Question for those recently graduated

[Craig_Sherwood234]

Recently got accepted to Tufts. I'm glad about this more than anything, as I have tried very hard during undergrad (maintained around a 3.9, literally have like 1 or 2 Bs on entire transcript, etc.)

However, feeling very overwhelmed with the prospect of another 4 years of school and hard work. Is this truly worth it? Should I be really that happy with my acceptance? I am overwhelmed more than anything. For what it's worth, I'm thinking here on practical terms. Not sure if I'm experiencing some form of burn-out here.

Thank you

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[toothfairyy]

I graduated undergrad in 2011 and started dental school 2 months later, I had a slight burn out from never having a break /my commute but learned quickly to study smart, manage time, and do well.
I had a goal so I figured out how to refocus and get back in even stronger. If you want it enough, there is a way and a part of it is an optimistic attitude. Yes dental school takes its toll , but u have to persist. Best of luck.

 

[periopocket]

Yes, you should be proud of your acceptance!
Dentistry is a life long learning process. Brace your self for continued education.

Sent from my iPhone using SDN mobile

 

[Craig_Sherwood234]

Yes, you should be proud of your acceptance!
Dentistry is a life long learning process. Brace your self for continued education.

Sent from my iPhone using SDN mobile

I don't feel proud

 

[DrSdreen]

I don't feel proud

I am experiencing the same thing. I dont feel proud with my acceptance. All I feel is stress... Financially and psychologically..

 

[Craig_Sherwood234]

I am experiencing the same thing. I dont feel proud with my acceptance. All I feel is stress... Financially and psychologically..

my long-lost twin... I knew I had one

 

[super frank]

I definitely feel a little stress financially, which is probably a result of being an active member of SDN and working out in the real world. But still, it's better to be informed than to have no idea what we may face following graduation.

 

[S_Diamond_DDS]

Recently got accepted to Tufts. I'm glad about this more than anything, as I have tried very hard during undergrad (maintained around a 3.9, literally have like 1 or 2 Bs on entire transcript, etc.)

However, feeling very overwhelmed with the prospect of another 4 years of school and hard work. Is this truly worth it? Should I be really that happy with my acceptance? I am overwhelmed more than anything. For what it's worth, I'm thinking here on practical terms. Not sure if I'm experiencing some form of burn-out here.

Thank you

.

 

[Likkriue]

Guess I'm the only one who is extremely excited. Financially not stressed out at all as I have everything planned on a excel sheet. Will modify it as I go through school but seems pretty straightforward.

2 of the posters above Who were so certain that paying more for a "better name" are having doubts about going to dental school now lmao. Well I'm going to call you out because welcome to reality where money doesn't grow on trees.

(Not directed at you Rekker). Those 2 know who they are.

 

[DreamChaser01]

I guess I'm not the only one.

 

[stoopidmonkeycatdog]

Guys please just talk to any dentist you know well

All the stress and worry you are feeling is because of the time you spend on this forum. This is still one of the best fields in the country. You should definitely feel excited.

I'm not going to tell you finances won't be an issue, they might. But everyone has those problems nowadays. If you want to focus on earning alot, you can as a dentist. If you want to focus on having a good work-life balance and earning a decent income? You can do that too, and everything in between.

This job just gives you a license, a license to a great field and autonomy, you choose how your experience will be.

 

[Incis0r]

Financially not stressed out at all as I have everything planned on a excel sheet. Will modify it as I go through school but seems pretty straightforward.

This is the solution - Likky is very smart to do this because having a concrete, written plan is very helpful to crush stress with!

 

[Incis0r]

I am experiencing the same thing. I dont feel proud with my acceptance. All I feel is stress... Financially and psychologically..

What's causing the psychological side of stress? Is it the perceived difficulty of dental school/the overwhelming amount of work?

Personally, I'm feeling this too somewhat. Everyone here talks about how brutal dental school is and how you won't see the light of day, etc etc. it's quite demoralizing.

