Bittersweet day today.

Bitter : Biochem Midterm :(
Sweet : VCU Invite! November 3rd baby!

And the good week keeps getting better. Just heard that I've been invited to UW for an interview via an AADSAS update. Haven't gotten the official letter via email or post, but I'll update when I will be back in the pacific northwest to interview

Hey everybody,

So this past weekend, I was up in New York interviewing at Columbia University School of Dental Medicine. I was pretty nervous seeing how it was my first dental school interview. We started off with a quick talk about the school. I was pleased to see that they are very medically-oriented and produce a very high rate of specialization (about 50% of grads get matched to a spot). They have a great reputation for turning out excellent clinicians and researchers there. Lots of good history and a great reputation. They train dentists much in the way that they do with their med students. They attend alot of the same classes, which in the brand new curriculum, are more concentrated into the first 1.5 years in order to complete them before some much needed clinical focus after that. I was happy to hear that they are actively working on giving their students more clinical experience, which I heard was a minor problem. However, Dr. McManus mentioned that they actually have a higher than average clinical experience for their students. Rumor dispelled. I also got a little more comfortable with the idea of taking class with med school students because I've found a liking for the medical aspects of dentistry due to my internship and because we are not graded with them. On that note, the class is Pass/Fail/Honors, which means no GPA, no class rank and pretty much specialty programs say "well he went to columbia.... he must be awesome."

Then I sat down for a 1-on-1 interview with a faculty member. Most people thought their sessions were pretty casual and more of a conversation, but I felt like I was being grilled a bit. Still, I felt that I answered the questions pretty well and presented myself in the best possible light. On another note, I was surprised to see that Columbia has been gradually stepping down the number of interview invites from 360 in 2007 to 250 in 2008 to this year, which they claimed was only 150 invites. WOW that is awesome! Considering that they will likely mail out more than 75-80 of the spots for the class, since not everybody accepts an offer to attend... my odds are fantastic now!

Overall, I thought the faculty were very kind and inviting. They made it clear that if I didn't want to specialize, I should not come there. Good advice. The facilities were okay, a little old in places but still okay. The library was pretty strange looking. Really minimalistic and lots of white walls. Washington Heights isn't the best area in the world, but I think I could stand living there for 4 years because its cheap. I wouldn't like living there if I was a female though. Yikes. Overall, I was very impressed by Columbia. They will be making a serious bid for my attendance this winter if they decide to accept me. I am seriously considering attending their great school.