Extracurricular Activities to Help You Get Into Dentistry

Dental school applications are sure to be competitive, attracting strong candidates globally. If you are an aspiring applicant to dental school, you may be wondering how to enhance your application to ensure you stand out against the rest of the applicants. This guide is here to give you some examples of extracurricular activities you can do to improve your chances of getting into dental school. 

Extracurricular Activities to Help You Get Into Dentistry

• Job shadowing: Job shadowing can give you valuable experience in what a dentist's day-to-day life looks like. If possible, you should try to get a job shadowing position for the field of dentistry that you are interested in (eg: pedodontist, orthodontist, etc.). This shows admissions officers that you have experience in what a dentist may need to do as part of their job and that you are still interested in pursuing this field. 

   

• Pre-dental club: Many universities have pre-dental clubs or associations for students who are interested in pursuing dentistry. Being part of such clubs will show your passion for dentistry, especially if you have organized a significant number of events to spread knowledge about dentistry or common dental health issues amongst the general student population at your university. Alternatively, if your university does not have a pre-dental club, you could always start your own! This would be even more impressive to admissions officers as it shows you were passionate enough to start your own club to help others learn more about dentistry.

   

• Dental assistantships/internships: This is similar to job shadowing, however instead of just watching the dentist do their job you can actually get experience doing the job yourself. As this type of internship involves working with actual patients, it may be more difficult to secure these positions. However, if you do manage to secure one, it will be impressive to admissions officers as it takes strong grades (and networking skills!) to secure such a competitive position. You will also have hands-on experience working with patients rather than just learning theory.

   

• Community outreach initiatives: Participating in local outreach events can strongly boost your profile as it helps show your passion for sharing dentistry and good dental health practices with the community. For example, you could volunteer at a local elementary school to teach young children about the importance of good dental health or volunteer at a local shelter to create and distribute care packages containing oral health products, etc. 

   

• Scientific research: Having scientific research experience can strongly boost your application as it shows you have strong critical thinking skills. These are often required in dentistry when you would need to use your knowledge to make decisions on what procedures would be required for certain patients based on their conditions. Having research experience doesn't necessarily need to be in dentistry, as that is usually difficult to gain in undergrad. You could also have research experience in a related field such as biology, for example.

   

• Other hobbies: You should highlight your other hobbies on your application as well. Even though these may not directly be related to dentistry, you can use them to highlight your personal strengths. For example, if you were a club president you could use that role to highlight your leadership skills, which could be useful when you may have to lead your own team in a dentist's office. If you were on a sports team you could use that role to highlight your collaboration and teamwork skills, which is useful for admissions officers to see as you may often have to work as a team (eg: X-ray technician, hygienist, dentist's assistant, dentist).