My experience in the Master’s of
Pharmacology program at Tulane School of Medicine has been very pleasant so
far. Coming from the largest university in the nation, I have never been in a
class this small before. Most of my classes in my undergraduate were between
100 and 300 people. This is an advantage for me as it allows the students and
faculty to get to know each other more easily.
I am unlike the other students in
the class, however. Rather than applying for medical school this cycle, I have
applied for dental school. I believe this program will benefit me greatly even
though I am not applying for medical school. I have talked with colleagues
currently in dental school who state that they are learning the same material
and have a complete medical pharmacology course in dental school. Some people
say this is one of the tougher subjects to master in dental school, so I am
happy that I will have a leg up on the competition when I eventually get in.
One thing I wish that the program
could improve on would be to offer more pharmacologic information related
directly to dentistry. The program is advertised as a Master’s Program that
will improve prospective medical students’ resumes as well as prospective
dental students’ resumes. However, there is an obvious correlation with medical
school in the curriculum and not much correlation with dental school. I am
aware that Tulane does not have a dental school, but I still think it would be
appropriate to offer more information for prospective dental school students. I
am not sure exactly how they could improve this aspect of the program, but a
few possible ways would be:
-Offer dates/times of seminars or
learning labs that LSU Dental offers
-Possibly set up an agreement type
of deal with LSU dental about getting involved clinically at the dental school,
whether that be shadowing, dental assistant training, or various other dental
related experiences that could improve one’s resume (a great example of this
would be at Temple University. They have a program very similar to this except during the summer before the 1-year program starts, they give the prospective dental students the
option to be trained as a dental assistant at their clinic, which they can then earn volunteer hours throughout the semester working in the clinic while acquiring valuable experiences. I
applied to this program but decided not to attend due to the price difference).
Again, I am not sure how possible that
would be to implement at this school, since they do not have a dental school
themselves, but I have heard that they have some ties to the LSU School of
Dental Medicine.
