{"id":1260,"date":"2017-11-27T08:14:10","date_gmt":"2017-11-27T13:14:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/editing.internationaldentistcentral.com\/?p=1260"},"modified":"2018-11-20T22:57:43","modified_gmt":"2018-11-21T03:57:43","slug":"dental-school-application-theme","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/editing.internationaldentistcentral.com\/dental-school-application-theme\/","title":{"rendered":"Importance of Choosing A Theme – Dental School Application"},"content":{"rendered":"

After working with candidates for so many years on their dental school application, including a statement of purpose and CV, it still never fails to amaze me how much I see a lack of focus in people’s personal statements and CVs. The result, of course, the dental school applicants come across highly forgettable and uninteresting to their respective programs.<\/span><\/p>\n

What do I mean by lack of focus though? I mean that people don’t think about an overarching dental school application theme that is threaded throughout their entire application as a candidate for the process. <\/span><\/p>\n

What mistakes do most applicants make?<\/h2>\n

\"\"Many dental applicants on sitting down to write up a personal statement will start from the beginning of their life, specifically answering the question: \u201cWhy I became a dentist?<\/strong>\u201d Often, they begin by recalling some story about how they were inspired by going to the dentist as a child or from an uncle or family member who was a dentist which inspired them to follow in the same path. They might even discuss some interest in art as a child and try to make the connection of why that inspired them to go into dentistry. Next, they will discuss everything that came after that, for adolescence, in any dental interactions they had, graduating from high school, then their experience in college taking classes on biology, perhaps deciding to go either the pre-medical or pre-dental route or perhaps discussing any dental-related internship they got involved in, or their work as a dental assistant throughout college.<\/span><\/p>\n

Finally they lend back at the present moment, where they’re sitting now after taking the DAT<\/a>, with an interest in pursuing dental school. Their last argument will be something like, <\/span>\u201cPlease accept me I’m very passionate and interested in dentistry.\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

What’s the problem with following the crowd for dental school applicants?<\/h2>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"Well if you can’t see it already, the main problem is that it’s what everyone else is doing! There are certain things in life where it is smart to copy what others are doing around you. For instance, trying to grow your own food and raise your own livestock so that you can eat instead of just going to the grocery store, is an unwise thing to do in most cases. Better to just copy what everyone else is doing and spend your energy on more important things, right? Or instead of walking to work 10 miles across town, better to follow the crowd and take the subway or use a car. That will certainly use up last time and allow you to have some energy when you actually get to work or get home from work. These are clear examples of when it’s the right thing to do is to follow the crowd: the pros clearly outweighing any cons.<\/span><\/p>\n

Following the crowd is a really stupid thing to do when it comes to creating your dental school application. If everyone has the same sounding statement of purpose, this makes it much harder for the dental program you’re interested in to see you standing out from amongst the crowd.<\/span><\/p>\n

How do I know this? Well simply because I used to process applications and read through personal statements on a regular basis when I worked at a prominent engineering-focused, southern California university. I was a part of numerous selection committees, various departments on campus, but we had to make tough decisions about which students we should select for a few very competitive programs. <\/span><\/p>\n

This is a grueling time of year for us. We had hundreds of applicants trying to apply for only about 40 seats. It took over 3 weeks for each of us to go through all the applications and statements of purpose for each candidate, slowly filtering based on our minimum requirements and categorizing them into highly qualified, qualified and least qualified. <\/span><\/p>\n

What I can tell you is that the candidates who put the least amount of effort into the statement of purpose, had the hardest time convincing us to give them an interview, even if everything else about their application was solid. You see, if candidates have fantastic test scores, grades, and experience, then they can get away with a boring or poorly written personal statement. They’ll likely be chosen for an interview anyway.<\/span><\/p>\n

But if the candidates will fall into that middle category, the average: these candidates have a really tough time trying to stand out from amongst themselves, because it’s a really large pool – most people fit into the average. For these candidates, since most everything else was the same in terms of scores and experience, the way we would choose who to interview is based on how impressed we were with their story. And a boring story meant you were put into the boring pile and probably not be called unless we started getting a little desperate.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0Okay so boring personal statements can lead to no dental school interviews. What can I do to make sure mine isn’t boring?<\/b><\/h2>\n

Great, now you’re asking the right question. The first thing is just to make sure that you try to avoid some of the common pitfalls that most candidates incorporate into their personal statements. Here’s a few:<\/span><\/p>\n