J Dent Educ. 71(8): 1098-1123 2007
© 2007 American Dental Education Association
U.S. Dental School Applicants and Enrollees, 2005 Entering Class
Jacqueline E. Chmar, M.P.H.;
Richard G. Weaver, D.D.S.;
Satyan Ramanna, M.S.;
Richard W. Valachovic, D.M.D., M.P.H.
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Abstract
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There were 10,731 applicants to the entering dental school class in 2005. This represents a 13.8 percent increase over the number of applicants to the 2004 entering class and almost a 45 percent increase over the number of applicants in 2001. Dental schools reported 4,558 first-time, first-year enrollees in 2005, an increase of 101 first-time, first-year enrollees over the number reported in 2004. The percent of applicants that were enrolled in 2005 was 42.5. The percent of applicants enrolled in 2001 was 57.6. Women were 44.2 percent of the applicants and 43.8 percent of the first-time, first-year enrollees in 2005, slight increases from what they were in 2004. Underrepresented minorities comprised 12.8 percent of the applicants and 12.6 percent of the first-time, first-year enrollees in 2005. These percentages are little changed from those reported in 2001. The average GPA of the first-time, first-year enrollees increased slightly in 2005, from 3.4 to 3.5; there was little change in DAT scores, standing at 18.9 for Academic Average, 17.4 for Perceptual Ability, and 18.4 for Total Science.
The annual applicant analysis conducted by the American Dental Education Association (ADEA) provides a compilation of data on selected characteristics of the applicants to and the first-time enrollees of entering dental school classes. In addition to the number of applicants and first-time enrollees, there is aggregate and individual school-based information about their gender, race/ethnicity, and geographic distribution by state, Canada, and other foreign countries. Other items in the analysis are the number of predental school years of college and average GPA and DAT scores of applicants and first-time enrollees, by school.
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Methodology
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Most of the information presented in the applicant analysis is derived from the files of the Associated American Dental Schools Application Services (AADSAS) administered by ADEA. The application service is a centralized service that processes applications to participating dental schools in a standard format. Fifty-two of the nation’s fifty-six dental schools that enrolled first-year students in 2005 participate in AADSAS.
To finalize the applicant and enrollment data of the AADSAS participating schools, each AADSAS school updated its roster of AADSAS applicants to its 2005 entering class. Each school added to its roster the name of students who had applied directly to the school, outside of the AADSAS process. The school also added for their direct applicants the same applicant information as that of the AADSAS applicants. Each school then indicated which applicants on the roster were offered enrollment and which were enrolled in the entering class. The four schools not participating in AADSAS provided a roster of their applicants and enrollees that included the same information as that of AADSAS applicants. The rosters were submitted to ADEA for analysis.
The following terms are used throughout the applicant analysis report:
- Applicant: An individual who applied to one or more U.S. dental schools.
- AADSAS Applicant: An individual who applied to one or more U.S. dental schools through the ADEA application service and whose application was forwarded to the school(s) requested.
- Direct Applicant: An individual who applied directly to one or more U.S. dental schools, not using the ADEA application service. (A direct applicant also could have applied to schools through the ADEA application service. The applicant database is scanned to clear it of duplicate applicants.)
- Application: A completed application received by a U.S. dental school. One applicant generates as many applications as the number of dental schools to which he or she applied.
- First-Time, First-Year Enrollee: An applicant who was matriculated at a U.S. dental school for the first time. Students repeating their first year of school were not counted.
- Total First-Year Enrollees: The sum of first-time, first-year enrollees and repeating first-year students.
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Findings
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Number of Dental School Applicants and First-Time Enrollees
The number of applicants to the year 2005 entering class of U.S. dental schools was 10,731 (Table 1
and Figure 1). This is the sum of AADSAS and direct applicants, "cleaned" of duplications. (Information for individuals who applied to dental schools through AADSAS and as direct applicants was combined so these individuals appear only once in the applicant database.) The number of applicants in 2005 was 13.8 percent higher than the number of applicants in 2004, which was 9,433. The number of applicants has increased almost 45 percent since 2001. As the trend in the DAT count is a precursor of the applicant trend, a further increase in the number of applicants is anticipated for 2006.
