Building your dental school foundation

pre-dental study skills

Pre-dental students have an endless well of questions regarding both the application process and what dental school actually consists of. What if I told you that there’s a way to both improve your application and prepare yourself for the rigorous coursework that you will experience as a dental student? By focusing on developing good study habits and routines, you can not only raise your GPA and DAT scores, thus significantly increasing your chances of getting an acceptance, but also prepare yourself to meet and exceed the expectations set by your dental school.

One lesson that stuck out to me when I was playing tennis competitively was when my coach described the efficiency of the best players. “Tennis players in college are compressing 2-3 hours of your practice intensity into one hour. Between balancing coursework and training, they need to fit as much training into a small timeframe as possible”. While my passion for tennis died off as I became more set on my goal of becoming a dentist, that lesson stuck with me throughout my academic career. As I spent hours in the library trying to decipher what I was learning in General Chemistry, I realized that I couldn’t continue adding more study hours for harder courses;  I would simply run out of time! I needed to figure out how to make my study time more efficient so I could get more work done in a shorter amount of time.

Making Study Time more Efficient

There are several mistakes I see students make all the time when it comes to studying. An easy one is that you must put away your phone! Many students will check their phone for texts or to look something up intermittently; constantly distracting your brain with this means that you are devoting less energy towards learning the material. Whether you use the pomodoro technique (25 minutes on, 5 minutes off, with a 30-minute break every two hours), or another method that works for you, you must figure out a way to consistently devote 100% of your attention to the material in front of you.

Another mistake students often make is committing themselves to a specific “learning style”. While many people are taught that each person has their own preferred method of absorbing information (audio, visual, reading, etc.), research shows that multi-sensory learning is optimal for learning and retaining information (Shams & Seitz, 2008). When learning material for a class, students should use all resources available to them. For example, a student might watch a lecture, review the slides, and then use visual figures from the textbook to better retain the information presented.

Concluding Thoughts

While these general tips will be of great service to students, there are many other aspects to being a successful student, and anyone who wants to pursue a professional degree should consider themselves a professional student as well, and constantly work on optimizing their performance. Feel free to reach out to me or any other tutor with Cambridge if you need help in becoming the best student you can possibly be!

Comments

topicTopics
academics study skills medical school admissions MCAT SAT college admissions expository writing strategy English MD/PhD admissions writing LSAT physics GMAT GRE chemistry academic advice biology graduate admissions math law school admissions ACT interview prep language learning test anxiety personal statements premed career advice MBA admissions AP exams homework help test prep creative writing MD computer science mathematics study schedules Common Application summer activities history secondary applications philosophy research organic chemistry economics supplements 1L grammar statistics & probability PSAT admissions coaching dental admissions psychology law legal studies ESL reading comprehension CARS PhD admissions SSAT covid-19 logic games calculus engineering USMLE medical school mentorship Latin Spanish parents AMCAS admissions advice biochemistry case coaching verbal reasoning DAT English literature STEM excel genetics political science skills French Linguistics MBA coursework Tutoring Approaches academic integrity astrophysics chinese classics dental school gap year letters of recommendation mechanical engineering technical interviews units Anki DO Social Advocacy algebra art history artificial intelligence business careers cell biology data science diversity statement first generation student freewriting geometry graphing kinematics linear algebra mental health presentations quantitative reasoning software engineering study abroad tech industry time management work and activities 2L AAMC DMD IB exams ISEE MD/PhD programs MMI Sentence Correction adjusting to college algorithms amino acids analysis essay argumentative writing athletics business skills cold emails executive function fellowships finance functions genomics information sessions international students internships logic networking office hours poetry pre-dental proofs resume revising scholarships science social sciences trigonometry writer's block 3L Academic Interest EMT FlexMed Fourier Series Greek Health Professional Shortage Area Italian JD/MBA admissions Japanese Lagrange multipliers London MD vs PhD Montessori National Health Service Corps Pythagorean Theorem Python Shakespeare Step 2 TMDSAS Taylor Series Truss Analysis Zoom acids and bases active learning architecture art art and design schools art portfolios bacteriology bibliographies biomedicine brain teaser burnout campus visits cantonese capacitors capital markets central limit theorem centrifugal force chem/phys chemical engineering chess chromatography class participation climate change clinical experience community service constitutional law consulting cover letters curriculum dementia demonstrated interest dimensional analysis distance learning econometrics electric engineering electricity and magnetism embryology entropy escape velocity evolution extracurriculars fundraising harmonics health policy history of medicine history of science hybrid vehicles hydrophobic effect ideal gas law immunology induction infinite institutional actions integrated reasoning intermolecular forces intern investing investment banking lab reports letter of continued interest linear maps mandarin chinese