Marquette Dental School Interview

I was going to post pictures from Rachel's corpman school graduation and the NBA Bucks game we saw last weekend but ran into some technical errors. They will be coming soon.

Until then, I'm sure you are all dying to know how my Marquette Dental School went. I think it stunk. There wasn't a lot that I could do about it. Before the interview, I didn't know how a dental school interview could possibly go wrong...now I know. I interviewed with the only two women on the admissions board. They smiled when they greeted me but that was about it. They had a chip on their shoulder about my application before we even got started. I sat in a medium sized conference room that normally sits say 12. A chair was left for me at the head of the table and I had an interviewer on each side about four feet away. My file was out in front of them and the questioning began. It started out fine - but these two were definitely all business.

They asked questions like; what I thought would be the three most challenging aspects of dental school. (Balancing school/life, achieving a solid foundation for a career and I can't remember the third I responded with.) What do you think a dental school's responsibility is to its students? I replied that they should show a real concern for their students and help them receive the essentials needed to treat patients and inspire them to continue learning for the rest of their careers. They also asked an ethics question about a friend cheating on a test and what would I do about it.

Then things started getting nasty. Q: So what were you doing between 1999 and 2005? (Clearly they didn't look at my folder as closely as they said they did.) I reported that I really was in school, I had a full load each semester and that when I transferred I know longer had control of how quickly I would graduate. Q: We see that you went to Minnesota, why are you interested in Marquette? This is where the bulk of the interview was spent. Upon reflection Jason and I are pretty sure that Marquette has an inferiority complex and takes it out on Minnesota grads. There is quite a bit of rivalry between the two schools and I got caught in the middle of a feud. They asked me specifically if I applied to Minnesota. I said yes, but I applied to a lot of schools as an applicant it would be foolish not to in such a competitive field. Then they wanted to know why I would go to Marquette instead of Minnesota. (Notice the emphasis on Minnesota, not just another dental school?) I replied that I hoped the school would prepare a better general practitioner considering there are fewer specialties offered there and more work for the students. I also talked about academic inbreeding. The thing I wanted to mention least is what they liked most. I broke down and told them that Jason was doing his internship and that we wanted to stay in the area for him to do his residency also. They appreciated that it was an honest answer.

The entire half an hour was incredibly awkward. Like I said it was all business and nothing was sugar coated. Most interviews are warm and bubbly - our school is great please come here. This was more like you meet our criteria but we are going to see if you are going to burn us and go to Minnesota instead. There were frequent awkward pauses as one interviewer switched to the other for questions. They asked if I had any questions...I did. However, after I asked the first question I knew the rest weren't going to go well. I wanted to know if there were elective courses offered if I had a special interest in prosthodontics or endo etc. They became really defensive and went into this long spiel about how hard dental school was and there was no time to offer anything like that. (Here is the funny part: I know Marquette offers an elective research class, and other schools offer elective courses with the same tight schedules.)

I knew one of the Doctors worked in community outreach projects so I asked about that. (I wanted to know if it gave the real world experience with timing and treating patients that the school setting didn't offer.) She rolled her eyes and said she wished the admissions board wouldn't disclose her role in the school before telling me about it. Needless to say, I feigned not having anymore questions after that.

The interview with the dental students and lunch went well. No one else had a bad experience with their interviews though - they just went on about how nice their interviewers were blah blah blah. I did hear that one of the applicants has already received several denial letters. Hmmmm, that's not the type of thing you openly disclose, yet I'm glad she did. I haven't gotten any of those yet, I wonder if that's a good sign or if the schools I applied to just don't respond. I expect to hear back on how the interview actually went by the first week of December. Some friends of mine who go there mentioned that they can be pretty brutal on Wisconsin residents trying to determine whether or not they actually plan on going there. I can't say won me over after the interview but the facilities are nice and it is half the cost other schools. So there are the details for you. Hope you enjoyed them.