This profile is the Advanced Standing (international) pathway.
It is for dentists who already earned a dental degree outside the U.S. and apply through ADEA CAAPID. It is not the four-year predoctoral program, and it is not a residency. See the same school's four-year DDS/DMD profile
Every line below is read from a published record — the program's own entry or its admissions page. No acceptance rates or average scores appear here, because no board publishes them per program.
No bench test is published, so the decision rests on exams, documents and the interview — your written file has to do all the work.
Official ADEA CAAPID recordExams they list as required: NBDE, INBDE, TOEFL.
Official ADEA CAAPID recordCredentials are only accepted through Educational Credential Evaluators (ECE) — an evaluation from anyone else does not count.
Official ADEA CAAPID record
In their own words: “The Program for Advanced Standing Students (PASS) at the University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine (Penn Dental Medicine) is designed for graduates of international dental school…”
Program website
Class size sits around the pathway average at 20 (estimate) seats.
Official ADEA CAAPID recordLonger than most: 29 months of enrolment, so budget for the extra year of tuition and living costs.
Official ADEA CAAPID record
Restricted to U.S. citizens and permanent residents in the published record — if you need visa sponsorship, this seat is not open to you.
Official ADEA CAAPID recordA separate supplemental application AND its own fee are required on top of CAAPID — missing it voids the application.
Official ADEA CAAPID record
University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine
Every figure on this page is taken from this program's own entry in the official ADEA CAAPID directory, last updated March 14, 2026. Verify anything for yourself:
The Program for Advanced Standing Students (PASS) at the University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine (Penn Dental Medicine) is designed for graduates of international dental schools who want to practice dentistry in the United States. Most states require a degree from a dental school accredited by the American Dental Association before granting licensure. Penn Dental Medicine offers a 29-month program that leads to a D.M.D. degree to prepare non-U.S. trained dentists. Upon matriculation, PASS students will join the second semester of the second year by participating in all ongoing preclinical, laboratory and didactic clinical courses. PASS students will not be required to take any second-year basic science courses, but instead will participate in an additional, specially designed preclinical laboratory/seminar program. Following the successful completion of the second year, students will be fully integrated into the class, and they will take part in all academic and clinical experiences in the third and fourth years of dental school. Students participate in a modern health care delivery system, which simulates general practice. In addition, they rotate through the specialt
- Degree awarded
- D.M.D.
- Program length
- 29 months
- Class size
- 20 (estimate)
- Application opens
- March 5, 2026
- Application deadline
- June 1, 2026
- Program start
- January 4, 2027
- Bench test
- No
- Supplemental application
- Yes
- Supplemental fee
- Yes
- U.S. citizens / green card only
- Yes
Required exams
Transcript evaluation
Educational Credential Evaluators (ECE)
National board notes
- Official National Dental Board Examination (NDBE) Scores
- - Passing official NBDE Part I and Part II, or INBDE scores are required for all applicants. Official ADA National Board scores must be sent to ADEA CAAPID.
TOEFL instructions
- An official valid TOEFL score is required for all applicants (including native English speakers) who have received their dental degree from a non U.S. dental school.
- While there is no minimum TOEFL score, serious consideration will be given to applicants with Internet-based test (iBT) scores of 5.0 and above (new scale) or 95 above (old scale). The average iBT TOEFL score for the class entering January 2026 was
- TOEFL scores from July 2024 and later are required for admission.
- Official TOEFL scores must be sent to ADEA CAAPID.
- For information and registration materials visit
- TOEFL
- IELTS scores will not be accepted.
Letters of evaluation
- Three letters of evaluation are required and must meet the following criteria:
- One letter
- must
- come from the Dean or Director of the applicant’s primary dental school on letterhead stationery with an original hand-written signature.
- One letter
- must
- come from a faculty member of the same institution on letterhead stationery with an original hand-written signature.
- One letter
This program does not publish a tuition figure in the CAAPID directory, and we refuse to print a guess next to a number as consequential as this one. Tuition, instrument kits, fees and living costs in Philadelphia change every cycle.
Open the cost-of-attendance page on the program's own site for the current figure, and budget separately for the 29 months you will be enrolled.
Open program websiteMenty Beyleyen
Senior Associate Director of Admissions
University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine
240 South 40th Street, Room 122
Philadelphia, PA 19104
215-898-8943
- Official ADEA CAAPID directory entry
https://programs.adea.org/CAAPID/programs/university-of-pennsylvania-school-of-dental-medicine
Fields taken from here: program length, class size, application open date, deadline, start date, bench test, supplemental application, required exams, transcript evaluator, TOEFL and letter instructions
- Program's own website
https://dental.upenn.edu
Fields taken from here: tuition and cost of attendance, curriculum detail, contact details
Verification history
No manual re-check has been logged since the source page itself was dated March 14, 2026. Administrators log every re-verification and it appears here.
Every account below was read straight off University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine's own website, so you are following the real feed and writing to the real office — nothing here is a look-alike page.
Accounts marked "university-wide" belong to the parent institution, not the dental school — the school itself does not run a separate feed on that platform.
Where these came from
https://www.dental.upenn.edu/Videos & links about this program
Official campus walkthroughs, admissions info sessions and program pages posted by the administration — each with a short written summary of what it covers.
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