If you’re considering applying for residency, fourth year of dental school is not cheap. From application fees to score reports to transportation to attire, costs can readily pile up. As such, it’s crucial to budget appropriately and plan ahead for residency interviews. Let’s run through a basic calculation to see how exactly the costs add up. Spoiler alert: be prepared to budget $5K – $10K and possibly take out an additional emergency loan.
Application Fees
Application fees constitute a sizable bulk of your budget for residency interviews. Simply put, the more programs you apply to, the more you will have to shell out. According to the American Dental Education Association, the processing fee is $190 for one program and $75 for each additional program. If you’re applying to 20 programs, the cost will be $1615. If you’re applying to 30 programs, the cost will be $2365.
What people often forget, however, are the mandatory secondary application fees. These are the fees that individual programs charge simply to process your application. With a range of $60-$100 per secondary fee, let’s say the average program charges $80. If you’re applying to 20 programs, you’ll rack up $1600. For 30 programs, $2400.
Score Reports
All dental residencies will ask for your NBDE Part I score report, and some will ask for your NBDE Part II score report if you’ve already taken it. At $34 per score report for the national dental boards, costs can quickly accumulate. Here we’re talking $680 for 20 programs, and $1020 for 30 programs. Oh, and don’t forget the relatively new Advanced Dental Admission Test (ADAT), which costs $35 to send per program. That’s an extra $700 for 20 schools, and a cool $1050 for 30 schools.
In addition, if you have the fortune of applying for Ortho, you’ll have to send in your GRE scores too. These cost $27 to send per program. That will be $540 for 20 programs, $810 for 30 programs.
Airfare
Congratulations! You’ve now landed a number of interviews, and for your top choices to boot! Application fees and score reports aside, you’ll now have to consider the transportation costs. Of the 20-30 programs you applied to, let’s say you have 5 interviews on the opposite coast. This will require round trip plane tickets purchased no more than 4-5 weeks before the interview date (they tend to notify you relatively last minute, but who are you to be pushy here?). Makes sense if you live in LA and have to travel to Boston, New York, Philly, Atlanta, and Florida. Or if you go to school in NY and have to travel to LA, SF, Seattle, Portland, and LA again. Roundtrip airfare will set you back $400 x 5 = $2000 including taxes and fees.
Congratulations! You have more interviews! Let’s say you have 3 more interviews, but they’re halfway across the country rather than on the opposite coast. Roundtrip airfare will set you back $300 x 3 = $900 including taxes and fees to travel to Chicago, Texas, and Minnesota. Congratulations yet again! You’ve landed 3 more interviews, but this time in your home city/region. No need for airfare here, phew. If only you could drive yourself to all your residency interviews right?
Lodging and Other Travel Expenses
Now that you’ve flown yourself to NY, you’ll have to find somewhere decent to sleep. Let’s be conservative and say you don’t have many friends/relatives in these cities who you can crash with overnight. That being said, you’re able to find some relatively budget hotels. $120 per hotel x 8 hotels = $960.
How about the Uber/Lyft/taxi costs? Or the costs for car rental + gas at those 8 interviews? Let’s assume you can get away with $40 on transportation costs per interview. That will bring you to $320. Let’s give you the benefit of the doubt and say you don’t have to pay for ANY food or drink whatsoever during these 8 interviews (false!). $0 for food/drink.
Attire
Gulp, how much do I owe boss?
Assuming you applied to 20 programs and had as many interviews as we said above, be prepared to budget $9K. On the other hand, if you applied to 30 programs and had as many interviews as we said above, we’re talking north of $11K. If you’re applying for Ortho, I didn’t factor in the GRE score report costs here, so add that cost as well.
As you can see, you should be prepared to shoulder a significant extra financial cost when applying for residency. While these numbers may seem astronomically high at first, there are a number of ways you can decrease your financial burden. That being said, it is nonetheless critical to budget wisely for residency interviews. Be prepared and take the plunge — chances are, it’ll be worth it!
How much did you spend on residency interviews? What did you do to cut costs? Any other tips? Comment below!
Loading ...
No responses yet