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Figure 1. Trends occurring in DAT counts, dental school applicants, and total first-year enrollments since 1989, the year from which the number of applicants and first-year enrollments began to increase, following their steady declines from the mid- to late 1970s
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The number of first-time enrollees that the dental schools reported in the 2005 entering class was 4,558. This is an increase of 101 enrollees, or 2.3 percent, over the number reported in 2004. Since 2001, the number of first-time, first-year enrollees has increased 6.8 percent. Total first-year enrollment, which includes first-time enrollees and repeat students, has increased 6.4 percent since 2001. The number of applicants per first-time, first-year position was 2.35 in 2005, with 42.5 percent of the applicants being enrolled. In 2001, the number of applicants per first-time, first-year position was 1.74, with 57.6 percent of the applicants being enrolled. The increasing number of applicants per position and the declining percent of applicants able to be enrolled have not yet adversely affected the aggregate number of individuals applying to dental school.
The total number of applications in 2005 was 79,105, which was an average, therefore, of 7.4 applications per applicant. This created an average of 17.5 applications per first-time, first-year position. The number of applications per position to be processed by any one school ranged from four to forty-three.
Applicant and Enrollee Composition by Gender
Women comprised 44.2 percent of the 2005 dental school applicants (Table 2). This continues the slight increases in women applicants that have occurred since 1996, prior to which time women applicants had been fluctuating around 36 percent.
The percentage of women first-time enrollees was almost 44 percent in 2005, up slightly from 42 percent in 2001. This becomes the largest percentage and number of women enrolled in the U.S. dental schools. The percent of women applicants enrolled in 2005 was 42.1; the percent of men enrolled was 42.6. Schools continued to draw similar percentages of enrollees from each gender pool of applicants.
Table 3 displays the number and percent of applicants and enrollees for 2005 by race/ethnicity; Figures 2 and 3 display the applicant and enrollment trends since 1990 by race/ethnicity. Over the last several years, Asian/Pacific Islander applicants have recovered markedly from the declines that occurred between 1997 and 2002, standing now at 2,377 applicants and 22.2 percent of all applicants. The numbers of black/African American, Hispanic/Latino, and American Indian applicants have also increased since 2002, after fluctuations but little growth between 1997 and 2002—currently standing at 666 (6.2 percent), 629 (5.9 percent), and 76 (0.7 percent) respectively. Still while the number of black/African American applicants has increased 111 percent since 1990 and Hispanic/Latino and American Indian applicants have increased almost 80 and 350 percent respectively since 1990, their total percent representation in the applicant pool is slightly less in 2005 than it was in 1990: 12.8 percent and 13.4 percent, respectively.
Regarding first-time, first-year enrollment trends by race/ethnicity, Asian/Pacific Islanders showed a marked increase in 2005, reversing the general decline that had occurred since 1997. Between 1998 and 2001, the number of underrepresented minority (URM) enrollees recovered from the 25 percent decline in their enrollment that occurred during the early 1990s. There was little change in the number of URM enrollees between 2001 and 2004. The number of URM enrollees increased in 2005 to a high of 573, primarily through an increase of black/African American enrollees. Still, while the numbers have increased, URM percent representation within the first-time, first-year enrollees is essentially the same as it was in 1990. To increase the number of underrepresented minority enrollees, it will be necessary to continue efforts to attract and recruit more underrepresented minorities into considering careers in dentistry.
Geographic Distribution of Applications and Enrollees
Table 4 (pages 1107–1111) presents the number of applications received by each school (which for the school is its number of applicants) and the geographic distribution of its applications/applicants. The listed number of applications received by school is the total of each school’s AADSAS applications of record at ADEA plus any direct applicants reported by the school. The distribution is in the following categories: State; Other U.S. Territories, Trusts, and Commonwealths; Canada; and Foreign Country Other Than Canada.