 

[stoopidmonkeycatdog]

What's causing the psychological side of stress? Is it the perceived difficulty of dental school/the overwhelming amount of work?

Personally, I'm feeling this too somewhat. Everyone here talks about how brutal dental school is and how you won't see the light of day, etc etc. it's quite demoralizing.

So I'm renting a place from a graduating dental student going into OMS, and his GF was there who is a year 2. They said it was stressful and then went in depth on why, what I got from them was two things. It's mainly stressful to keep your grades A's, not necessarily to pass with good grades, and it's stressful if you require a lot of time to study.

He said that you will find you can only miss 2-3 questions on all of your exams if you want to keep your A's, which is why you get a bit stressed because you are constantly trying to cover every single little thing. He then said a lot of his friends took it easier and got A's and B's because they didn't sweat everything.

They both said EVERYTHING is multiple choice except for practicals, and if you Excel at multiple choice questions you can do well pretty easily.

They both said they had time for fun on the weekends and recommend that you make time for it.

Also her source of stress is that she would be in school from 8-5, come home for 2 hours, then head back until 12 or 1, repeat. She simply needed a lot of time to study, he claimed he never had it that bad and just spent a few hours a day. It's exactly like college where your learning style matters.

If you were a good college student and found keeping up with a heavy science load easy, don't stress out. Just relax and understand that you're obviously capable of doing it, otherwise you wouldn't have been accepted. Don't let the negative opinions of a few invade your thoughts.

I typed that on my phone sorry for any errors

 

[Medin2017]

To play devil's advocate on the optimism above, idk how much doing well in undergrad correlates with d school performance. For the most part if you were a solid student you prob will be ok. But from what I've read on med boards, there have been people with top MCATs and high GPAs struggling in school or doing worse than peers who didn't do as well in undergrad. For example, there are those with 35+ MCATs with mediocre scores on step 1 and some with 28 MCATS and >250 on the step 1. It can be a different ball game from undergrad to grad school depending on how well you adapt. I might make a post asking about how much undergrad + DAT correlated with dental school performance.

 

[stoopidmonkeycatdog]

To play devil's advocate on the optimism above, idk how much doing well in undergrad correlates with d school performance. For the most part if you were a solid student you prob will be ok. But from what I've read on med boards, there have been people with top MCATs and high GPAs struggling in school or doing worse than peers who didn't do as well in undergrad. For example, there are those with 35+ MCATs with mediocre scores on step 1 and some with 28 MCATS and >250 on the step 1. It can be a different ball game from undergrad to grad school depending on how well you adapt. I might make a post asking about how much undergrad + DAT correlated with dental school performance.

I think a lot for it has to do with how much time it takes some people to study. I had a friend in undergrad we called "Mr. 100" because he literally got more one hundreds than anything else. It was shocking when he got a 95. He took his MCAT and scored like 90th percentile I think, so it was pretty decent, though not great. 4.0 GPA obviously, but the thing is, be studies literally like all the time to get those grades, he's not really that good on the fly, you know?

So when he is in med school, and there is so much material flying at him and he can't devote the same amount of time to each subject as he did on undergrad, it definitely wouldn't surprise me if he did worse.

But students who were very quick to understand subject and found the actually material and difficulty of undergrad easy, I feel like dental school won't be too bad. You may have to increase your studying, but you already studied really quickly, so it's not like you'll be running out of time. And professional school is all about time management.

 

[Medin2017]

I think a lot for it has to do with how much time it takes some people to study. I had a friend in undergrad we called "Mr. 100" because he literally got more one hundreds than anything else. It was shocking when he got a 95. He took his MCAT and scored like 90th percentile I think, so it was pretty decent, though not great. 4.0 GPA obviously, but the thing is, be studies literally like all the time to get those grades, he's not really that good on the fly, you know?

So when he is in med school, and there is so much material flying at him and he can't devote the same amount of time to each subject as he did on undergrad, it definitely wouldn't surprise me if he did worse.

