Name of Ortho Program: Southern program
Dental School Attended: Different Southern program
Year Earned DMD/DDS: Past few years
AEGD/GPR/Fellowship/Residency: Nope
International Student (yes/no): No
NBDE Part I/II scores: Pass/Pass
ADAT Score: N/A
GRE Score: 162VR/163QR/5.0W
Class Rank: Top 10%
Match/Non-Match: Match
Externship(s)/where: Two one-day visits (interviewed at both)
Research: Two projects during and after dental school (one ortho & one unrelated project), no publications
Extracurriculars: Class leadership, finance club leadership, tutoring, typical community service activities, etc.
Programs Applied to/Interview Invites/Interviews Attended/Programs Ranked: 23/15/9/9
Due to family circumstances, I practiced general dentistry for a bit of time before applying. I'm very grateful to have matched at an amazing program, especially after meeting so many awesome applicants on the trail this year! One small piece of advice I'll give to future applicants is that while class rank is obviously important, it is definitely not the only thing. The ortho community is a very small world, and people often underestimate the weight that a good rec letter can carry. Showing a true commitment to the field and having an "all in" mentality can go a long way in helping to land interviews. Also one last thing to note.... the whole process is very expensive, so plan accordingly. Just to give some rough ballpark estimates, I spent ~$7500 throughout the process between the application and travel costs (~3K to apply to 23 programs including supplementals, etc, and ~$4500 for everything else including buying interview attire, dry cleaning, plane tickets, rental cars, etc while interviewing at 9 programs). Hope this helps someone out!