Table 5 (pages 1112–1116) presents each dental school’s reported number of first-time enrollees to its 2005 entering class and the geographic distribution of the school’s enrollees in the following categories: State; Other U.S. Territories, Trusts, and Commonwealths; Canada; and Foreign Country Other Than Canada.
Reviewing Tables 4
and 5 together clearly displays from where the schools are receiving their applicants and the initial legal residence of their enrollees. Private dental schools tend to have larger numbers of applicants than public dental schools, with Boston University and New York University each having over 3,000 applicants, followed by Tufts University (2,953) and Nova Southeastern University (2,950). Almost 21 percent (16,436) of the applications came from applicants who are California residents. Texan residents accounted for the next largest number of applications at 4,415 (5.6 percent), followed by New York residents at 4,182 (5.2 percent) applications. Florida accounted for 5 percent of the applications; Utah was next at 4.8 percent of the applications. Almost 4 percent of the applications were from residents of Canada.
For any one school, the number of applications reported in Table 4 divided by the reported number of enrollees in Table 5 will provide the number of applicants per position for that school.
Applicants and Enrollees by Dental School, Region, and State
Table 6 (page 1117) presents each school’s number of in-state applicants and enrollees and the percentage of each school’s applicants and enrollees that are in-state. Table 6 provides a more aggregate display of from where schools are receiving their applicants (in-state/out of state) and the initial residence of their enrollees (in-state/out of state).
Tables 4, 5, and 6 present information about the geographic distribution of the 79,105 applications to and 4,558 first-time enrollees in the individual dental schools. While each application is an applicant to a dental school, as previously mentioned, there were 10,731 dental school applicants in 2005. Table 7 (page 1118) presents the geographic distribution of the 10,731 applicants (at the time of application) by Region; State; Puerto Rico; Canada; Foreign Countries; and Other, which includes U.S. Territories, Trusts, and Commonwealths and information not reported. The largest number of applicants came from California (1,385), followed by Texas (761), New York (509), and Florida (503). There were 3,622 applicants from Canada and 250 from other foreign countries. Table 7 also presents the number of enrollees by these same categories, as well as the percent of applicants enrolled.
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Table 7. Geographic distribution of applicants and enrollees (as determined by legal residence at time of application)
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Applicants and Enrollees by Gender and Race/Ethnicity by Dental School
Tables 2 and 3 present the percentage composition of all dental school applicants and enrollees by gender and race/ethnicity in aggregate. Tables 8 and 9 (pages 1119–1121) present each school’s composition of applicants and enrollees by gender and race/ethnicity. In Table 8, the individual number of men and women enrolled at each school is shown as a percentage of the men and women applicants to each school. This affords comparison of percent enrollment from each gender pool of applicants. Table 8 also shows the percentage of each school’s 2005 applicants and enrollees who were male and female.
Table 9 presents numbers of applicants and enrollees by race/ethnicity (for whom such information was available) by school without percentages, since cell size for minority applicants and enrollees by school is small.
Applicants and Enrollees by Predental Years of College and Major Areas of Study
The number of enrollees by the year of college at the time of application, by dental school, is presented in Table 10 (page 1122). Slightly more than two-thirds of the enrollees who reported this information were individuals in their senior year of college at the time of application. Slightly over 15 percent of the enrollees had some level of graduate education.
More than 9 percent of the dental school enrollees came from individuals who indicated "Other" as their enrollment status at the time of application. This would include individuals pursuing college credits towards a degree on a more flexible time schedule than the traditional freshman to senior four-year program and were in a fifth or more year of college. Almost 8 percent of the enrollees were individuals with three or fewer years of college. As in past years, over 90 percent of the enrollees have had four or more years of college.
