Guide for the mentoring dentist: the admissions office perspective.

There is no better way to give back to dentistry--which has given us so much as dentists--than to mentor a young person into the profession. With the size of the applicant pool dramatically increasing over the past 10 years (73.6 percent), the challenge of the admissions process has increased as well. To put it simply, the "line" of those desiring dentistry as a profession has become quite long. In 2010, based upon data from the Texas Medical and Dental Schools Application Service, the ratio of dental applicants to positions exceeded the ratio of applicants to medical school positions! We haven't seen ratios like this since the late 1970's. This guide will aid mentoring dentists in the process of helping their mentees to be successful as applicants, dental students and, ultimately, dental practitioners.