Four years ago, I was an undergraduate student attending a Pre-Dental Day event at MUSC. Today, I had the privilege of planning Pre-Dental Day as a third year dental student. To say that the process of applying to dental school can be overwhelming is an understatement. You stress about having a perfect GPA, knowing which pre-requisites to take, what study materials to use for the DAT, how to stand out during interviews, and the list goes on and on. To be able to help ease the stress of pre-dental students who were once in your very same shoes, and to help them through the overwhelming process of applying to dental school, is an incredibly rewarding and humbling feeling.

This year our annual Pre-Dental Day was a great success! We had 40 students sign up from several states including South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, and New York. As the students checked in that morning, they received their personalized nametags and bags, then headed to one of our main classrooms to have breakfast and mingle with other current dental students. Dr. Vuthiganon, a MUSC faculty member who serves on the admission committee, gave a highly entertaining presentation that went over the admissions process. He addressed specific questions that the pre-dental students had and even included the statistics of the most recently accepted dental school class. Another MUSC faculty member, Dr. Zachary Evans, gave an interesting lecture about how technology is changing the practice of dentistry and showed some example complex cases. This year, we added a new perspective and had a resident come and speak. Dr. Lauren Kuhn, a first year Endo resident. She introduced the various dental specialties, elaborating a little more on Endodontics, and discussed some common misconceptions about root canals.

Following the morning lectures, we broke out into small groups led by 2-3 dental students, which allowed students to get some more one-on-one time to ask any lingering questions. We gave the students a tour of our dental school/clinic building and then met up to have lunch with a few faculty members in our student lounge. During the afternoon, we headed to our Simulation Lab to introduce the students to some hands-on activities that we learn during our first year. We waxed tooth #8, then let the students drill a halloween-themed "spooky" tooth. I was very impressed with the results from these activities! Overall, it was a very informative and fun day! We can't wait for next year!