if I am dental hygienist, how many more years in school do I need to become a dentist?
Friday, March 5th, 2010 at
10:34 pm
I am in the process of becoming a dental hygienist, and I was wondering if it would be easy for me to change my career into dentist.
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Filed under: Continuing Dental Education Courses
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To get into dental school you will need either a BS or BA degree from undergraduate school. If you obtained an associates degree in hygiene, you would have another 3 years of college before you could apply to dental school.
Hi ,
The fact that you are a dental hygienist will be a plus of your application. (However, they will want to look at your DAT score & GPA . And, interview, in my opinion, is the most important thing that they will consider. )
Most dental schools require a completed bachelor degree (usually 4 years). Some just need 3 years of undergraduate school (no bachelor degree required) with all their required courses completed.
Fastest way for you is to focus on taking courses which your dental school requires after earning your associate. It will save you sometime by not taking unnecessary courses.
It may take you about [2 more years of undergraduate + 4 years in dental school] = 6 years to become a dentist.
Hope this help!
It depends upon whether any of the courses you took for Hygiene School can count as prerequisites for Dental School. If you are serious about the possibility of Dental School, make sure the science courses you take also work for Dental School. Often Hygiene programs do not require science courses that are as rigorous as those for Dental School, so you may have 2 -3 more years of undergraduate education taking classes over again (like Chemistry) before being able to apply to Dental School.
Once you are in, even if you are a hygienist, it will be the normal length of time to graduate (either 3 or 4 years, depending on the school). The good news is you can moonlight as a hygienist while in Dental School and hopefully not graduate with as much debt as your classmates.