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I'm glad you made a video that cut through a lot of the negativity and subjectivity you see online to get to a much clearer picture of this profession.

small channel, but you are putting quality content out there. Lots of schools and doctors find it taboo to talk about income, but when they are piling 300-600k in debt on us, income is a huge factor that we have got to think about. I know you have done videos on income, but maybe you could do a video of where ideal locations for practices are? obviously more people less dentists is the golden ratio but I am sure there is more to it. Would love to hear since you have lived in the middle of nowhere and im sure done the research to support that decision. Subbed!

Studying in Germany, 4th year rn. Im sooo happy that studying dentistry is almost "for free" here. Wont have any dept when I finish...

Hey Joel! Been a fan since DAT Genius days! Love your videos man! As someone who is starting dental school in the summer, I was worried about the amount of loans but your advice has given me motivation for my dream of becoming a dentist! 🙏🏾

Thank you for your positivity and nuance! I for one am grateful for increasing diversity in dentistry (we still have a long way to go). And I am also excited that suicide rates in dentistry are dropping.

I wish I found this channel sooner!! You do not beat around the Bush with all your videos and they are so well edited. All the info is just what I need too.

Hey Joel! I just wanted to say thank you for helping me with the PAT for the DAT. You were clutch. I’m about to apply for dental school this application cycle. I hope we can meet one day as colleagues! Keep up the good work!

This video came as a blessing It was so well presented!! Thank you so much!!!!!!

What an amazing video! To the point. My wife is a dentist and we can vouch everything you just said

Loved this video as a D1, definitely keeps me going! This may be outside your area but can you make a video or comment about ideals people have about medicine vs the problems it has now?

I am a dentist in the middle east and the saturation down here is crazy. Fresh grads are working for free, they end up making money off of commissions. Three years in, if you are lucky, you start getting paid the equivalent of 1.5 to 2 thousand dollars per month. I think the prevailing advice to anyone wanting to go into any feild is that nothing is easy any more and that you need to love the feild you wanna potentially part of so much that you dont mind the bs you will go through to get where you want.

Hey Joel, love your videos! I’m starting dental school and n the fall and this video really gave me a lot of encouragement and motivation :)

Thank you Dr. Joel

Almost never comment on videos but I gotta say I enjoyed this video. I agree with your points👍

Very nice video Joel, I think I'm becoming addicted to your content.

Hi Joel! Super awesome videos! Can you also do an exploration of the other specialties? It was super helpful to see the info about oral surgery!

Hey, can you make videos related to dentistry in Canada? I feel like there’s already so much info out there for US students but these type of videos for Canadians (using Canadian data/stats) would be more helpful due to lack of info

just a add on, at 6:25, if a the IBR payment is is way less than the interest payment, then the loan instead of decreasing or staying still, it will increase instead. in order words, for example, if you own 500k for DS loan, at 7% ,you will spending about ~5.5k for student loan at 10 years plan normally at federal loan. for IBR loan repayment at 20 years plan, instead of 5.5k, you will be paying 10% of what you make instead, which is possibly 1.4k a month if you make about 14k/ month. after 20 years the remain balance is forgiven BUT, is consider taxable income. (meaning you have pay tax on that xxx$ or whatever you own) but since you are paying 1.4k instead of 5.5k, your loan will increase from 500k to xxx$$ or who ever know how after 20 years. ex: 1 mil then after 20 years, you will have to pay tax on that 1 mil. so you better save up a chunk of money after 20 years to pay of that tax bomb or you will be in deep $#$$.

dentistry is my dream, I'm still in high school but I live in the middle east and studying dentistry there isn't really the best way to go. im worried about the future and that I wouldn't be able to pursue my dream, anyways your videos have helped me a lot and gave me hope, I will forever be a big fan of yours!

Many of the students in American dental schools are from countries all over the world and practice there after they graduate.

700,000 in debt 💸 ? As a person out of debt I’d say that’s highly risky. Never 👎

Honestly I came out of school with close to 200k worth of debt but I realized that I should always pay myself first since the interests are so low on those loans. My money gets me better return in almost any financial instrument.

