Foreign-Trained Dentists: How to Become a Dentist in the U.S.

If you earned your dental degree outside the United States or Canada, that degree alone doesn't qualify you for a U.S. dental license.

Licensure usually requires graduation from a program accredited by the Commission on Dental Accreditation (CODA) — or, for Canadian schools, by CODA's Canadian counterpart, CDAC — and a school outside that CODA/CDAC system isn't accredited to that standard (BLS).

The standard route in is an advanced-standing program — sometimes called an "international dentist program" — a shortened DDS or DMD curriculum that U.S. dental schools run specifically for dentists who already trained abroad.

Graduate one, and you sit for the same national board exam and state licensure as any other U.S. dental-school graduate.

Here's the route from a foreign dental degree to a U.S. dental license, in order.

The early steps are the ones that differ from the domestic path in our step-by-step guide to becoming a dentist — everything after graduation is the same licensure sequence every graduate faces, whether they trained in America or abroad.

Timelines and costs are set by each school and each state board, so treat these as a sequence to plan around rather than a fixed schedule.

U.S. dental licensure usually runs through a DDS or DMD from a CODA-accredited program (BLS) — the same standard covered in our how to become a dentist guide for anyone starting from a U.S. bachelor's degree.

Dental schools outside the U.S. aren't CODA-accredited (Canada has its own equivalent body, CDAC), so a degree from a school outside that CODA/CDAC system doesn't satisfy the requirement — no matter how rigorous the training was or how long you practiced at home — except in the narrow, state-specific cases covered below.

That holds even for dentists who were fully licensed and working in their home country.

Years of clinical experience abroad can strengthen an application to a U.S. program, but it doesn't substitute for an accredited degree itself.

There are narrow, state-specific exceptions worth checking rather than assuming.

California, for example, lets an applicant sit for its dental exam with a degree from a CODA-approved or board-approved dental college, which can include a foreign dental school accredited by a body with a reciprocal accreditation agreement accepted by the board.

Exceptions like this are set by individual state boards and change, so verify directly with the board where you plan to practice.

For internationally trained dentists without a state-specific exception like California's, the advanced-standing pathway remains the realistic route.

An advanced-standing program is a DDS or DMD track built for dentists who already hold a dental degree from outside the U.S. or Canada.

Because you're not starting from zero, the curriculum typically gives credit for the biomedical science coursework you've already completed and compresses the program into a shorter, more clinically intensive timeline than the standard four-year track described in our dental school guide.

Exact length, cost, and curriculum are set by each dental school and vary meaningfully from program to program.

Graduating awards the same DDS or DMD as the standard four-year program, with the same scope and the same path to licensure.

The shared application system for these programs is the Centralized Application for Advanced Placement for International Dentists (CAAPID), run by the American Dental Education Association (ADEA) — the same organization behind AADSAS, the application service U.S. dental-school applicants use.

One CAAPID application goes out to every advanced-standing program you select, and each program runs its own review and secondary steps from there.

Before you apply, your foreign dental degree and transcripts typically need an outside academic credential evaluation, and many programs also require English-proficiency test scores.

Requirements differ by school, so check each program's current application instructions rather than assuming they match — this is exactly the kind of detail that changes from cycle to cycle.

Once you graduate from a CODA-accredited advanced-standing program, licensure works the same way it does for any other dental-school graduate: pass the INBDE (the national written board exam), pass a clinical licensure examination, and apply to the dental board in the state where you plan to practice — which can add state-specific requirements of its own, such as a jurisprudence exam on the state's dental law.

Our how-to-become guide walks through that exam sequence in full.

Check your target state before you enroll, because a state can route initial licensure through residency training rather than a clinical exam.

In New York, every applicant for initial dental licensure has had to complete an approved dental residency of at least one year since January 1, 2007 — a clinical examination isn't accepted there for initial licensure.

Delaware requires a year as a dental intern in a CODA-accredited general practice residency (or a CODA-approved specialty residency with board-specified rotations) plus its own practical examination.

If you're set on one of those states, build the residency year into your plan.

With a license in hand, your career looks like any other dentist's from there on — in ADEA's 2025 survey, 77% of seniors planning to join a private practice expected to start as an associate, and the same questions about DSO vs. private practice and specializing apply.

When you're ready, browse current dentist jobs.

This article is general career and education information, not legal or immigration advice. Accreditation standards are set by CODA, application details by ADEA and each dental school, and licensure requirements by the dental board of the state where you plan to practice — all of them change, so verify current details directly with each before you apply or relocate.