There are many students who just want a clear idea about the tuition of New York University Dental School. And if you’re one of them, then you have stopped by to the right spot. Below I’ll give you a clear image for the tuition costs and other costs associated with this college.

Get more information regarding NYU Dental School Tuition,

NYU Dental School Tuition

The direct educational cost of NYU dental school is $395,393 for the 2020-2021 school year.

That number ignores accrued interest, loan fees, living expenses, and tuition inflation. If you add these costs, an NYU Dental degree costs $705,997 for the class of 2024.

For this high cost, NYU Dean Dr. Charles Bertolami has blamed “real horror stories […] that involve excessive [dental student] living expenses.”

The only horror story is the price NYU sets for its dental school degree, which we will break down in detail for you.

Incoming Students: Full-Time Hygiene Program Cost of Attendance 2020 – 2021

Fall 2020 and Spring 2021

Full-Time Hygiene Program (Fall 2020 Admits)

Direct Expenses	Fall 2020	Spring 2021
Tuition (based on 12 credits)	$26,102	$26,102
Mandatory Fees (based on 12 credits)	$1,662	$1,416
Dental Instrumental Fees/Books and Supplies	$3966	$0
Total	$31,730	$27,518

Indirect Expenses	Fall 2020	Spring 2021
Room & Board (*2)	$9,622	$9,622
Transportation (*3)	$555	$555
Personal Expenses (*4)	$1,395	$1,395
Health Insurance	$1,759	$1,759
Loan Fees	$29	$29
Total Indirect Expenses	$13,360	$13,360
Direct & Indirect Expenses Total	$45,090	$40,878

Direct Expenses are institutional charges billed to you by New York University via the Office of the Bursar.

Indirect Expenses are estimates of costs that may be associated with your attendance, but are not typically University charges.

¹ NYUCD encourages each student to assess their specific expenses and resources, and to finance/borrow only as much as needed.

² Individual costs for off-campus living vary as the New York City area has many different housing options and associated costs, depending upon location, number of roommates, amenities. The listed amount represents the budgeted amount for the Semester

³ This amount represents an average cost for one round-trip travel home during the academic year.

⁴ This category represents miscellaneous expenses, including local transportation within New York City, that will vary widely by student.

⁵ Students who borrow federal loans will have the mandatory federal loan fees included in their Cost of Attendance budget.

• Please access the Tuition and Fee Rates site to acquire specific information about charges
• Please access the Billing and Payment Due Dates site to acquire information about billing and payment

Tuition, Fees & Expenses

2021-2022 Four-Year DDS Program

Category	Class of 2025	Class of 2024	Class of 2023	Class of 2022
	12 months D1	12 months D2	12 months D3	11 months D4
Tuition	$88,700	$88,700	$88,700	$88,700
Fees	$3,121	$2,986	$2,986	$2,986
Instruments	$6,430	$6,430	$6,430	$6,430
Health Insurance*	$4,610	$4,044	$4,044	$4,044
Total Educational Expenses	$102,861	$102,160	$102,160	$102,160
Room and Board	$36,552	$36,552	$36,552	$33,506
Transportation	included in personal expenses	included in personal expenses	included in personal expenses	included in personal expenses
Personal Expenses	$5,052	$5,052	$5,052	$4,632
Total Estimated Indirect Costs	$41,604	$41,604	$41,604	$38,138

* This charge is for Comprehensive Health Insurance. Students may downgrade, or waive the insurance coverage by contacting the Student Health Insurance Services at (212) 443-1020.

2021-2022 Advanced Standing Program

Category	D2 Class of 2024	D3 Class of 2023	D4 Class of 2022
Months	6 months	12 months	12 months
Tuition	$44,350	$88,700	$88,700
Fees	$1,438	$3,121	$2,986
Instruments	$3,215	$6,430	$6,430
Health Insurance *	$2,482	$4,044	$4,044
Total Educational Expenses	$51,485	$102,295	$102,160

* This charge is for Comprehensive Health Insurance. Students may downgrade, or waive the insurance coverage by contacting the Student Health Insurance Services at (212) 443-1020.

