Hi, I stumble upon this forum which attracts me when searching for "imu dentistry" in google. I'm juz an ordinary dental student from imu which passby here. My reply here do not specifically apply all to yeyechan as im still new to how the reply thingy function.

Juz wan to clarify something and clear ur doubt. I remember when we meet our dean on the first day, she explained to us why dentistry is so expensive (not juz imu, but all the other uni in the world). To let u all know, dentistry cost more because we need to spend a lot on facilities, dental materials, instruments, devices, lab machines and especially dental chairs (u'll be surprised to see how much materials and instruments we use, and how expensive the things are if u enrolled into dentistry). Compare to our medical frens, they just need a clinical skill room with a bed, table, some medical device which can be shared,and etc, but we need our own set of instrument for our learning process and treating patient. For instance, one small instrument can easily cost more than RM100, and imagine each of us has a box of instument. Plus, dental chair can cost more than RM100K depending on the brand and function of the dental chair.

And yes, I admit that our fees is expensive. But the money is used to set up our lab and clinic and buying materials, instruments, machines and dental chairs of good quality. Our clinics is really luxurious, and the dental chair we are using is like the mecedes benz of dental chair and that's where all the money goes. I can only say u get what u pay for, despite i still think it's expensive compare to other uni, but expenses in KL is higher too. The dental chairs is definitely sufficient to accomodate our needs, as there are only 3rd year and 2nd year student used it sometimes and we are using it in different time. The reason we pair up is not because we have not enough chair, but it's because we practice 4-handed dentistry, which means there is a operator and an asistant during our treatment and we take turn to become operator and assistant. The same goes to the dental lab too. The downside is, coz material is so expensive, occasionally they control the material that we use, juz occzsionally. And I would say our fees are more worth than medical student as they only have 2 hrs lecture everyday while we have whole day lecture, labs, etc(which means hectic..)

Academic wise, I would say that all our lecturers speak relatively good english even if they are from middle east(only few of them, some are chinese and one japanese) because some of them did they postgraduate in UK, we do not faced the problem as our medical frens did. Our dental lecturers are really bright and some are really experinced. A lot of them are actually active in dental field as in they are actively involved in research, attend conference and some even give lecture in conference and have close network with dental professionals around the world. And there will be more lecturers joining in the future.

Our course can only get recognition after the 1st batch graduate, but there shud be not much problem as our lecturers will make sure that we obtain adequate training before we graduate.

To Law_yew_wooi, manipal vs imu. Both are relatively new school, the difference is fees, way of teaching (manipal use traditional way of teaching while imu use newer teaching methods, there is pros n cons), imu have no campus life compare to manipal, etc.. If u're thinking of juz spend one semester in imu, i wont suggest u to do so because basically u're mostly studying basic science in year 1 and u'll only have the feel of u're a dental student when u're year 2 onwards. I suggest u can try arrange a visit to our uni and tour around, do ask dental student if u hav doubt as the administrative ppl are not familiar with how our faculty runs.