The major area of study for dental school applicants and enrollees was biological sciences, 52.6 and 53.3 percent respectively (Table 11). Chemistry/physics was the major area of study for 12.2 percent of the applicants and 13.2 percent of the enrollees. Only 12.3 percent of the applicants and 11.4 percent of the enrollees indicated that predentistry (or other health profession) was their major area of study. In all of the listed categories of predental majors, the percent of enrollees by category was most similar to the percent of applicants by category.
Of interest is the percent rate of enrollment by predental major. As mentioned previously in this report, 42.5 percent of the year 2005 dental school applicants were enrolled. While 78 percent of the first-year enrollees had majors in the biological/chemical/physical sciences or predentistry/medicine, 22 percent of the enrollees had other than science majors; and, other than the categories of social science, other major, and no major reported, their percent rates of enrollment were greater than 42.5 percent. It would appear that though the large majority of applicants and enrollees have their major in the biological/chemical/physical sciences or predentistry/medicine, as long as an applicant meets the minimum required courses for admissions, equal consideration is given to all applicants, regardless of major.
Grade Point Averages and Dental Admission Test Scores
Table 12 (page 1123) presents, by school, the average science and total grade point average (GPA) and Dental Admission Test (DAT) scores for their 2005 applicants and enrollees. Averages for all dental school applicants were the following: science GPA 3.12, total GPA 3.24, DAT Academic Average 17.7, DAT Perceptual Ability 16.7, and DAT Total Science 17.4. These are all the same or slightly higher than they were in 2004 (Table 13).
The grade point averages for the year 2005 enrollees (science GPA 3.41, total GPA 3.49) were slightly higher than what they were in 2004. The DAT scores for the 2005 enrollees (Academic Average 18.9, Perceptual Ability 17.4, and Total Science 18.4) were most similar to those reported in 2004.
Tables 14 and 15 display the percent of applicants and enrollees by range of GPAs and DAT scores. As would be expected from the averages and scores reported above, there were increases in the percentages of applicants to enrollees in the higher GPA and DAT ranges and corresponding decreases in the percentages in the lower ranges. While over 85 percent of the enrollees had science GPAs of 3.0 or higher, almost 15 percent had science GPAs of less than 3.0. While over 92 percent of the enrollees had total GPAs of 3.0 or higher, almost 8 percent had total GPAs of less than 3.0. Regarding DAT scores, for academic average, over 89 percent of the enrollees had scores of 17 or above; almost 11 percent had scores below 17. Perceptual Ability had almost 68 percent of the enrollees with scores of 17 or above and almost 32 percent with scores of less than 17. Over 85 percent of the enrollees had total science DAT scores of 17 or above; almost 15 percent had total science DAT scores of less than 17. The percent of enrollees with GPAs above 3.0 in 2005 was slightly higher than the percent in 2004. Likewise, the percent of enrollees with DAT scores above 17 in 2005 was slightly higher than the percent in 2004. While the overall tendency is to select for enrollment those applicants with the higher GPAs and DAT scores, the enrollees still reflect a relatively broad range in academic achievements as determined by these measures. But there do appear to be lower limits in the consideration of applicants for enrollment: less than a 2.5 GPA and DAT scores of less than 14. GPAs and DAT scores are accepted as indicators of potential success as dental students, and individuals in the lower ranges may be considered "of risk."
Age Distribution of Applicants and Enrollees
Table 16 presents the age distribution of applicants and enrollees. Since last reported in 2002, there has been an upward age shift of applicants and enrollees. Almost 21 percent of the applicants in 2005 were twenty-two or twenty-three years of age, declining from almost 41 percent in 2002. Almost 35 percent of the applicants were twenty-four or twenty-five years of age in 2005, increasing from 25 percent in 2002. About 28 percent of enrollees were twenty-two or twenty-three years of age in 2005, a decline from about 46 percent in 2002. The percent of enrollees twenty-four or twenty-five years of age in 2005 increased from 25 to almost 37 percent. The percentages of applicants and enrollees thirty years of age or greater were higher in 2005 than they were in 2002. This continues the upward age trend reported in the 2002 applicant analysis.