True, but that seems to be a weird scenario. To study so much, one could easily assume he could cut a lot of time and still make 90s and that he was just doing it for the sake of being a perfectionist. I'm a risk averse person, so if I can study enough to make 90s, might as well put in some extra time to clinch 95s and only need 70s on the final to ace courses. I feel like it wouldn't be that hard to distribute time slightly better to cover a larger range of courses unless you were a major bonehead and still wanted 100s on everything like that dude. I feel like in dental school I'm gonna anki a bunch of stuff and cover nearly everything which is time consuming, but I really wanna be in top 10.

 

[stoopidmonkeycatdog]

True, but that seems to be a weird scenario. To study so much, one could easily assume he could cut a lot of time and still make 90s and that he was just doing it for the sake of being a perfectionist. I'm a risk averse person, so if I can study enough to make 90s, might as well put in some extra time to clinch 95s and only need 70s on the final to ace courses. I feel like it wouldn't be that hard to distribute time slightly better to cover a larger range of courses unless you were a major bonehead and still wanted 100s on everything like that dude. I feel like in dental school I'm gonna anki a bunch of stuff and cover nearly everything which is time consuming, but I really wanna be in top 10.

Haha so I have some weirdly related experience to this.

I graduated this past December, but I was very confident in my interview performance and knew I was going to be accepted, so for my final semester I decided to slack off enough to pass, maybe with B's but C's being alright. Obviously bad idea, but whatever.

It's incredibly hard to put in just the "right amount" of effort. Halfway through the semester I was failing two classes and passing two others with A's. I eventually righted the ship and A, 2 Bs and a C, but I found how hard it was to aim for a grade range. Now I think you can definitely put in like "enough" effort where you know you should be getting around an A, but t does make more sense to simply try your hardest to aim for a 100

I have always been a last minute study kind of guy, there was one exception, the semester I took my DAT because I had 18 hours and the test to focus on I wasn't trying to get below A's at that point. I'm going to be doing the same thing I did that semester, just get a little head start instead of waiting one day before. I was bored but I've never had an easier semester, and it took some stress away because usually I'd be sitting at like a 88-93 and just clutch out the A, but that smeester all my averages were 95+.

Honestly i think it's only super stressful when you have a high goal like yours, I have no desire to be in the top ten. I want to keep my grades high just in case, but I don't mind just passing.

Sorry for the weird off topic parts, I'm a little distracted and not proofreading

 

[Medin2017]

Haha so I have some weirdly related experience to this.

I graduated this past December, but I was very confident in my interview performance and knew I was going to be accepted, so for my final semester I decided to slack off enough to pass, maybe with B's but C's being alright. Obviously bad idea, but whatever.

It's incredibly hard to put in just the "right amount" of effort. Halfway through the semester I was failing two classes and passing two others with A's. I eventually righted the ship and A, 2 Bs and a C, but I found how hard it was to aim for a grade range. Now I think you can definitely put in like "enough" effort where you know you should be getting around an A, but t does make more sense to simply try your hardest to aim for a 100

I have always been a last minute study kind of guy, there was one exception, the semester I took my DAT because I had 18 hours and the test to focus on I wasn't trying to get below A's at that point. I'm going to be doing the same thing I did that semester, just get a little head start instead of waiting one day before. I was bored but I've never had an easier semester, and it took some stress away because usually I'd be sitting at like a 88-93 and just clutch out the A, but that smeester all my averages were 95+.

Honestly i think it's only super stressful when you have a high goal like yours, I have no desire to be in the top ten. I want to keep my grades high just in case, but I don't mind just passing.

Sorry for the weird off topic parts, I'm a little distracted and not proofreading

No problem. I agree on the "right amount" of effort. If I need a 70 on a final or something, I'll study a bit but when I take the exam, I can't tell if I bombed or not (usually get around 85-95 in those sccenarios). Yea I say I want to keep my grades high just in case, but it makes it harder to do super well without a "tangible" goal for me personally.

