Which Factors Influence Students’ Selection of Advanced Graduate Programs? One Institution's Experience

Abstract

The reasons that students choose certain specialties may be integral to the quality of specialty programs and the future of those specialties. The Harvard School of Dental Medicine (HSDM) has a high percentage (87.6 percent) of students who enroll in postgraduate programs. The goals of this study were to establish a baseline of factors that affect postgraduate program selection at HSDM and to determine if there was a significant difference in factor selection by gender, relationship status, graduation year, or choice to specialize versus choice to pursue advanced training in general dentistry. As a pilot study, we asked HSDM graduates from the classes of 2005 to 2007 to rank the importance of forty-two factors in selecting a field of dentistry and a particular program or institution within a specialty. Overall, students felt that intellectual content, challenging diagnostic problems, and possessing a special skill or talent unique to a specialty were the most important factors in choosing a field of dentistry. Influence of family members in dentistry was ranked as least important. In choice of a certain program or institution within a given field, clinical training and philosophy of training were ranked most highly. Students felt that the opportunity to moonlight was least important. Significant differences (p<0.05) were found regarding gender, relationship status, and students who chose to specialize versus those pursuing advanced general dentistry training.

The Pre and Final Year Dental Students’ Attitudes, Perception towards Postgraduate Specialization in Kinshasa University—Dental Medicine Department/DR. Congo

“…This result means that the specialists formed will maybe not have high levels of clinical skills, or they are useless for the benefit of the population or the patients. Conversely, the influencing factors such as having a competence or talent in a particular field for specialization was very less admitted by the students in this study when compared with others findings (Saeed, Jimenez, Howell, Karimbux, & Sukotjo, 2008;Smith, Lambert, & Goldacre, 2015) in which having a talent in a particular field or possession of special skills was the most popular reason to specialize. However, the prospect of so many more years studying was a discouraging factor as was recently reported (James, Veselina, & Alisa, 2016).…”

“…Studies views of Japanese, Canadian and Thai undergraduates found that Orthodontics was the most preferred subject in the first two countries, and Oral Surgery in the latter country (Karibe, Suzuki, Sekimoto, Srithavaj, Iamaroon, Warita, Kawakami, Ogata, Shirase, & Nakahara, 2007). In addition, Orthodontics was also the most preferred subject in dental undergraduate's students of USA (Saeed, Jimenez, Howell, Karimbux, & Sukotjo, 2008;Weaver, Chmar, Haden, & Valachovic, 2005). Other findings of involved senior dental students from all dental schools across the USA also reported Orthodontics followed by Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery and Paediatric Dentistry to be the most popular specialties as did for Canada (Gallagher, Patel, & Wilson, 2009).…”

“…The findings of these studies seem to point out the financially lucrative profession, job security, desire to help the people, opportunity to utilize the technical skills, self-employed, talent in the field of study, and altruism as the most dominant motivational factors. With regard to the most preferred intended specialty by the students, previous studies reported Restorative dentistry in the UK (Fisher, Wilson, & Bartlett, 2007), later Orthodontics in the same institution (James, Veselina, & Alisa, 2016;Puryer & Patel, 2016), Orthodontics in Japan, Canada, USA and Oral Surgery as the most preferred intended specialty for Thai undergraduates' students (Karibe, Suzuki, Sekimoto, Srithavaj, Iamaroon, Warita, Kawakami, Ogata, Shirase, & Nakahara, 2007;Saeed, Jimenez, Howell, Karimbux, & Sukotjo, 2008). The length of training, cost, and disruption of life were reported to be the three greatest barriers to further dental specialization (Puryer & Patel, 2016).…”

An Analysis of College Choice Information Provided on Graduate Program Websites: Implications for Improving Applicant Diversity in Educational Measurement

“…Specifically, we found that there are currently 13 states where there are no educational measurement programs and some regions of the country, such as the Northeast (14% of total programs), where a limited number of programs currently exist. Although it may be assumed that all students have the ability to relocate for graduate school, previous research has suggested that such an assumption may be untenable, particularly for individuals that have familial responsibilities or place great importance on staying close to their home community (Ramirez, ; Saeed, Jimenez, Howell, Karimbux, & Sukotjo, ). Proctor and Truscott () found that 70% of black school psychologists interviewed reported that the location of the program had a major impact on their decision to attend their doctoral program—mostly due to familial responsibilities and the need to be close to family.…”

Post- Graduate Dental Education: The Ghanaian Experience

“…Several studies have shown the tendency of majority of students to prefer to continue their education towards a specialty degree [3][4][5][6]. In a survey of ten graduating classes at Harvard School of Dental Medicine [7] regarding students' specialty choice and factors influencing that choice the findings were that the largest percentage of students chose "enjoyment of providing the specialty service" as the factor most influencing their specialty choice. "Prior Dental school experience" and "faculty influence" were greater influences for students pursuing specialties other than those pursuing postdoctoral general dentistry.…”