This question was originally posted on Quora.com and was answered by Cindy Lin, Dentist, knows about teeth and root canals I was a more mature student at the time of application. My previous career was a high school teacher. I had always wanted to be in health care, but I was basically told to hurry up, finish school and get a job. At the time, teacher education program was one year and seemed like a good idea, so I did just that and became a teacher. I did work for some years as a teacher before I decided I needed to challenge myself more. I will always be an educator at heart. I didn’t appreciate at the time that my GPA in Microbiology and Immunology undergrad was pretty good and I could have applied after 3rd or 4th year for medicine or dentistry. So it was down to either medicine or dentistry as I didn’t want to study for both DAT and MCAT working full time. Honestly, I thinking back and knowing what I know now, I think I would have enjoyed medicine more than dentistry. But I chose dentistry for practical reasons - you basically can go into private practice after four years of school and start earning money, whereas medical school you have extra years of residency. Time was an issue due to age. I chose dentistry because I knew I’d be good at it since I have excellent manual dexterity from being a sewing enthusiast and a sewing teacher (I know how pieces of fabric can fit together and had a nice portfolio of work) and as an origami enthusiast (my favorite was modular origami). I also thought that being in a private setting would be better than one that is bound by provincial medical insurance. My husband, who is brilliant, had chosen dentistry over medicine for just that reason - at the time, the Ontario government weren’t treating physicians right. In retrospect, I shouldn’t have let the pressure of age and starting a career late get to me. I was lucky that I was able to get in on my first attempt (thanks to competitive GPA). I was 29 when I started dental school. In retrospect, I probably wasn’t too old to do medical school, as there were definitely other my age or older in medical school. Source
