Dental School loans

How to pay for US dental schools? I will be discussing what you can do if you are an international dentist as well.

For US citizens:

All the options in this article are available for US citizens.

Scholarship options:

1. Health professions scholarship program: through the army , navy and air force

It takes care of 100% of your tuition and also get around a $2500 stipend monthly and military discounts and benefits when using your military ID.

2. National Health service corps: it is extremely competitive. There are over 2000 applicants this year out of which only 10% that is about 20 people got the scholarships. NHSC also pays 100% for the tuition and 1400$ as stipend monthly.

3. Indian health services scholarship: IHS : it is for native American or Alaskan native, they  pay full 100% of the tuition as well.

4. Other scholarships by ADEA and other institutions for about 10000$ per award even though small can help every bit.

For Green card holders:

Following options are available.

Federal Loan options:

As a US citizen if one doesn't receive any scholarships then one could try loans.

1. FAFSA: which stands for Free application for Federal Student Aid. It is Federal direct un-subsidised loan with 3.7% fixed interest rate.  It will cover about  40-50000$ per yr
2. Grad PLUS loan ~5.3% fixed rate the rest of the cost of attendance each year will be covers by this loan
3. Perkins loan: 5% fixed rate and may be given by dental schools based on your financial standing and is given to certain individuals only
4. Health Profession Student Loan: 5% fixed only for those with exceptional financial needs

Eligibility criteria is that you must have:

• Good credit history
• Will need 2-3 loans for the whole fee.
• Will need a total loan of about 400-500K or more depending on the universities if you do the 8 yrs of predental and dental in US. .
• Sometime you may get federal loans like FAFSA to cover (50% to 70% of loan) rest as a private loan
  

If you don't qualify for federal loans then you make take  private loans.

• Private loans: Sallie Mae, Prodigy finance etc. They have very high interest rates.
• Federal loans interest ~4-5% but private loans interest from 6-14%
  

I will also talk about loan repayment programs in a bit.

International Dentist on a visa

Now If you are an Internationally trained dentist on a visa, then you may need to take a loan from your home country or have a green card or citizen person be your cosigner. You will be eligible for the Private loans with a US cosigner..

• It is very important to make sure you explain everything well to the cosigner as you wouldn't want them to back out at the last moment and then you wont get a loan and may have to leave the program after trying so hard. I know this because a friend of mine was in this situation and couldn't take up the course. So please explain your cosigners well.

Debt for your dental school.  

Now Lets break it down a little bit more for  understanding the debt for your dental school.  

Dental school debt for US grads:

Cost of pre dental courses: $50-60,000. For 3- 4yrs.    

Cost of dental school 4yrs after that is : $250000 to 500,000.                                      

Total loan for a completely  US trained dentist will be around $500,000-700,000.                    

I am giving you a range because, Typically the Public dental schools will cost less as compared to the private dental schools. And the tuition for instate residents is less compared to out of -state residents.

Dental school debt for international dental + US education grads:

If you are an internationally trained dentist then you may need a total loan of about 250-350K.          

Since complete dental schooling in the USA is expensive, I have also known of a couple people who are from the US but chose to do dental schooling abroad , and then came back and did international DDS programs in the US and now practice dentistry in the US. That way it cost them way less  in the long term.

After graduation average Salary : $150000-250,000/yr  as an associate dentist working for someone. If you plan to own your clinic then even though there will be more initial debt for a few years, the return on investments are quite higher in the long run as compared to being an associate.

LOAN repayment programs:

If you got your loan from

National Health service corps NHSC: it  needs 2 yrs of commitment after graduation to repay while working in an NHS approved site.

Or if you took loans from the military  then you would have to work with them for a period of 3-5 yrs similarly. Government agencies like the Armed forces also give loan repayment assistance according to the ADEA website.

FEDERAL LOANS Repayment

If you have federal loans then the repayment options range from 10-30yrs. You may also qualify for a Public service loan forgiveness program. What this does is that once you make 120 qualifying payments on an income driven repayment plan , the program will discharge your debt. The forgiven amount of the loan won't be considered taxable at the end. So what's the catch, Well You have to work full time for a government agency, it may be state or federal or local or tribal or even certain non profit organizations. You can get the complete details of this on the US department of education website. I will put the link below.

If you are not eligible for student loan forgiveness or repayment assistance then you also have an option of LOAN REFINANCING for a better interest rate. .

For repaying Private student loans you can choose upfront the term for repayment from 5yrs to 25yrs.

Depending on how aggressively you want to  repay them,

If you take the international programs then it can take from 3-5yrs since it cost you less

If you do the 8yrs of dentistry in the US then repaying can take from 8-10yrs. If you repay slowly then , you can even have a 10-15yr loan repayment plan.

Other way to repay loans is Corporate dentistry: There are various dental corporate dental chains in USA. which help in loan repayments too. A lot of people may not like the idea of working with corporate offices.  I would recommend you to think about the cost to benefit ratio for you specifically and then choose where you want to work either in private or corporate offices. .

My goal is to give as much information as possible out here and help you all in achieving your dental dreams. If you have any questions  feel free to comment below  or email me. If the information is too overwhelming or you are a visual learner and prefer a video please check this out for the information.