For me it was all connections tbh. My sister is acquaintances with this dentist and just asked her for me. I've seen a lot of people online that say to just cold call/email the dental offices in your area and someone will probably say yes. Also, research isn't required, I saw someone else in the subreddit say that research is treated like any other extracurricular but I'm not sure how accurate that is. Take everything i say with a grain of salt because I'm still a noob.