Master’s Programs Tuition and Fees

2018-2019 Clinical Research and Biomaterials

Tuition	$53,610
Registration & Services Fees	$2,958 (based on 30 credits/year)
Health Insurance*	$3,683
Total Educational Expense	$60,251 (based on 30 credits/year)
Room and Board**	$26,024
Books	$1,100
Personal Expenses	$3,678
Transportation	$1,100
Loan Fees***	$218
Total Estimated Living Expenses	$32,120
ESTIMATED TOTAL	$92,371

* This charge is for Comprehensive Health Insurance. Students may downgrade, or waive the insurance coverage by contacting the Student Health Insurance Services at (212) 443-1020.
** Figures are estimated for graduate student living expenses in New York City.
*** Loan Fees are based on the unsubsidized loan only, subject to change per federal regulations
Office of Global Service Fee (for International Students) $90

NYU Associate Dentist Salaries Are Not High Enough to Pay For the Degree Without Income Based Repayment

The average associate dentist makes around $120,000 to $140,000 (about $80,000 to $100,000 after taxes). The average NYU dental grad that I’ve worked with owes about $600,000.

Keep in mind you cannot go back in time and borrow at yesterday’s tuition prices. Therefore, take any mention of the student debt of the graduating class with a grain of salt.

Even if you could refinance that debt to 5%, you’d have to pay about $5,800 a month, or roughly $70,000 a year just to make a meaningful dent in the principal.

When prospects and students ask about how they’ll pay back their loans, how can NYU’s dental school say anything but “our graduates from working-class and middle-class families are almost exclusively at the mercy of federal income-based repayment and forgiveness programs for their financial survival.”

Yet students have told me that financial aid and administrators do not tell them that. They even suggest that they’ll “pay it back in no time.” That assertion seems to be at odds with basic math.

NYU Dental Student Claims of False Claims by Admissions Office 

I have had numerous clients and readers who told me that when they applied to NYU, someone in the administration claimed that the average repayment period for dental student loans was only seven years. 

Is this possible? Perhaps if you include students from wealthy backgrounds who borrow nothing, or maybe it’s just blatantly false.

Much of the national discussion has been about regulating the banks, insurance companies, or investment firms. Who’s watching the universities who are taking our Millennial generation to the poor house?

Look at this presentation to the class of 2016 on NYU college of dentistry’s financial aid website. They suggest trying to make payments on the accruing interest while still in school to make paying back the loans easier.

That is TERRIBLE advice. If someone can barely afford to pay down the interest, they will struggle ever paying back the loan in the first place and should use an income-driven strategy like PAYE or REPAYE.

*SOURCE: NYU PRESENTATION LISTED ON WEBSITE

After listening to NYU’s financial aid dept, you’ll only have to deal with $500,000 of student debt instead of $550,000. How helpful!

Excuses About the Cost of NYU Dental School

One of the most common excuses I’ve heard from administrations everywhere at dental programs for rising tuition is that “the cost to educate a dentist has soared and that’s why tuition had to go up.”

Another one of my favorite excuses is “federal and state support for higher education has declined enormously, so we had to make up the difference in revenue with higher tuition.”

Yes, inflation happens over time. I understand that faculty want raises and that health insurance costs for staff continue to increase rapidly.

However, at least in NYU’s case, the university owns some of the most valuable real estate in the world, which has only gone up in value.

It established locations in Shanghai and Abu Dhabi. Are they unrelated to the finances of the dental school? Perhaps. 

That said, the school is not hurting for money.

Professional Schools Are a Profit Center for Universities

I’d argue that dental school is a big profit center. The tuition increases have little to do with rising costs of equipment or insurance. It’s mostly about an institution that seems to act like a for-profit business.

In my view, the main reason tuition at schools like NYU has soared is simply because they have been able to get away with it. Students don’t say, “you know what, I’d rather not be a dentist because of that sticker price.” Why is this?

