****THIS ARTICLE WILL ONLY WORK IF YOU SEND IN YOUR PERSONAL STATEMENT*****
The time is approaching for the dental school applicant to You should have started thinking about your AADSAS essay by this time of the year. With about a month until AADSAS open again for the new application cycle it is a good time to sit down and write your essay so it can be edited, reviewed, edited, reviewed and edited some more until an acceptable final draft is obtained. Start by making an outline. Ask yourself some questions: Who are you? What is your experiance? Why dentistry? What have you accomplished? Do you have family in dentistry? What are your hobbies? What research have you been involved in? I am not going to sit here and waste my time thinking of other questions that you can ask yourself, you get the idea. Constructively relate all of these back to dentistry in an organized format. It doesn’t have to be anything amazing just make sure it flows and holds interest.
Here are a few examples. Please donate your own essay once you have been accepted and share the wealth!
Dental school essay examples:
Ben Johnson’s AADSAS Letter of Intent From 2005-2006 Application Cycle
5 Interviews | 1 Acceptance | Application turned in on the first day possible
A. C.’s Personal Statement for the 2006-2007 Application Cycle
11 Interviews | 5 Acceptances
J. T.’s Personal Statement
5 Interviews | 3 Acceptances | UoP
C. G.’s Personal Statement for the 2006-2007 Application Cycle
3 Interviews | 2 Acceptances
N. C.’s Personal Statement for the 2006-2007 Application Cycle
Applied to 1 School | Attending 1 School
A. M.’s AADSAS Essay for the 2006-2007 Application Cycle
Temple Class of 2011
M.G. AADSAS Essay for the 2007-2008 Application Cycle
8 Interviews | 3 Acceptances
P.A. AADSAS Personal Statement
Applied/Accepted: 4/4
I made the mistake of turning my first essay into a story with lots of experiences that, although very interesting, did not relate as well to dentistry as I had thought. The second time I applied I brought my essay to a respected professor who had helped many who passed before me. He read over everything, highlighted two sentences in my whole essay and scratched out everything else. He then told me to expound on those two sentences. What resulted was a simple, flowing essay that highlighted some of my experiences and desires in dentistry. I haven’t read it in over two years so I imagine it sounds cheesy, but I have attached it below for you to read. I have also received some other essays through email that I have also attached. To help me (I know there are about 50 of you reading this) please email me your AADSAS essay along with any statistics you wish to send. Statistics of interest would be # of interviews and acceptances and possibly the school you are or will be attending.
I will need some more essays to make this post work. You can see that these essays are simple and straightforward and cut to the chase. They have to be concise and detailed because you only have a certain amount of characters available to write the essay. So use these examples, glean the knowledge they hold and when you have done yours, send it in to add to this dental bank of knowledge! Note that the words Dental Essay, Letter of Intent, and Personal Statement are all synonymous.


10 responses so far ↓
1 Richard Sedwick // Apr 17, 2007 at 10:10 am
I’d like to add my personal essay, but I’m not sure how so just let me know. I applied to 2 schools kind of late, interviewed at one and was accepted, so I figured it must’ve worked pretty good.
2 Ben // Apr 17, 2007 at 10:22 am
send it to templedmdstudent@hotmail.com, sorry for the confusion!
3 pinger // Apr 17, 2007 at 9:49 pm
hey, i finally added an RSS feed. very easy (I was trying to write one by hand earlier).
4 ben // Apr 17, 2007 at 9:55 pm
YES! Everyone visit blue-harmony.com and sign up for the feed!
5 Bas // Jul 9, 2007 at 7:34 am
A bit offtopic but I just found out that you use one of my photos at your blogpost. Not really a problem (a link to the original page would be kind though), but quite funny is that it is actually a photo from a dutch dental syllabus, because I am a dentistry student too :p
6 CheerioKing // Jul 10, 2007 at 3:25 pm
Wow! What a coincidence. If you hold your mouse button over the photo, it gives you credit. Here is a link to Bas and his Flickr page:
http://flickr.com/photos/bask/
7 Carla // May 31, 2008 at 3:33 am
I think u r so awesome to take time to do this, and every time I return to your site, you reinforce that feeling.
8 More helpful application stuff « Malocclusion // Jan 16, 2009 at 8:47 pm
[...] to dental school, mostly about the nitty gritty AADSAS stuff. The articles include writing a personal statement, getting letters of recommendation, potential interview questions and a handy dandy application [...]
9 Dee // Nov 20, 2009 at 4:52 pm
Here’s a question: I applied 2 years ago (knowing I wouldn’t get it) to see where I stood. I am getting ready to reapply next year. Does anyone have an idea what people write about when they reapply? I was thinking of trying to write about why I am a better candidate this time around….
10 Kim // Feb 1, 2010 at 2:32 am
I’m also a reapplicant and I want to shine this time around. Thank you for the examples. It has helped a lot in developing my own PS
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