 

[super frank]

So I'm renting a place from a graduating dental student going into OMS, and his GF was there who is a year 2. They said it was stressful and then went in depth on why, what I got from them was two things. It's mainly stressful to keep your grades A's, not necessarily to pass with good grades, and it's stressful if you require a lot of time to study.

He said that you will find you can only miss 2-3 questions on all of your exams if you want to keep your A's, which is why you get a bit stressed because you are constantly trying to cover every single little thing. He then said a lot of his friends took it easier and got A's and B's because they didn't sweat everything.

They both said EVERYTHING is multiple choice except for practicals, and if you Excel at multiple choice questions you can do well pretty easily.

They both said they had time for fun on the weekends and recommend that you make time for it.

Also her source of stress is that she would be in school from 8-5, come home for 2 hours, then head back until 12 or 1, repeat. She simply needed a lot of time to study, he claimed he never had it that bad and just spent a few hours a day. It's exactly like college where your learning style matters.

If you were a good college student and found keeping up with a heavy science load easy, don't stress out. Just relax and understand that you're obviously capable of doing it, otherwise you wouldn't have been accepted. Don't let the negative opinions of a few invade your thoughts.

I typed that on my phone sorry for any errors

Coming through with some great posts today.

 

[Medin2017]

Recently got accepted to Tufts. I'm glad about this more than anything, as I have tried very hard during undergrad (maintained around a 3.9, literally have like 1 or 2 Bs on entire transcript, etc.)

However, feeling very overwhelmed with the prospect of another 4 years of school and hard work. Is this truly worth it? Should I be really that happy with my acceptance? I am overwhelmed more than anything. For what it's worth, I'm thinking here on practical terms. Not sure if I'm experiencing some form of burn-out here.

Thank you

OP, if you're feeling nervous, just browse MD allo and look for study help, tips, habits, etc. I feel you cannot get better advice from medical students. Yes dental students are smart, but as a whole, the MDs are so much more neurotic. They are busting their butt all the time and the ones that want derm or some competitive specialty are always asking questions on how to improve themselves. I picked up anki and onenote reading those forums and it helped a ton when I had a pretty hard undergrad sem (a&P, biochem 1, Histology, an essay course, etc). And the range of people on there makes it great too. You'll have people who had cruddy stats as undergrads going balls to the walls and becoming good students, high level people with top 1% stats giving good advice, etc.. One dude failed his first med school test and then went like 8 hours a day of studying and has been acing tests since. Seems like a good motivator

 

[Kareful]

Likky

@Incis0r over here handin' out nicknames fo' free!

 

[Incis0r]

So I'm renting a place from a graduating dental student going into OMS, and his GF was there who is a year 2. They said it was stressful and then went in depth on why, what I got from them was two things. It's mainly stressful to keep your grades A's, not necessarily to pass with good grades, and it's stressful if you require a lot of time to study.

He said that you will find you can only miss 2-3 questions on all of your exams if you want to keep your A's, which is why you get a bit stressed because you are constantly trying to cover every single little thing. He then said a lot of his friends took it easier and got A's and B's because they didn't sweat everything.

They both said EVERYTHING is multiple choice except for practicals, and if you Excel at multiple choice questions you can do well pretty easily.

They both said they had time for fun on the weekends and recommend that you make time for it.

Also her source of stress is that she would be in school from 8-5, come home for 2 hours, then head back until 12 or 1, repeat. She simply needed a lot of time to study, he claimed he never had it that bad and just spent a few hours a day. It's exactly like college where your learning style matters.

If you were a good college student and found keeping up with a heavy science load easy, don't stress out. Just relax and understand that you're obviously capable of doing it, otherwise you wouldn't have been accepted. Don't let the negative opinions of a few invade your thoughts.

I typed that on my phone sorry for any errors

Man thank you so much. Really appreciate you typing all that out (and on a phone too!). I know this is supposed to make me feel better, but I'm not going to truly be confident about this until after 1-2 months of school have passed.

Coming through with some great posts today.

He really is.

@Incis0r over here handin' out nicknames fo' free!

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*$100 annual fee to retain use of nickname.