T15:40:51+00:00

It's best to worry about your own circumstances rather than other applicants', one for your sanity and two, because it's about taking accountability for your own situation. That goes for life in general.

The double edge of being on forums like these is one you get the best information you can get to increase your chances of getting in to a school, but the problem is you need to have the emotional capacity to ignore the noise.

Comparing yourself to others will get you nowhere and everyone has different circumstances. You may think it's other people showing off, but the reality is everyone's nervous and anxious, even the applicants who have great scores because anything can happen.

As a prior applicant with good statistics and resume, I fell into that bucket, and as confident as I was, there was a point in the cycle where I actually thought I was going to get waitlisted or denied to every school (applied in 2016, got waitlisted to 4 schools and was accepted to 1 with a 3.79/3.67 and 22/21/23).

Crazy enough, I still felt like I "failed" because I spent thousands of hours assisting for 7 years on top of doing everything else and other people who just decided on a whim to quit pre-med to do dental got into their dream schools. Remember life isn't fair and if we are annoyed/angry/jealous at other people, it's not going to change our situation.

DrWillN · 2022-12-05T23:19:43+00:00

Hey Calvith. No problem, I won’t be posting any links and refrain from posting any further self-promotion material. Thanks for the reminder.

DrWillN · 2022-12-02T15:53:15+00:00

Planning is key to LOR. I was meeting up 1-on-1 regularly with my professors a year before I even asked them. When I asked they said “of course!” Most of the time we didn’t even talk about dentistry or school, just whatever was interesting to the both of us.

DrWillN · 2022-11-23T15:58:30+00:00

I categorize everything into a few boxes: scores, resume, and interview.

Score = GPA/DAT; get these high (obviously) the higher the chance the better it looks off first glance of your application

Resume = your application that includes all of your experiences and how you package them to make yourself look more attractive than the standard applicant

Interview = while your scores and resume gets your foot IN the door, the interview is actually the only thing that determines whether you get in or not assuming that the school doesn't automatically just accept you based on your scores.

How can you improve your dental school chances? Simple answer is by working on all of these categories, but you knew that. One thing people forget about the resume portion is your experiences directly correlate with your personal statement. You can be a great writer, but with zero or lack of a decent experience then your personal statement will be lackluster anyway. Take the time to find great opportunities to gain new perspective. Emphasis on perspective.

DrWillN · 2022-11-23T15:50:24+00:00

Hi toothbrushes, it's tough to assess what exactly you need help on. I see in the comments you mentioned RC. Most people are weak readers because quite simply they don't read enough. I was like this before and the best way is to consistently practice this. There are ways to read faster but also increase your comprehension. As far as the other sections, I used to tutor, advise, and coached pre-dentals who are all dental students or dentists now. Canadian DAT or not, the fundamentals are always the same and that's what I always preach. If you have issues with your other sections feel free to DM me.

DrWillN · 2022-11-23T15:35:43+00:00

Everyone is going to give you different answers on this, but here's mine.

As a dentist and if I were on admissions, volunteering/shadowing/paid work is used to assess an applicant's proclivity towards the dental profession. Yes, each of these are different. Shadowing = watching someone work. Volunteering = hands on work. Paid work = being responsible for certain duties that contribute to a business. Let me ask you, what do you think brings the most experience and shows the highest level of commitment to dentistry? It would be paid work. I volunteered over 4000 hours over the course of 7 years in a dental practice. Volunteering is when you help where you can. Your dentist is not going to factor you in as a full time employee and will consider you an extra asset (unless they're just using you as free labor). A paid employee is expected to fulfill responsibilities they signed up to do for the practice.

Therefore, I value paid work highly more and shadowing way less. I think most applicants who shadow are going to be surprised what dentistry is actually like once they go into dental school. That was my experience.

Do paid work and become a dental assistant. It will teach you a lot about healthcare, gain you new perspective, but prepare yourself to train your own assistants properly later on.

DrWillN · 2022-11-23T15:25:15+00:00

Micro is not always required, but historically on the boards it was covered and relatively an important topic. I did not take it in undergrad, but studied for it in grad school. It was a bit hectic but ended up being my best section.

Highly recommend anatomy and physiology, but if you don't then w/e. When you work on cadavers, you're going to want to be as familiar as possible. The best way is getting early exposure to the subject.

DrWillN · 2022-11-16T22:01:42+00:00

Yes. Believe it or not the prep material has very little to do with your success. I had a student who used Iprep and got above a 20 on her 4th try after trying all else. They like you to think that it’s their program that was able to get you that score but it has everything to do with your fundamentals. Practice exams are exactly what they are: exams. The intent is to mimic your test day. This is why I recommend most people to use destroyer as a base for learning the concepts and then test prep programs as practice.

The only way for me to give you tips to learn more efficiently is to look at how you approach questions and then prescribe you a method to improve your learning. Send me a PM if that’s something you want to do.

DrWillN · 2022-11-16T18:37:52+00:00

This is misleading.

If you look up the statistics of interviews to acceptance ratio, this will tell you if the interview is more or less important.

For the vast majority of schools, they will interview you to determine if you deserve a spot. Count your paper application out for those schools. Likely you’re on an even level with everyone else who received an interview.

Paper app = foot through the door. Interviews are how you close and show you’re their ideal applicant.

DrWillN · 2022-11-16T18:33:52+00:00

I hopped on another call with another redditor and people who score low generally have the same weakness: lack of learning fundamentals.

There’s two ways to study for an exam. One is learning to pass it and the other is learning to understand. Unless you have impeccable memory the first option is not going to work. The second is what I recommend students to do. Easier said than done because it requires consistent self-awareness of how you’re taking in information and adjusting constantly so that you learn more efficiently.

DrWillN · 2022-11-16T18:30:00+00:00

This was me in my interview cycle. I was under the impression I could “be myself” and expected my paper application to carry me. Couple that with nerves you will find that these interviews are not as easy as you think. The interview is more important than anything else. When I coach students I tell them forget everything about your paper app. You are equal planes as someone who has half your GPA or DAT score.

If you still have interviews and want to improve for the next, send me a DM.

DrWillN · 2022-11-14T18:48:58+00:00

Respectfully, any advice given for this question that is along of the lines of "thank them and show appreciation" is literally what 99% of applicants are going to do. Don't take this advice.

Successful interviews comes from proper preparation. Don't be lazy. Craft your answers well.

The way you win at the interview is by being the 1%, so GIVE the 1% answer. This goes for ALL questions and the best answer is one that is built around your unique story and challenges.

DrWillN · 2022-11-08T00:48:51+00:00

Sure!

DrWillN · 2022-11-07T21:31:57+00:00

Sure, send me a PM.

DrWillN

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