Students applying to the Goldman School of Dental Medicine must spend significantly more on the application process, travel for mandatory interviews and face a lower acceptance rate than prospective students at other BU graduate schools, officials said.
Goldman School predoctoral admissions coordinator Laura Ellerbeck said the school has 115 seats in its entering class. The BU School of Law has about 275 open seats, law school senior admissions assistant Michelle Cote said.
Dental school applicants must apply through the Associated American Dental Schools Application Service, which has taken control of all of the dental school applications in the country, Ellerbeck said. The organization is responsible for organizing and transmitting student transcripts and scores to the dental schools. The first school a student applies to costs $195 and each additional school costs $60 on top of the application fee of the school itself.
Faheem Nasar, a third-year dental student, said he spent $2,000 in application fees alone while applying to dental school, and spent additional money on travel expenses for the in-person interviews that dental schools require of their applicants.
“You can only be accepted if they offer you an interview first,” Nasar said.
For applicants who live out of state or out of the country, the additional travel fees can cost thousands of dollars altogether. The Goldman School does not assist applicants with their travel fares, Ellerbeck said.
“People fly from around the country, around the world to meet with us,” Ellerbeck said. “[They] make the travel arrangements all on their own. We sometimes suggest hotels in other cities, but it’s really more or less up to the applicant.”
The travel fees for interviews may be the big difference between dental school and other graduate school fees. The BU law school does not require or even allow interviews during the application process.
“If an applicant wants to come by and speak with an admissions counselor, that’s fine, but we don’t allow any interviews included in the application process,” Cote said.
While AADSAS does provide a reduced fee application for dental school applicants, the reduction is only awarded to applicants in “extreme financial hardship,” according to the website. Even if the applicants are awarded the fee reduction, they will only be partially refunded for their applications.
“Maybe if I went through it again I wouldn’t apply to so many schools,” Nasar said. “You’re scared at that point. You just apply to everything you can.”