My Journey

2013 – 2015

I graduated from dental school in Nov 2013 from SVS Institute of Dental sciences Telangana, India. Soon after, I came to United States in Jan 2014 to pursue my Master’s in Health Care Systems Management at NJIT (New Jersey Institute of Technology) in Newark, New Jersey on an F1 student visa. I got a shadowing opportunity at a dental office in New York around the same time, so took advantage of it to keep myself in touch with dentistry. It was initially very overwhelming to manage my school, the shadowing, cooking, laundry, my finances. But I think we humans either breakdown or adapt to the new situations (Guess I got adapted). Graduated from master’s program in May 2015. Wohoo!!!

2015- 2016

Lucky enough I was able to get a job soon after my graduation at a hospital in New Jersey as an “EMR analyst” in mid 2015. Worked in that position for a year and got promoted to be the “EMR Supervisor “. Did some major projects including transition of the paper records to electronic version, training the clinical and non-clinical staff in the hospital about the EMR and its updates (Sometimes I would have to stay all night with the nurses to get all the shifts staff trained and be on-call). Around April 2016, I cleared NBDE Part 1, I was super excited thinking I am very close to getting into dental school (did not know back then what it takes to get here).

2016- 2018

In recognition of my work, after serving for 6 months as an “EMR Supervisor”, I was promoted to be the “Director of IT/EMR”.  During this time, my job required me to have a degree in Information Systems, so I went on to pursue my second master’s in information Systems . My company sponsored for my entire education and for a H1B visa (work visa) too. I was enjoying the new job role, feels good right to be prompted twice ! (totally living in the moment, forgot that I still had to take NBDE Part 2)

After some self-realization, I was thinking to myself what am I doing as an IT person (definitely a good alternate career plan), I decided to take Part 2. Look at that I was working a full-time job, doing a full-time master’s and attempted to take NBDE part 2 (wasn’t I just being a little too much). With no surprise I failed both the attempts, may be that was not the right time for me to take the test.

2018

Too much serious stuff going on up there right!! Haha, we dentists also have a personal life running alongside of our career. Let’s take a quick peek into my personal life, it was that time of my life where my parents were bugging for quite a while by then to get married. I kept delaying it until I found my right one. Too many things in my mind at that time, my job, my dental stuff, my visa, my parents and now finding the right guy was the biggest task. After all the twists and turns I found the man of my dreams, who is now my husband (Manohar). A very simple, easy going person, touchwood everything is going well so far)). My husband encouraged me to take a break and focus on the NBDE Part 2, so I wont regret 10 years later, that I did not give my 100%.

2019

I switched jobs, took up a part time job, so I could focus more on my exam. Finally cleared NBDE Part 2 in the 3rd attempt (Finally right!!). 2019 was my first cycle to apply to schools through CAAPID. Applied almost to 14 dental schools through CAAPID around May. Waited until the end of the year and got “zero” interviews. I was both surprised and shocked not knowing what went wrong. Did not want to give up so easily, still trying to be positive. I volunteered as a dental assistant at a non-profit organization and got certified for “Dental Radiography”.  I travelled to Chandigarh, India just to take a bench test preparatory course for a month. Anybody who has the option to travel to India and have a month time, I would totally recommend this place (ODA Achever).

2020

Now this is my second cycle, I kind of made a list of all the things I thought went wrong in my first cycle and tried to improve them in my second cycle (like applying earlier, improved my SOP, better TOEFL score, added some CE courses [both in person & online] etc). I applied to 18 schools this time in March. Around the same time COVID hit, nobody knew what was happening, how the interviews were going to be conducted. I almost lost hope, but at the end of the tunnel, there is always light. Got 5 interviews from University of Minnesota school of Dentistry, Indiana University School of Dentistry, Loma Linda, University of Michigan, Herman Ostrow school of Dentistry (USC).

September 2020

Got an acceptance from University of Michigan School of Dentistry!