First off, some classic advice: shoot for the moon; even if you miss, you’ll land amongst the stars. Try your hardest and attempt for a 94 ATAR. You never know what you’ll get until you receive your score and who knows? You might surprise yourself! Also, remember that selection ranks change yearly, so you don’t know what will happen when you apply in the future; it could drop next year, for example, purely due to low demand.
My second piece of advice? Have a back up plan, just in case: La Trobe and Homesglen both have Oral Health courses. (La Trobe also has a bachelor of dentistry but it’s also super competitive.) The only catch with La Trobe is the location - it’s in Bendigo, so might be some decent travel if you live in Melbourne. Otherwise, you can attend Holmesglen.
If you don’t like those options, I would recommend:
- internal transfer - start with an Arts degree at UoM, transfer into oral health later.
- bridging course - take methods bridging course, get into Science at UoM and transfer into oral health.
- external transfer - take a closely related course at another Uni and transfer into UoM’s Oral health later.
- postgraduate route - fulfil the prerequisites for the Doctor of Dental Surgery and apply for that. This is much longer but you’ll be a dentist rather than an OHT this way.
You will need to do more research than this but hopefully that gives you a starting point. 🙂