• Income-based programs keep students from feeling the full weight of their debt load
• Schools like NYU still have many more applicants than seats
• Publications routinely tout the high incomes and job stability of the dental fields without mentioning the debt

One dentist told me a story about being forced to buy an equipment box at the cost of hundreds of dollars. Meanwhile, a bait and tackle box that basically performs the same purpose can be had for $30 on Amazon.

Others have shared stories about software programs that run in the thousands, textbooks so expensive that you might as well carry around gold instead, and other equipment that seems unneeded or at least wildly more expensive than it should be.

The Average NYU Dental School Debt vs the NYU Loan Balance I’ve Seen

According to the recently released College Scorecard data, the NYU dental school average debt for students in 2016 and 2017 was $357,882. The median was $387,660. That big difference between the median and mean suggests there are a lot of smaller debt burdens from students with family assistance hiding the true cost for students without financial help.

Keep in mind the estimated cost of attendance I’m showing you is supposed to be for entering 1st-year students in fall 2020. However, I mentioned that the debt loads of the class of 2015-2020 that I’ve seen have been about $600,000 for NYU dental students.

That means when they went to school, the published cost of attendance was significantly less than what’s on the NYU website today.

Dentists have told me that their tuition increased while they were in school. If you look at NYU’s four-year cost of attendance estimate, you’ll only see the published prices at today’s rates. That gives an inaccurate picture for a student interested in their final loan balance at graduation.

Accrued Interest Growth Has a Big Impact on the Cost of NYU Dental

The worst impact though comes from the accrued interest growth while you’re in school. Unlike undergraduates, professional students receive few subsidies. The accrued interest balance once you finish can often be over $80,000 for dental students. At NYU Dental I project that new students will add just under $100,000 of interest on the balance borrowed during school alone. 

This interest goes directly into your principal balance at graduation (called capitalization).

Hence, there are three ways the school’s cost of attendance estimate is flawed:

• Future tuition increases are not accounted for
• Accrued Interest isn’t mentioned
• Loan Fees are not accurate

High Cost of Living in New York City Adds to NYU Dental Cost

Let me focus on one aspect of the NYU student loan balances that is not the fault of the school: location.

New York City is extremely expensive. You’re virtually guaranteed to need the super high-cost Grad Plus loans to pay for living expenses there. In New York (or any expensive city for that matter), your rent could easily exceed $2,000 or even $3,000 a month.

Motivated students might try to live with roommates or avoid expensive food and entertainment options, but that only goes so far when your required tuition and fees cost $100,000 each year.

If you have other options, I always suggest to prospective applicants to choose a low-cost location for their graduate study. You’ll be working and studying most of the time anyway, so you might as well save $100,000 or more in living expenses that will result in a much lower debt burden.

Is NYU Dental School the Worst Offender?

There are plenty of offenders out there in the high balance student loan world.

I have already written about St. George’s med and vet schools, so this is not the first time I’ve called out a university before.

There are certainly other extremely expensive dental schools I could mention. I’ve chosen NYU Dental to analyze because I consistently hear so many horrifying stories coming from my clients and readers. It’s also one of the biggest dental schools by class size.

A cynical person might say I’m attacking NYU because I have a student loan consulting business. If I was smart, I’d keep my mouth shut and send a thank you note to NYU administration for producing so many new clients in need of our services. I’d rather folks have options when they graduate dental school that include not being at the mercy of government repayment plans. 

In my view, the school seems to pair lots of poor information with a massive debt load. They are a virtual factory churning out dentists at a huge rate. 

At other high-cost schools including USC, I have heard more stories of financial aid departments going out of their way to tell people about how they will likely need to use income-based repayment programs when they graduate.

Another example is Midwestern University. They list on their cost of attendance estimate that students should expect tuition increases of between 4% and 7% annually.

In contrast, I have heard SO many stories of NYU employees claiming fast repayment periods for half-million-dollar loan balances that I felt compelled to write this article.

