Performance in credential enhancing masters program facilitates future success in the health professions

This paper examined the critical factors and potential predictors necessary for successful admission to dental school for students participating in the credential enhancing Oral Health Sciences (OHS) master’s program at Boston University. The academic parameters of OHS-DMD and traditional (four year) college graduate DMD students were compared to determine if OHS graduates performed at a comparable academic level in dental school as DMD students who entered dental school without completing a credential enhancing master’s program. To accomplish this, we examined data from students who matriculated to the Oral Health Sciences program from 2006 to 2015 and collected demographic, undergraduate grade point average (GPA), dental admissions test (DAT) scores and Oral Health Sciences GPA from Admissions and Registrar records for our analyses. To compare dental school performance and success on national board exams we obtained data for both OHS-DMD and traditional DMD students who enter the Boston University Goldman School of Dental Medicine. We performed unpaired T-tests to evaluate differences in undergraduate GPA, DAT and OHS GPA data for those OHS students matriculating to any dental school to determine what criteria, if any, can be used to predict success. We found that two factors were significant in determining acceptance to dental school: the Oral Health Sciences GPA (3.501 ± 0.301 vs 2.914 ± 0.336, p