The problem with income is that people cherry pick stories from the top earners in other professions or they forget that even with the debt they will be making a lot more money than most and way more money once they pay it off

Hey Joel, loved the video it was super informative. One thing I just wanted to comment on was the income based loan repayment that you briefly discussed. Based on my understanding, the loan forgiveness at the end of term results in a massive "tax bomb" where the loans + interest accrued that are forgiven are counted as income and subjected to federal /state income tax. In the example you presented, the tax bomb would be massive and wouldn't he end up paying the same amount anyway?

Great video! Informational as always!

Hey great video! Just wanted to clarify what you said about Dr. Meru’s debt being forgiven. I believe at the end of 20 years he will owe income tax on the amount that is forgiven. So I his example he would owe income tax on the $2mil that his loan has grown to become. He will probably need to have $400-600k saved up for this I imagine

Great video. I am wondering if you took into account the saving for the tax-bomb of what goes into the loan forgiveness program? Keep the great work up.

Those average student debt numbers are also averaging in all the students whose family is paying for everything.

If you do the income repayment plan and pay the minimum on what you owe, you have to pay the taxes on the amount forgiven unless something has changed in the last 6 months. The individual that was mentioned in this video would have to write a 600-800k check on the 2 million that is “forgiven” at the end of the 20 years

As a nurse I dont even recommend nursing hence why I am looking for a career change. Though travel nursing has been lucrative as of late due to covid and the shortage of nurses but once it is over rates will go back down.

You should do a video on endo I hear that’s a good specialty!

I love your work Joel. Just to be clear with Dentists..the golden age was ALWAYS approximately twenty years before they started dental school. The same was true in 1980 when I started and the same question was always is it worth it to be a dentist. Back then the vaccine against dental caries was just a year away and thousands of dentists would be out of work. Nobody could believe that the yearly cost for dental school might top 10 thousand dollars but it actually did in my junior and senior year. I left school with a staggering debt of 30k from Columbia. Many dental schools closed during the eighties. When you get together with other dentists everybody is complaining how slow it is and how malpractice insurance is way too crazy. We start talking about retirement from year one. Yet a lot of dentists are still going strong into their seventies and beyond. Its actually one of those fields where you really get much better at it with age and if you are in good health you can go on indefinitely. The key is to always make it interesting and try new things. Almost everything I do today was not really around back in dental school...and thats a good thing. I do worry about corporate dentistry. I can see that it can be structured to discourage innovation and growth. Having your own practice allows you to learn things like endo implants and cad cam. If you have a corporate structure a lot of that work will always be given to the specialists who might be more efficient. Bottom line is ..if you feel this work is challenging and interesting you will find a way to get into the profession and make it work. If you are going because your parents or your uncle says "go into dentistry...my dentist has a yacht " that a terrible idea and it makes for unhappy people

Dentistry is one of the most challenging fields period. The scope of responsibility plus the vast array of "hats" you wear as an owner, added to the actual challenge of the work you do makes it a ridiculously challenging field. In today's day and age there are many other easier ways to make money and have a much less stressful time away from the office. Getting spit and blood shot in your face while bending your neck angling your face down and having gravity giving you a reverse face lift for 30 years boarders insanity.

be informative about the loan forgiveness. There’s a tax bomb at the end of 25 year of IBR. If you live in California, you’re looking at (up to) 50% tax with the forgiveness amount. Key: work hard during those years and live somewhere else other than Cali

There was a newly minted female orthodontist with one year's experience under her belt in Southern California; she made $400,000.00 a YEAR in 2023!!!!!!!!

These inflation calculators are usually conservative… often more inflation has taken place.

It's crazy how bigger cities haves more debt than smaller cities which is about 70k in debt which you can EASILY pay it off.

Hey Joel, you post awesome stuff. BTW, I was wondering do you guys need a video editor and KZfaq growth strategies who works specifically? If this something you are considering? Let me know if you want to see my work samples!

How about, as a video suggestion, talking about some of the physical challenges of dentistry? From what I understand it can be very physically demanding at times and a lot of dentists develop tendonitis. What are your thoughts and how do you deal with this?

thanks for the video. Taking the DAT august 20th. Gonna worry about not shitting myself over the test first T.T

Something I've really noticed in this profession is this culture of disrespect amongst dental colleagues. I.e. quick to bad-mouth other dentists' work despite not knowing full story; older dentists "cherry-picking" high prodn cases from their associates; I can go on. I can understand the saying "Dentists eat their young" or "Dentists eat their own" that is often repeated on DentalTown. I bet this is worse in saturated areas where there is fierce competition.

