The good old college days

College was (as it is for most) a time of immense change. As I left off in my earlier post, I left high school thinking I wanted to be an architect and came into college thinking maybe an architect, engineer, or doctor. All of them sounded like quite lofty goals, and I had no idea what was coming my way...

Freshman year, my first class (ever) was engineering calculus. About 30 minutes of sitting in that class scared the heck out of me and I decided to drop it and just forget engineering. Seriously... I dropped my first college class ever. Once again, math was my barrier and I wasn't willing to jump over it. So I switched into thinking about medicine, my other idea when I came into college.

That first semester, I also took a class called "Intro to Health Professions", which is what really turned me from medicine to dentistry. I heard a dentist come in and talk about how he liked the fusion of medicine and detail work (the kind of detail work that my architecture/engineering style mind loved to do). So I started going to some Pre-Dental Club meetings and next thing you know... I was hooked.

I met an orthodontist at Pre-Dental Club named Dr. Revels and he was a life-saver for me. I shadowed him quite a bit and he ended up writing one of my letters of recommendation when I eventually applied to dental school. He also was a big reason I pursued the Air Force HPSP (check the top of the page for more details on what that is) scholarship for dental school.

I made sure to keep up my grades, and suffered only 1 B (intro to psychology... WHAT?!) so I was on the right track.

Sophomore year, I hit the dentistry thing at full speed. I was elected as the Vice President of Communications of my fraternity and Secretary of the Pre-Dental Club. I also managed all A's through fairly rigorous science courses. My main focus this year was expanding myself. I tried to not just focus on grades but also on volunteering, leadership, etc. I kept up with my shadowing (for those that don't know what this means, check out the 'Pre-Dental Process' tab up top) and made sure I was taking the right classes. I started to understand the amount of work it was going to take to get into dental school and I soon found out that studying was going to be an every day thing. As I'll explain later, it certainly paid off.

Another thing I started doing during this year was taking summer, december, and may intersession classes. I didn't always NEED them (in one case, with Organic Chemistry 1, I actually did need it ASAP and took it summer between Soph and Junior yr.) but I took them just because I had to have them eventually and it gave me something to do. This eventually let me graduate early, which I'll discuss later.

Overall, this was sort of my 'plug away' year. I expanded my horizons and got involved with lots of different things and hit them all at full steam. I had managed to come away with all but 1 A freshman year and nailed a 4.0 both semesters of my sophomore year. As I would find out shortly, however, grades and leadership weren't enough to get into dental school... during my Junior year, I met the giant DAT monster.

Junior year, my classes were even harder... but I was more prepared to handle them. Despite this, I wound up with another B (Biochemistry) and ran for office again in my fraternity (this time, a relative downgrade to 'parking chair'... which was no fun at all) and in Pre-Dental Club (an upgrade here, to president!). So with my leadership rocking along and my grades holding steady, I faced a foe that tested me to the core.

In October of my Junior year (before I was elected to my new offices in December) I took a practice DAT for free with Kaplan. There are lots of these available, check out 'Pre-Dental' for links in your area. I scored a meager 15 but it was enough to convince me that I had the base knowledge required to shoot for an early try... my goal was to study over Christmas break and take it just before I went back to school in late January. A lofty goal indeed. For a breakdown of the DAT and how to prepare for it, go up top to the 'DAT' section.

Long story short, I did well enough to be pretty happy with my score (that is, after I freaked out 3 days before I was supposed to take the test, moved it back a week, got sick, had my car die the morning of the test... you know... the usual).

So there I was. Grades where I wanted them, lots of leadership and shadowing, and a solid DAT score. Now for the hard part... actually getting in to dental school.

Side note: I actually discovered that I could graduate early from all of the summer/intersession classes I took. Fantastic! This would end up cutting my Senior year into a Senior semester.

Summer between Junior and Senior year... this was when all the applying went down. I applied to USC, OU, Marquette, Nova Southeastern, and Creighton. I had very good reasons for each (in a way...) and I was happy with my choices. I pretty much spent the summer working and getting all my application stuff together as well as getting my letters of recommendation together...

Oh, and this was the time I started seriously looking into the Air Force HPSP.

Senior Year... Um actually, this turned out to be more like a half year, like I said earlier. This was the tail end of me being president of the Pre-Dental Club which was a great experience. I took my capstone class, as well as some other classes, and finished up with my college journey! But what about dental school?...

In October, I got an interview request from both Nova and USC... I pushed my Nova interview from mid-October to Dec 18 (in hopes that OU would take me on December 1) and I had no choice but to go out to USC when they offered so I got a nice little mid-semester trip to LA! OU got in touch with me in November and I went to that interview in early November.

On December 1, I got an e-mail from the OU College of Dentistry telling me I was accepted to dental school! My brain let out this massive sigh of relief that it had been holding back for the last 3 years and I promptly withdrew my application from all other schools once my deposit at OU was paid a few weeks later.

Around the end of my semester, I got a job as a high school math and chemistry tutor with a lady that is friends with my dad. I must say, it was the luckiest thing that happened to me because I was looking at possibly waiting tables again for a whole 6 months from January to July... and I just wasn't too excited about it.

(I also got accepted to the 4 year Air Force HPSP in early February 2010... I know that's not really Senior year, but we'll count it.)

So I'm accepted to dental school, accepted to the Air Force HPSP, and tutoring about 20 hours a week...

And that is where I am now... so read on and see what's going on with me right now!