Dentistry --> Medicine

Hey Everyone,

I am looking for some serious help! I recently left dental school to pursue medicine and will be applying in the 2021-2022 cycle (taking MCAT on Jan 25th). I am a bit nervous in terms of my competitively as most of my time un undergrad was tailored toward dentistry during the final two years. I volunteered as a dental assistant, and work in two different dental clinics. I do have some experience scribing and have only 40 hours of shadowing a cardiologist. Most of my clinical experience (700+ hrs) was in a dental clinic. I took blood pressure, blood sugar levels, sterilized equipment, took X-rays, charted and volunteered as an assistant. I also did some research and am in about 650 hrs with a couple posters but no pubs.

I am concerned that my application would raise a lot of red flags and give a vibe that I lack commitment. I am really hoping to only have to apply once and was hoping to get some advice on how I could best prepare for these next two gap years, especially before the application cycle.

Should I work at a research lab as a clinical laboratory technician?
Work as a scribe or pharm tech?
Any good clinical experience I should be on the look out for?

Any help would be much appreciated!

You can include your dentistry experiences but they wouldn’t make a significant impact for your medical school application. You need more experiences in the medicine side (you can scribe, EMT, etc.)

In terms of your “lack of commitment” you can explain why you want to go into medicine instead of dentistry in your Personal statement.