What are the best things about attending Indiana University School of Dentistry?

Indiana University School of Dentistry offers a wide variety of opportunities, especially for those just entering as D1 students. The school has many extracurricular events that are offered for all students, where some schools limit opportunities to upper year students. The opportunities continue as you advance in your years, especially with the Student Outreach Clinic and events such as Give Kids a Smile, which allow D3’s and D4’s to treat patients outside of school requirements. We also have a Student Outreach Clinic that provides free dental care to an underserved area of the community. D1/D2 students assist D3/D4 students and it is a great opportunity to get better at clinical procedures, learn from experience and help those less fortunate than ourselves.

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What are the worst things about attending Indiana University School of Dentistry?

There are many instances of flawed communication at IUSD. Examples range from the admissions information sent to applicants and accepted students, to expectations during didactic classes. The lack of communication causes stress and strain on individuals and believe me, there is enough stress already.

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What do students need to know/what do you wish you knew before attending Indiana University School of Dentistry?

Note that Indiana has some unique prerequisite requirements: 3 credits of social science courses as well as 3 credits of humanities courses. The schedule and flow of our education is pretty standard, meaning we have didactic and preclinical courses for the first two years, and then start seeing patients our third and fourth years. Similar to most schools, we are in the simulation lab during the fall and spring of our first year. We shadow in the actual clinic a few times per semester of the first year as well. Students move into the clinic with their own patients summer after D2 year (they are technically D3s at this point). D3 year is mostly spent in clinic, but there are still a few didactic courses. The third years have a lecture class M-F from 8-9 am (first patient is at 9:30a) and then one day per week has a bigger focus on lecture. Fourth year is pretty much all clinic. The fourth years are in one class per semester but it is online (the class deals with the legal side of dentistry).

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