Hi everyone! I hope you had a beautiful week. This week was a good one for me. I had my first exam for a class on Friday last week and I’m currently getting ready to go into my first interview with a dental school. I’m so excited to announce this and feel incredibly honored to say that I have received an invitation to interview with Herman Ostrow School of Dentistry of USC!
I applied to five schools overall: Herman Ostrow School of Dentistry of USC, Texas A&M College of Dentistry, University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC College of Dentistry), Creighton University School of Dentistry, and University of Colorado School of Dental Medicine. I would be an amazing opportunity to attend any of these schools and I feel so excited and encouraged to have received even one interview. In addition to this interview, I actually also heard back from University of Colorado School of Dental Medicine, and I will be attending their interview this upcoming week as well.
Regarding my interview with USC, that begins today at 2 pm. I will be doing a written assessment and MMI interview which I believe will involve a variety of questions regarding difficult situations and scenarios. I will be limited in the time I have to prepare my answers and then deliver them so that my answer is the most candid answer I produce. I will be very curious to see what I am asked! As far as I know, I will not be interviewed directly by their admissions committee, but they will review all of my answers. I then have an admissions presentation to watch today as well. Tomorrow I will complete my interview with USC in a group setting. I look forward to the opportunity I have with USC and regardless of the outcome, it is so encouraging for me to have had the chance to interview with a school like Herman Ostrow.
Before I received both of my interview invites, I was really starting to doubt myself. I’ve always known that I’m smart. While I don’t always admit it, I would really consider myself an incredibly hard-working, persistent, and intelligent person. But when you apply to dental school, you’re not the only hard-working, persistent, and smart person in the room. I started to worry that maybe I’m not good enough and I started to think that maybe I would never hear back. God works in funny ways though. The night before I received my interview invitation from USC, I sat in my apartment crying as I looked back over my application status, seeing that nothing had changed. Yes, I understood that it would take awhile for me to hear back from schools or that I may never hear back. But with that being said, I had read over a forum for prospective dental students that mentioned that all the schools I applied to with the exception of University of Colorado had supposedly already been sending out interview invitations since late July. I thought that maybe I was behind. Maybe I really wasn’t good enough. And then a little glimmer of hope appeared the next day after I got back from my morning classes. I received the good news from USC.
If I have learned anything during this dental school application process, it is that this process is my own journey. While other people may find it helpful to others to let them know when they’ve received interview invites or even helpful to their own confidence to brag to the world about what all they’ve got going for them, then more power to them. I’m going to take this journey as my own thing. I’m going to be thankful and grateful for every opportunity I get. Of course I will support people I know that are along for the same ride; they deserve all the best!! But maybe I also deserve the best. I have worked so hard to get to the point I have and I hope I get the chance to see that hard work pay off.
I’m gonna go give this interview with a dental school my all now and keep you all updated on how it goes now. Have a great week everyone! And to those of you also applying to dental school or even medical school or some other graduate program, keep your heads up and keep chasing your dreams. We can do this. 🙂