Did you just say that you could buy a soda for a nickel in 1996….what…

Either go into tech or pa

3:00 _The purchasing power of dollars back then were a lot less than they are today._ Incorrect -- purchasing power was higher in 1996. And no, sodas did not cost a nickel. You couldn't buy a candy bar in 1969 for less than 15¢. (Which I guess I shouldn't mention in front of a dentist.) Nor, a can of soda. You have to go to the way-back machine to discover what ordinary items cost in 1996, or 1969, or 1960. A small amalgam filling in 1968 cost $15...I saw the bill my parents or the insurance company paid. Over the 14 years of dental education tuition displayed in your graph, tuition costs at public universities have risen at an _obscene rate of 7.3%!_ This is the source of crippling dental student debt. Worth examining further is why _private_ university dental school tuition has risen at a slower, but still excessive 5.18%. Americans are not going to have a viable health care system if students in dentistry and medicine graduate with excessive debt, and are compelled to establish high-fee practices which prioritize costly procedures over conventional preventative dentistry -- the kind that keeps citizens healthy. Congress must either subsidize medical tuition, or create incentives for private endowments to subsidize it. The dental products industry has healthier profit margins than most other segments of health care (check out the very high cost of products sold to dental practices). Perhaps those profits can be taxed to help fund dental education and reduce tuition costs. You know something is wrong with dentistry as a field when the primary selling point of virtually all dental product manufacturers is increased profit margins for the practitioner. Health care must be a science- and technology-based profession that pays competitively compared with practitioners in other countries, but ultimately, does not have an overriding profit motive like it has for decades in the US.

USC orthodontist Mike Meru has over a million dollars in student loan debt. Holy shit.

Purchasing power was much more than today. You said it backwards.

Make $120k or $150k as dentist with $400k-500k student loans in some cases, versus dental hygienist needs no 4 years of college and two years education after high school and makes $80,000 or 100k with $10-$20k in total debt load with no stress. Think twice about dentistry and consider hygiene because way better money considering debt load for education (only 2 years after HIGH SCHOOL NO COLLEGE).

the music is distracting

Did u mention the tax bomb?

I’m an engineer, but Im really interested in becoming a dentist. Not sure if it’s too late for me. PS: I really love your voice! ❤️

The Inflation calculator used in this video uses the ' official ' CPI .. Fun fact: the way inflation is calculated has changes numerous times since 1980. Today gas , food , housing and electricity prices are no longer used to calculate inflation... If they did we would have a drastically different out look on how impoverished americans have gotten.

You didn't mention the huge tax bomb Dr. Meru will need to pay after 25 years.

Given dentists are so integral to good human health than why not train NHS only dentists. All training and fees paid with guaranteed salaries and NHS only practices. Well funded, well equppied, well staffed. If we can blow billions on pointless IT system and unnecessary foreign aid we can look after the nations dental heapth. But, tied to NHS for a minimum of 10 to 15 years post qualifying. That would provide a service and breathing room for long term solutions. And, we all start looking after our teeth properly.

is it a bad reason to pursue dentistry for money?

Debt to attend Dental school + Debt to open a practice + Tax tax tax = Corporate dentistry slave.

What about orthodontics?

#1 when talking about tech you compare people making 400k to dentist making 200k and then say these 400k people are rare , you know what’s not rare and is found in practically every respectful tech or non tech company? People making 150-200k as seniors. Say what you want that’s the reality , yes they aren’t makings 400 , 500 , 600k these are the 1% but practically everyone is making 100k + as mid levels and 150+ as seniors google or not google. That’s with a 4 year degree.

Somebody has to fix teeth

The "well-intentioned" comment that suggests doing nursing instead and complains about stress... Sir (or ma'am/ person), are you sure about that? Cuz I don't think that all of the nurses leaving their jobs in the middle of this pandemic would agree with you... lol

Aw man, I just found your channel and love your other content but this clickbait is way over the top for me. How in the world could the dental industry die? Maybe you're spending too much time learning dental techniques and not enough time learning basic evolutionary biology... Humans have teeth and we will keep growing them.

DUDE, A CAN OF COCA COLA WAS 95 CENTS IN 1996 NOT 5 CENTS. GET YER EASY FACTS RIGHT.