I think that you’re suppositions are correct. Many dental schools don’t require an undergraduate degree, nor is there any significant post-graduate training. Do 2-3 years of undergraduate work, 4 years of dentistry, and voila! your ready to practice dentistry unsupervised. Taking a mission into account, one can become a dentist 8-9 years out of high school.

Additionally, dentists don’t take any call and cans set office hours as they please. My dentist is open 9-4, M-Thu.

In effect, it’s not really different than going to law or business school, and lawyers and business folks generally work longer hours.

Compare that to medical school. An undergraduate degree is mandatory. Medical school is then 4 years, followed by a residency that can take anywhere from three years (internal medicine/pediatrics/family practice) to seven years (neurosurgery). Once one is a physician, call is often an integral part of the job, and can range from once every three days to once per month depending on how many of your specialty are in an area (for example, I’m on call every third night, but the local ophthalmologists are on call once every 20 days on average).

Also, reimbursement for dentistry is generally better. The clientele are generally insured, and there is no requirement to be associated with a hospital and see uninsured patients.

And to answer your question, I would say it’s neither a good or bad thing. It just is. Dentistry is an attractive lifestyle choice for people want a “medicine like” career.

We have multiple LDS Dentists around here in Tarrant County Texas. In fact if what you want is an LDS dentist you can pick from 4-5 of them within a 5 mile radius of my house.

The high number of dentists in Utah is especially interesting as Utah does not have any dental schools. Still, I wonder if looking at the number of dentists in Utah can really tell you about how many LDS dentists there are–at some point, any area is going to meet the saturation point, and more working dentists just wouldn’t be possible. Perhaps we could look at the percentage of dental students that are LDS? From what I’ve heard, those numbers are pretty high.

Good money, easier than being a doctor or lawyer–but it sounds dreadfully boring. I can’t imagine looking at teeth day in and day out.

1. Kari – I also seem to remember a Wall Street Journal article that mentioned that Dentists, on average, make more money than Physicians given the ability of Dentists to sell all sorts of cosmetic applications.

2. ESO – The data would suggest that Utah, Idaho, Nevada and Wyoming have much higher numbers of dentists per capita than other states which also backs up my suppposition.

3. bbell – wow that is impressive.

4. Mel – I have heard that a few times as well – my brother went to Idaho for the same reasons

5. Tim – it also suggests that if the Mormon west is saturated with Dentists there must be a lot in other areas of the country as well. I can’t speak for most Dental schools, but I know that Tufts (in Boston), Temple (Philly) and Creighton (Omaha) have a lot of Mormon Dental students…

6. Steamtrain – the ones I know seem happy – what does “personalities of pancakes” mean? I could interpret that a lot of ways…

I’m afraid of the dentist, maybe, I suppose because I grew up in foster care and most of the dentist that I went to were kind of snarky. They all had the<"Harvey the Misfit," dentist attitude. I had one tell me as an8 year old that I should be glad that he was fixing my teeth because according to the state he didn't have to. I'm willing to take a polygraph to verify the veracity of that statement. anyway I happened to live in an area on the East coast where there are two major schools of dentistry.

Can any of you dentist answer this question? Why do dentist stick a drill in your mouth going about 450 rpm a minute and then think you are going to carry on a conversation with them?

Let’s not ignore another possible reason for the high number of LDS dentists: the subliminal impact on impressionable young minds of watching the Osmonds and their oversized teeth.

I have worked at a dentistry school far outside of the Mormon corridor, and done nationwide evaluation work with dentists. It is much harder to get into dental school than medical school, because of all the lifestyle reasons mentioned. I don’t know of any program that will admit without an undergraduate degree any more.

For a while in the 90s, my program was going to refuse admit any more BYU grads, because of the perception that Mormons get instate tuition here, but then go off to the intermountain west to practice. But a group of BYU grads stayed local, got active in the alumni association, and turned that around.

In admissions, we have something like 1700 applicants for about 90 slots. And that doesn’t even count those who want to apply, but know they don’t have what it takes and wait a year or perhaps get an MPH before applying. One things that helps LDS is if they are returned missionaries (it is “different” enough to stand out), and especially if they have foreign language skills as a result.

In admissions, we have something like 1700 applicants for about 90 slots. And that doesn’t even count those who want to apply, but know they don’t have what it takes and wait a year or perhaps get an MPH before applying. One things that helps LDS is if they are returned missionaries (it is “different” enough to stand out), and especially if they have foreign language skills as a result.

Naismith, how do you figure that dental school admission is harder than medical school? 1700 applicants for 90 slots is on par with most medical schools. Is that typical for most dental schools? Are there any centralized statistics for dental schools like there is for medical schools (see: https://www.aamc.org/download/161128/data/table1-facts2010school-web-pdf.pdf)?

Devyn,

There was a WSJ article that pointed out that for the first time the average dentist out-earned the average GP physician. Those numbers excluded orthodontists and periodontists from “dentist” which is significant because those specialties earn significantly more. The article also pointed out that very little of the average dental practice’s income came from insurance or government reimbursements. There was amfollow-up article that quoted the statistic that one in five new dental practices opened today operate on a cas-only basis.

I have never heard of a Mormon chiropractor, but I also don’t know anyone who sees a chiropractor–are they more popular in other regions of the US, I wonder?

Devyn–I only argue that, given Mormons’ tradition of advanced education, I suppose that any profession requiring graduate work will be well- or over-represented in those areas. I further argue that dentists may be at their saturation point there, which may be relatively higher than for doctors, for some reason. Many of the medical students who study here are from Utah or Idaho and would like to return but do not expect to be able to for some time after their residency, because of that “saturation.” Academics say the same thing: they do not anticipate tenure-track positions in Utah because the competition is so high. I suspect that dentists may be working part-time (and still earning a nice living in relatively low-cost areas), starting their own practices, or capitalizing on the reported popularity of cosmetic procedures in UT. Pediatricians and emergency physicians just don’t have that same flexibility.

