Lyon College School of Dental Medicine prerequisites

3 semesters · 12 credits

Most dental schools ask for 2 semesters · 8 credits · lab.

"12 semester hours or 18 quarter hours of Biological Science are required." Larger than the baseline block but broader and with no laboratory stated: it "Includes all Biological Science courses applied toward a baccalaureate degree in traditional science fields, such as General Biology, Microbiology, Molecular Biology, Genetics, Ecology, Immunology, Parasitology, and Anatomy & Physiology." Upper-division biology counts toward the requirement here rather than sitting beside it.

6 credits

Most dental schools ask for 2 semesters · 8 credits · lab.

"6 semester hours or 9 quarter hours as required for college science majors. Physical Chemistry and Quantitative Analysis also satisfy the requirement." No laboratory is stated, and the substitutions are unusually generous.

6 credits

Most dental schools ask for 2 semesters · 8 credits · lab.

"6 semester hours or 9 quarter hours, as required for college science majors." No laboratory is stated.

1 semester · 3 credits

"3 semester hours or 5 quarter hours of biochemistry are required. This requirement is in addition to the Biological Science requirement of 12 hours and may not be used to fulfill the Biological Science requirements." Biochemistry cannot be double counted toward the biology block.

6 credits

Most dental schools ask for 2 semesters · 8 credits · lab.

"6 semester hours or 9 quarter hours, as required for college science majors." No laboratory is stated.

1 semester · 3 credits

Most dental schools ask for 2 semesters · 6 credits.

"3 semester hours or 5 quarter hours of college-level English. Any course accredited by the English Department that fulfills a general education English requirement of a baccalaureate degree will be accepted. Remedial or developmental courses or English as a Second Language courses are not accepted." One semester, half the dental baseline.

3 credits

Named by a minority of schools and useful preparation for the first year regardless.

3 credits

Required at a meaningful minority and recommended widely; a strong pick for the spare science slot.

100+ hours

Required but never quantified, and judged on breadth of setting rather than hours: "Candidates for admission to LCSDM will be expected to provide evidence of observation and volunteering (i.e. shadowing) at several types of dental practices or clinics such as community health centers or federally qualified health centers with oral healthcare facilities." The admission criteria page lists "Shadowing at multiple dental offices and/or clinics" among the things an applicant must show evidence of, and "Candidates will be expected to discuss their observations and experiences at these oral healthcare facilities in their essays and during interviews."

100+ hours

Most dental schools ask for 100+ hours and list it as recommended.

Listed among the things applicants "Must also show evidence of": "Healthcare-related and other community service." No hour figure is published.

1 letter

A committee letter replaces the entire required set here, not just one line of it: "If a candidate attends a school that has a Health Professions Advisory Committee (HPAC), a letter of evaluation from the HPAC Chair or a Pre-Health Professions Program Director/Committee Chair will meet the requirement."

2 letters

Required only where no committee letter exists: "Otherwise, two letters of evaluation will be required. These letters should be from science faculty who can evaluate the applicant's performance and potential for success in dental school." The admission criteria page words the same rule as one committee letter "OR two letters of evaluation, preferably from science faculty."

1 letter

"A third optional letter can be from another faculty member in any discipline or from a health professional who knows the student in a professional capacity, such as shadowing." This is where a dentist you shadowed goes at Lyon, and it is optional rather than required.

Lyon's letters of evaluation page specifies the whole packet, one committee letter or two science faculty letters plus one optional third, and no dentist letter appears in it. A dentist can write the optional third letter as "a health professional who knows the student in a professional capacity, such as shadowing," but nothing requires one. Shadowing itself is still expected.