What Undergraduate Degree is Best For Dental School Dental School as Well as Which Classes

 So to address that question as an undergrad, I majored in biological sciences. And while a lot of people who want to go to dental school do major in something science-related, there is no prerequisite that says that you absolutely have to be a science major or a biology major to apply to dental school. That being said, you can be any kind of major you want. You can major in business psychology.

I've even heard of one person majoring in anthropology. I think that's what it is. But yeah, you can pretty much major in whatever you would like to do, whatever you're interested in. But the only thing is that you have to complete the prerequisites for that dental school. So what are these prerequisites?  It varies for dental schools, but for the most part, the prerequisites are general biology, general chemistry, organic chemistry, physics, and some type of English class. Some schools require biochemistry, and some schools require psychology. So those are the main classes that you want to take as an undergrad in order for you to move along and apply to dental school. I know I said that you could basically major in whatever you want to do as long as you get the prerequisite. But for me personally, I feel like there's a huge benefit in being a biology major or a biochemistry major.

  And why is that? It's because we have to take those prerequisite classes anyways, and we get extra time to take the upper-division classes that are actually really helpful for a dental school. And if you were, let's say, a business major, you would have to take care of all your business courses first. You'd take your prerequisites for dental school, but there might not be enough time in four years to take that upper-division, biology classes. which is what undergrad classes that I took personally helped me in dental school. 

 I feel like if I didn't take these classes an undergrad, I would be so lost and so confused in my dental classes. The first class, I think, is absolutely important for everybody to take. If you want to go to dental school is physiology. So what is physiology? Physiology is the study of how the body systems work.  And this is different from anatomy. Anatomy is a structure. Physiology is a function. So, like, for example, in my physiology class, what we're learning about is the pulmonary system. So how we breathe, how lungs work, and how we get ventilation.  And we're also learning about the gastrointestinal tract or the GI tract. And how digestion works, how absorption and secretion work, and how food gets in your body and how you dispose of it. The second course that I feel is important to take. As I mentioned before, anatomy. 

I've had several classmates in dental school right now who have not taken anatomy before in undergrad.  And I feel like taking anatomy really helped me. Because anatomy, in my opinion, is basically like a foreign language. There are so many terms that you have to know, and it just gets really confusing. But because I learned anatomy as an undergrad, I'm, like, familiar with a lot of the words. But it's just mostly like reviewing and brushing up and expanding on that knowledge rather than starting from zero.  The third most important class that I feel you need to take is biochemistry. So I know that some dental schools don't require biochemistry as a prerequisite. But my school did. And I feel like biochemistry is not to say not as important, but you definitely should take it in undergrad. Biochemistry is the study of the chemical things that happen in our bodies. 

So, like, amino acids, carbohydrates, lipids, nucleic acids, how those components work. And I personally thought that biochemistry was super confusing. At undergrad. Without taking biochemistry and undergrad, I would have been lost too. Because there are just a lot of processes that go on.  And it's very conceptual. Personally, I'm not a very conceptual person. It takes a long time for me to understand so many processes. And kind of, like, make these connections in my brain. So that's why biochemistry, taking biochemistry as an undergrad really helped.  The fourth class that I feel is very important to take. And I feel like a lot of people kind of tend to forget about it. Is histology. So histology is the microscopic study of the structures of the tissue. So this is basically a lot of microscope work. 

 You look at things like the epithelium of the skin. The reason why I think histology is very difficult. Is that everything looks pink. So in the body, a lot of our structures are colorless. So you have to stain these cells and tissues into something that is more visible, like pink or purple. So the reason why histology is confusing to me is that a lot of the time everything just looks pink. Like, how am I supposed to know cartilage? And how am I supposed to know if this is bone? As my teacher says, you have to be a detective and look for clues to see what structure that is that we're trying to look for. The next part that I'm going to talk about are the classes that I didn't take as an undergrad but I wish I did take the most obvious ones something like ceramics or sculpture.