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Discussion
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Individuals considering or actually applying to dental school understand the importance given to GPA and DAT scores in the admissions process. Unfortunately, too often, the average GPA and DAT scores are taken as the minimum or near minimum needed to successfully compete for an offer of enrollment. Using the 2005 enrollment averages for total GPA and the DAT Academic Average, over two-thirds of the applicants would have been excluded from further consideration for enrollment due to a GPA less than 3.49; and over 52 percent of the applicants would have been excluded due to a DAT Academic Average less than 18.
As displayed in Table 5, there is a range of GPA and DAT scores, with few enrollees with total GPAs of less than 2.5 to almost 48 percent having GPAs of 3.5 or higher. There were few enrollees with DAT Academic Averages of less than 14 to almost 90 percent with Academic Average scores of 17 or higher; with 12 percent, 22 or higher. Again, if the 2005 enrollment averages had been used in the admissions process, 51.5 percent of the enrollees would not have been accepted, their GPAs being less than 3.49; and almost 26 percent would not have been accepted, their DAT Academic Averages being less than 18.
There was a slight shift in the percent of applicants in 2005 with higher GPA and DAT scores and a slight shift in the percent of enrollees with higher GPA and DAT scores. In comparing the GPA and DAT score percent distributions for applicants and enrollees, though, it appears that the overall tendency is to select for enrollment those applicants with higher GPA and DAT scores. Admittedly, it is essential to select individuals for enrollment who present with quantitative indicators for success as a dental student, capable of meeting the rigors of the dental school curriculum. But as the number of applicants to consider and select for enrollment has been increasing, higher GPA and DAT scores can become easy criteria on which to fall back to simplify and ease the arduous admissions process. Arbitrarily selecting individuals with higher GPA and DAT scores also simplifies the justification of admission decisions.
Applicants bring a wide range of background, interests, and experiences. These qualitative attributes are equally as important as GPA and DAT scores in selecting enrollees who can be successful students and successful in meeting current and emerging needs of the profession, practice, individual patients, community, and society. Acknowledging the range of GPA and DAT scores, quantitative criteria must be augmented with qualitative criteria that capture, assess, and give value to the noncognitive attributes of applicants. The challenge is establishing, describing, and documenting a system of admissions requirements and selection criteria that can meet judicial and societal scrutiny for fairness. An excellent resource to meet this challenge was presented by Dr. William E. Sedlacek at ADEA’s 2006 Joint Fall Meeting in Baltimore, drawing from his book Beyond the Big Test: Noncognitive Assessment in Higher Education (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2004). Dr. Sedlacek highlights eight noncognitive variables that can be considered in applicant assessments, along with guidelines for their adaptation to admission processes. The noncognitive variables are positive self-concept; realistic self-appraisal; successfully handling social, cultural, and racial systems; preference for long-term goals; availability of strong support person(s); leadership experience; community involvement; and sustained acquiring of knowledge in a field.
Dental schools control the admissions process and entrants into the profession. Thereby, they have the responsibility to administer a broadly considered and fair process that enables the selection of a diverse body of capable students, giving rise to competent graduates and practitioners who can best serve the profession, the public’s health, and the public good.
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Footnotes
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Ms. Chmar is Policy Analyst, Center for Educational Policy and Research; Dr. Weaver is Acting Director, Center for Educational Policy and Research; Mr. Ramanna is Senior Analyst, Office of Information Technology; and Dr. Valachovic is Executive Director, all at the American Dental Education Association. Direct correspondence and requests for reprints to Dr. Richard Weaver, American Dental Education Association, 1400 K Street, NW, Suite 1100, Washington, DC 20005; 202-289-7201 phone; 202-289-7204 fax; WeaverR{at}ADEA.org.
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Associations Among Predental Credentials and Measures of Dental School Achievement
J Dent Educ.,
February 1, 2008;
72(2):
142 - 152.
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Abstract
Methodology