NYU Dental School

The New York University College of Dentistry is the dentistry school of New York University. As the 3rd oldest dentistry school in the United States, it offers both graduate programs and clinical training in oral healthcare.^[1]

History

The College of Dentistry was founded in 1865 as the “New York College of Dentistry.” It merged with NYU in 1925. NYU Dentistry is the third oldest continuously operating and the largest dental school in the United States. In 1957, the College moved into its present home on First Avenue, which in 1965 was named the K. B. Weissman Clinical Science Building. In 1978, the Arnold and Marie Schwartz Hall of Dental Sciences was completed. In 1987, New York University dedicated the David B. Kriser Dental Center. In 2002, the Leonard I. Bluestone Center for Clinical Research opened – the only dental school-based research center that provides beds for 24-hour patient monitoring. In fall of 2005, NYU’s Division of Nursing moved from the Steinhardt School of Education to form the College of Nursing within the College of Dentistry. In 2015, a new joint 170,000 square foot building for Dentistry, Nursing, and the Bioengineering Institute was opened. In aggregate, the College of Dentistry occupies 27 floors distributed among five buildings.

Facilities

The College of Dentistry is located on First Avenue between East 24th and 26th Streets, about 6 blocks south of the NYU School of Medicine. The College’s facilities include the Schwartz Hall of Dental Sciences, the K. B. Weissman Clinical Science Building, the new 13 floor interdisciplinary building at 433 First Avenue, four newly renovated floors at 137 25th Street, and one floor at 380 First Avenue. These house classrooms, patient clinics, research and teaching facilities, and administrative offices, as well as a state-of-the-art Learning Commons for dentistry, dental hygiene, nursing, and engineering students and an Executive Conference Suite. Clinical facilities include 506 dental operatories. The operatories are designed in modules, each containing a waiting room, offices, X-ray facilities, and a seminar room for instruction and consultation. These facilities enable the College to provide oral health care for thousands of New Yorkers. The address shown in the caption for the figure below is incorrect, the building shown is on East 24th street, not East 25th street.

Library

New York University College of Dentistry from E.25 Street

The College of Dentistry maintains one of the largest rare book dental libraries, close to 1000 volumes, the legacy of Dr. Bernhard Wolf Weinberger, a dental historian, orthodontist and a faculty member in the 1930s. Its collection includes a first edition of the Pierre Fauchard Le Chirurgien Dentist (1728), one second edition (1746) and a third edition (1786). Other volumes include works by Bartolomeo Eustachio, 1563 edition of De Libellus de Dentibus, 1546 and 1547 editions of Artzneybuch (The Little Medicinal Book for All Kinds of Diseases and Infirmities of the Teeth), one of the first German dentally-related book. The original library, founded in 1909 and named the Waldmann Memorial Library in 1978 was digitized and modernized in 2015. The College of Dentistry has moved its “library” into the newly opened Dental-Nursing-Biomaterials joint interprofessional building at 433 First Avenue. The building has a large study area for all students but it no longer houses books. The students have 24 hour access to the study area.

E-Curriculum

Since 2001, NYU Dentistry has replaced traditional textbooks with a collection of digitalized textbooks. All required materials are available to students through a computer-enhanced curriculum. The new technology gives each student a license for all of the textbooks in the curriculum. In addition to traditional textbook content, students are able to view slide presentations and video streams of lab and clinical procedures and do full text searches on their materials.

Notable faculty

• Milo Hellman, American orthodontist
• Norman William Kingsley – First Dean of New York College of Dentistry, 1865-1869, Father of orthodontics
• Robert Ledley – inventor of the whole body CT scanner
• Eduardo Rodriguez – Professor and Chair of Department of Plastic Surgery at NYU Langone Medical Center; performed the first full facial transplant
• Martha Sommerman – Director of NIDCR (2011–present)
• Paul Goldhaber – former Dean, Harvard School of Dental Medicine (1968-1990)
• Louis Goldberg – former Dean, SUNY University of Buffalo School of Dental Medicine

Notable alumni

• Daniel Bukantz (1917–2008), Olympic fencer
• Frank A. Gough, orthodontist
• Irwin Smigel, dentist