How Many Experiences Should You Put on AADSAS?
How Many Experiences Should You Put on AADSAS?
When preparing your dental school application, one of the most common questions is: How many experiences should I put on AADSAS?
As a general benchmark, we recommend that applicants aim for around 15 total experiences on their AADSAS application. However, there is no single number that makes an applicant competitive.
The type and quality of your experiences are much more important than simply having a large number of them.
Dental schools evaluate experiences differently. Some place greater emphasis on community service, while others may prioritize dental exposure, research, leadership, employment, or other areas. Because of this, building a strong experiences section requires more than accumulating activities. Your experiences should be selected strategically based on the dental schools you plan to apply to.
How Many Experiences Should You Have for Dental School?
Around 15 experiences is a reasonable target for many dental school applicants, but this should not be treated as a requirement.
The appropriate number depends heavily on the types of experiences you have.
Your application may include experiences involving:
Dental shadowing
Volunteer and community service
Research
Employment
Academic enrichment
Dental-related experiences
Extracurricular activities
Awards, honors, and achievements
You do not necessarily need multiple experiences in every category.
For example, shadowing requirements vary considerably between dental schools. Some schools establish specific expectations for the number of shadowing hours or the type of dental exposure applicants should have.
This is why simply asking, "How many experiences do I need?" does not tell the entire story.
A better question is:
Do my experiences demonstrate the qualities and experiences that the dental schools on my list are looking for?
Quality vs. Quantity: Which Matters More?
Quality is significantly more important than quantity.
Applicants sometimes assume that completing hundreds of additional volunteer, shadowing, or extracurricular hours will automatically make their application more competitive.
That is not necessarily the case.
Hours provide useful context, but they do not always determine how strongly an experience contributes to an applicant's evaluation. Instead, schools may consider factors such as the type of experience, your involvement, what you accomplished, the skills you developed, and how the experience relates to qualities the school values.
For example, an applicant with 15 carefully selected and meaningful experiences may have a stronger experiences section than someone with 25 activities that were selected simply to add more entries to the application.
Do not focus on filling your application.
Focus on building the right application.
Not All Dental School Experiences Are Valued Equally
This is one of the most important concepts for pre-dental students to understand.
Different experiences can carry different value depending on the dental school evaluating your application.
Applicants often participate in common activities such as:
Food pantries
Soup kitchens
Animal shelters
Hospital volunteering
These can certainly be worthwhile experiences. However, applicants should not assume that every type of volunteering or extracurricular activity will be viewed equally by every dental school.
A particular school may place greater emphasis on experiences that demonstrate certain forms of service, leadership, dental exposure, research, commitment to underserved populations, or other characteristics.
The same experience can therefore contribute differently depending on the school evaluating your application.
That is why your school list and your experiences should not be developed independently of one another.
Ideally, you should understand what your target schools value and then evaluate whether your experiences provide sufficient evidence of those qualities.
How Should You Choose Your Six Most Important AADSAS Experiences?
AADSAS allows applicants to designate up to six experiences as their most important experiences.
Do not select these six simply because they involved the most hours or because they were personally memorable.
Your choices should be strategic.
Ask yourself:
Which six experiences best demonstrate that I am a strong fit for the dental schools on my school list?
The answer will be different for every applicant.
If several schools on your list place significant emphasis on a particular type of experience, you may want your highlighted experiences to reinforce that strength. Your six most important experiences should collectively show admissions committees the qualities you most want them to recognize in your application.
This is also one reason we recommend finalizing your dental school list early enough to make strategic decisions about your application.
Should You Include Every Experience on AADSAS?
Not necessarily.
More experiences do not automatically create a stronger application.
Each experience should have a reason for being included.
Before adding an activity, consider what it contributes to your overall application. Does it demonstrate commitment? Leadership? Service? Dental exposure? Manual dexterity? Research experience? Personal growth? Another characteristic that is relevant to the schools you are targeting?
If several entries are repetitive or contribute very little to your overall application, adding them simply to increase your total number of experiences may not provide much benefit.
Admissions committees should be able to look across your experiences and develop a clear understanding of what you have done, what you have learned, and what you could contribute as a future dental student and dentist.
What If You Don't Have Enough Experiences?
If you review your application and realize that your experiences section is weak, the solution is not simply to start adding random activities.
First, determine what is actually missing.
Look at the schools you are considering and identify the areas of your application that need to be strengthened.
For one applicant, that could mean obtaining additional dental exposure. For another, it could mean developing stronger community involvement, research experience, leadership, employment, or another area.
This distinction matters because your time before applying is limited.
If you have six months before submitting your application, you want those six months to be spent on experiences that are most likely to meaningfully strengthen your candidacy—not simply activities that allow you to add another line to AADSAS.
Build Your Experiences Around Your Dental School List
One of the biggest mistakes applicants can make is treating every dental school as though it evaluates applicants in exactly the same way.
They do not.
Schools have different missions, priorities, requirements, and methods of evaluating applicants. Those differences should influence how you prepare your application.
At Dental School Guide, we encourage students to approach their application in the opposite direction from what many applicants naturally do.
Instead of asking:
"I have these experiences. Where should I apply?"
You should also be asking:
"These are the schools I want to attend. How well does my application match their scoring rubric?"
That shift can help you make much more intentional decisions about where you spend your time before applying.
How Dental School Guide Can Help
Determining that you need "more experiences" is relatively easy.
Determining which experiences will have the greatest impact on your application is much more difficult.
This is where Dental School Guide can help.
Dental School Guide works with pre-dental students to evaluate their applications in the context of the specific dental schools they are considering. Rather than giving every student the same generic checklist, we help applicants understand which areas of their application should be prioritized based on their school list.
If you are unsure whether you have enough experiences—or whether you have the right types of experiences—you can schedule a free Dental School Guide strategy session.
During your strategy session, we can help you look at where your application currently stands, the schools you are considering, and the areas you should prioritize to build a stronger application.
The objective is not to tell you to accumulate as many experiences or hours as possible.
It is to help you use your time strategically so that your experiences align as closely as possible with what your target dental schools value and how they evaluate applicants.
