Harvard School of Dental Medicine: Average DAT, GPA, and How to Get In

Numbers below come from the school's own published materials as of July 2026 (each is linked to its source). Admissions stats shift every cycle — treat these as a snapshot and confirm on the school's official admissions page before you apply.

Harvard School of Dental Medicine (HSDM) is a private DMD program in Boston, Massachusetts, and one of the more application-heavy dental schools in the country to apply to. If you're building your school list, here's exactly what HSDM has told applicants about its own program, straight from the school's own pages, with nothing rounded or guessed — and where Harvard simply doesn't publish a number, we say so plainly instead of filling in a guess.

Harvard dental school stats at a glance

Harvard's average DAT score

HSDM does not publish an average or minimum DAT score anywhere on its official site. Its own admissions FAQ states plainly that HSDM has no minimum GPA or DAT score requirement, and that applications are reviewed entirely holistically, per the school's admissions FAQ — interpersonal and communication skills, motivation, and prior exposure to the dental profession are weighted alongside academics, not treated as a secondary tiebreaker after a score cutoff. Since there's no dated class-profile page with a stated average anywhere on hsdm.harvard.edu, the honest answer is: Harvard doesn't tell you a number, so check the school's admissions page for the current cycle rather than trust a secondhand figure circulating on a forum.

That doesn't mean percentile context is useless. Our DAT score percentiles guide walks through the ADA's own official percentile tables, so you can see exactly how any DAT score stacks up nationally even without a Harvard-specific number to compare it to, and our DAT score converter translates your practice scores between the old 1–30 scale and the new 200–600 scale.

Harvard's average GPA

Unlike DAT, HSDM does publish a GPA figure — just not the way most class-profile pages present one. In an official Dean's welcome letter for the incoming class, hsdm.harvard.edu states that the DMD Class of 2029 — 35 students, entering Fall 2025, arriving from 29 undergraduate institutions — "consistently performed at the top of their class with an average GPA of 3.94," per the school's published welcome letter. That's an overall/cumulative GPA figure, not a separate science-GPA breakout, and it's tied to one specific entering class (Fall 2025) rather than a published rolling multi-year average, so treat 3.94 as the most recent snapshot rather than a permanent bar.

Class size and admission selectivity

HSDM's incoming DMD class holds 35 seats, per the school's admissions page, a figure echoed on both the Class of 2029 welcome page and the Class of 2027 news page. What makes Harvard tough to get into isn't a stated score cutoff — it's sheer volume: the school "receives well over 1,000 applications annually for the 35 seats in each incoming DMD class," per the school's admissions page. Harvard doesn't publish an acceptance rate, but that ratio alone puts it among the more application-heavy programs on any applicant's list.

Interviews can run in up to two rounds. Fall applicants get a virtual first interview and may be invited back for a second — either virtual or in-person, with the in-person version including a campus tour and student panel — while spring applicants complete both interviews virtually on the same day, per the school's admissions page.

Application deadline

Per the "Timeline" accordion on HSDM's official admissions page, the AADSAS deadline to apply for the 2026-2027 cycle is December 15, 2026, and applications "must be completed by this date to be considered for admission" — January 1, 2027 — with incomplete applications after that date denied. First acceptance notifications also go out on December 15, 2026, on a rolling basis, so a file that's complete early can hear back sooner rather than waiting on a single decision date.

Tuition and cost of attendance

Per HSDM's official Cost of Attendance page, DMD tuition is $76,828 per year for each of the four years of the 2026-2027 academic year — a single flat rate, since Harvard is private and doesn't split resident/non-resident tuition. Tuition alone isn't the full cost, though: HSDM's own on-campus budget table puts total cost of attendance, including mandatory fees, health insurance, and living expenses, at roughly $125,274 in Year I, climbing to about $148,101 in Year II once an $18,840 clinic fee kicks in. Both figures are explicitly labeled as projections for the 2026-2027 academic year and are subject to change in future years, so confirm current numbers directly with HSDM before you build a loan budget around them.

FAQ: Harvard dental school admissions