What of optometry–they would receive the same blend of perks/prestige/predictable hours/relatively limited schooling, would they not?

University of Washington’s dental school has tons of LDS students, most of them BYU grads. I was one of the few graduate or professional students in the ward who WASN’T a dental student.

re #13: Oh, and this dental program does not require an undergraduate degree.

This is funny. I seem to have lived in a very different segment of the Mormon world. I can only think of two dentists, but dozens of doctors. My wife has two brothers, two uncles, one sister-in-law, and a few cousins who are doctors. I did graduate work at Johns Hopkins and knew many medical students and residents there, and in my current ward there are several army doctors.

Devyn S.-I was just reffering to the ones I personally know! With the exception of two great people!

I don’t have access to the current figures. When I was doing work with a national sample in the early 2000s, the acceptance rate for medical school was around 44%, with dentistry only in the high 30s. However, some dental schools have opened since then (e.g. Arizona), making it easier to get in. But of course since state-run universities often limit their out-of-state entrants, it makes it harder for specific folks to get in. I am sure that I am biased because all my student assistants for years have been dental school wannabees, and among them were people who had already been accepted to medical school as a fallback plan. And the scuttlebut around our medical center is that the veterinarian and clinical psychology programs are even more competitive.

Also, many American physicians could not get into medical school, either. Of our current medical residents at church, at least three of them trained offshore (Caribbean) but were accepted into residencies here.

But I don’t think there is a glut of dentists as much as there are vast stretches that are underserved, with only a few having enough. All this medical stuff is going to be in great demand as the baby boom ages. Pharmacy, physical therapy, etc. are the careers to consider for young people going into school.

Bryan H.

Those statistics are published every year by the AAMC (Association of American Medical Colleges) and the AACOM (American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine).

For allopathic med schools, in 2010 there were 42,742 applicants who submitted 580,304 applications (13.6 applications per applicant) for 18,665 spots. That’s an acceptance rate of 44%.

For osteopathic medical schools 13,147 applicants generated 98,929 applications (7.5 applications per applicant) for 4,807 slots, an acceptance rate of 37%.

Of note, BYU generated the 5th largest number of applicants to D.O. schools (http://www.aacom.org/data/Documents/Applicants/2010-OM-Applicants-Profile.pdf), and the 5th largest number of white applicants to M.D. schools (https://www.aamc.org/data/facts/applicantmatriculant/86042/table2.html).

We have multiple LDS Dentists around here in Tarrant County Texas. In fact if what you want is an LDS dentist you can pick from 4-5 of them within a 5 mile radius of my house. Well, to the contrary, in the wards I’ve been in, in Plano, Texas and in Wichita Falls, we had doctors but no dentists (except, briefly, when the Air Force had a guy coming through training at SAFB).

We lived in a ward that contained the University of Colorado Dental School (until it moved). There were always a large number of Mormon students. We joked that there was affirmative action for Mormons, because there were far and away more Mormon students than demographically proportionate. They were well prepared, had stable lifestyles (most were married RMs), and were sober. That was attractive to the school. We were all afraid that news would get out, cause a scandal, and Mormon domination of the dental school would be stopped. Never happened as far as I know.

Colorado was also the recipient of a program that attracted students from Utah, Wyoming, Nevada, Idaho (I think) and (until recently) Arizona, states that did not have dental schools, that provided the student would pay in state tuition and their state would make up the difference, if the student promised to return to live and practice in their home state after graduation. This further bloated the Mormon contingent at the dental school. We had years where our ward executive secretary, elders quorum president, one of the EQ counselors, the YM president, and one of his counselors, were all dental students, and there were usually others. We probably have a dozen or fifteen dentists on our Christmas card list, all of whom were in our ward for a time. By the way, only one of the dental students was a woman, in all those years.

I’ve heard that 1/3 of our dental school is LDS! Devyn, are you trying to bring back Married Mormon Grad Students on Welfare?? All the dental students have tons of kids and go on welfare and the wives stay home. Also, at the institute I say hi to people I see and male dental students will not look at me so they don’t “cheat” on their wives. Not a fan of dental students!

34. JM – sounds like my old ward

35. Jim Donaldson – I will say in my ward in 14 years we had zero female LDS dental students…

36. ESO – I don’t think it is only LDS men, I think it extends to men in general

37. Merkat – My sister did Medical School at the Univ of Utah and had a similar experience with the large number of Mormon males…

Devyn, the view from Indiana isn’t any different from Boston? I had the theory that a big factor in what you were seeing was the ways of life in the high-rent district.

There’s probably a lot of variability depending on the kinds of jobs available locally. Our stake has a handful of dentists, only one foot doctor, and a couple of nurses. All the ones currently practicing are male (including the nurse). There didn’t used to be any lawyers in our stake, but now there are five, three of which are in our ward (one is female: me). What our stake has by the bucketload is engineers: EEs, MEs, CEs, you name it, we’ve got it, but especially the EEs. We are totally geeked out. (I think it has something to do with the local IBM presence, which for decades now has recruited BYU grads.)

43. Coffinberry – good to know there is a female lawyer in the bunch!

44. bbell – Lawyers are everywhere in the Bloggernacle – I don’t know what % but it is pretty extreme… Maybe we should take a poll

Bbell – ouch – I tend to agree. Maybe you should do a post on Lawyers, lawyers everywhere, it would make for some interesting discussion…

Whitney – Utah is creating a Dental School? Wow – I did not know that.