How to Become an Orthodontist: Dentistry Careers (2022)

Last Updated: May 15th, 2022 by Noah Shaw

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Dentists help people maintain their oral health, but there are several specializations within the field.

One of them is orthodontics, which focuses on diagnosing, preventing, and correcting irregularities in a patient’s teeth and jaw.

The process of learning how to become an orthodontist is pretty straightforward, with very few deviations along the way.

This guide will show you every step of the way and also show you how much you can earn by working in this role.

Visit our Career Guide for a list of all our job insights for an in depth look at the new career path you are considering.

Job Description

As an orthodontist, you’ll specialize in diagnosing irregularities in a patient’s teeth and jaw. These include irregularities in appearance and the alignment of their teeth, jaw, and surrounding parts.

By identifying those irregularities, you can then help patients prevent them from becoming more severe as they grow older.

At the same time, you’ll also correct any existing irregularities and help patients achieve a perfect smile.

You’ll achieve your goal of preventing and correcting those irregularities by fabricating and using corrective dental devices on your patients.

As time goes on, you’ll inspect and adjust them for each patient as needed, removing them entirely once the irregularities no longer exist.

What Does an Average Day for an Orthodontist Look Like?

Before you commit to learning how to become an orthodontist, you should consider if the career is suitable for you. One way to do that is to understand what an orthodontist does every day.

So, here’s what an average day will look like for you as an orthodontist:

Prepare Patient Records

At the beginning of each day, you’ll seek to understand the patients that you’ll be seeing. That process starts by preparing and examining patient records.

Here, your goal is to update yourself on the patient’s condition before meeting and examining them later.

This step is also crucial if you need to provide those patients with any treatments during their appointment.

Meet With Patients

Next, you’ll meet with patients and their caregivers (if any). As orthodontics patients, they likely come to you with issues related to aesthetics, bite alignment, and jaw alignment.

During this time, you’ll help patients understand the irregularities in their teeth and jaw. More importantly, you’ll also explain to them the preventive and corrective options that they have.

For example, you’ll likely prescribe braces for most of your patients to correct the alignment of their teeth. However, some patients might prefer alternatives to braces.

In that case, you can offer them alternatives like retainers or other appropriate dental devices.

Typically, you’ll examine a patient’s condition and progress, taking note of everything in their records.

You will also likely perform minor adjustments to braces and other dental devices as needed.

Check Medical Imagery

Sometimes, you’ll require the help of medical imagery to understand your patient’s condition.

So, for example, you’ll take x-rays of the patient’s jaw and examine them for alignment and other issues.

Prepare Braces and Other Dental Devices

Once you understand the patient’s condition and the correct measures needed, you can then prepare the necessary dental devices.

Some common examples include braces and retainers, among many others.

These dental devices are custom-made for each patient, as their needs are unique. That’s why this part of the process will take time.

Perform Dental Treatments

Being an orthodontist means that you specialize in fitting, adjusting, and removing corrective dental devices. That will take up a significant part of your day.

However, you’ll also perform standard dental procedures like checking and cleaning patients’ teeth and gums, as well.

Process for Becoming an Orthodontist

The process of how to become an orthodontist involves several years of formal education and plenty of hands-on experience.

You can start the process as early as high school before going through tertiary education and post-doctoral training.

Here are the steps you’ll have to go through to become an orthodontist.

1. Start Preparing in High School

Suppose you’ve decided early on that you want to become an orthodontist. In that case, there are several high school courses that you can take to prepare for the career ahead.

The Illinois workNet Center System lists a few helpful high school courses that include:

Safety and First Aid
Introduction to Health Care
Anatomy and Physiology
And more.

Taking these kinds of courses will be incredibly helpful when you start college.

By gaining early exposure to these topics, you’ll find it much easier to absorb the information you’ll learn later on.

If you plan on being a self-employed orthodontist, the Illinois workNet Center System also highlights that you can take business-related high school courses like:

Introduction to business
Entrepreneurship
Accounting

2. Get a Bachelor’s Degree

The next step after high school is to pursue a bachelor’s degree. This step is crucial as it’ll set you up to get into dental school later on.

The dentistry program you’ll enroll in later will likely not have a specific degree requirement.

However, they will most likely expect you to complete college courses like:

Science
Biology
Chemistry
Healthcare-related courses

It’s always best to research the dentistry program you’ll want to sign up for and its requirements.

This part of the process will take you 4 years.

3. Pass the Dental Admissions Test (DAT)

At some point during or after your bachelor’s degree, you’ll then need to pass the Dental Admissions Test (DAT) to get into a dental school.

The test is administered by the American Dental Association (ADA).

4. Sign Up for Dental School

Next, you’ll want to sign up for the dental school of your choice. Check that the program is accredited by the Commission on Dental Accreditation (CODA).

The dental school admission process will consider your Dental Admissions Test (DAT) results alongside other criteria like:

Interviews
Recommendations
Grade point average
Other factors as required by the school

Your goal in dental school is to obtain a Doctor of Dental Surgery (DDS) or Doctor of Medicine in Dentistry (DMD) degree, also known as Doctor of Dental Medicine.

This part of the process will take you another 4 years.

5. Pursue State Licensing

After graduation, you’ll need to pursue a state license before you can work as a dentist.

The requirements differ between states, but they typically require:

An accredited DDS or DMD degree
Passing a written examination by the National Board Dental Examinations
Passing any other examination required by the state or region

Once you have your license, you can then work as a dentist and pursue your orthodontist specialization.

Read our related article on How to Become a Dentist for a more exhaustive overview of the path that leads to this career!

6. Orthodontist Training and Licensing

The final step is to pursue your orthodontist specialization. This final step requires you to undergo a residency that lasts 2 to 4 years.

You’ll typically get a postdoctoral certificate or master’s degree at the end of that process.

Additionally, you must also have a license to engage in a specialization like orthodontics. Aside from the residency detailed above, you may also have to pass a special state exam.

Find An Orthodontist Job Near You!

Are You Suited for an Orthodontist Career? Skills, Credentials, Tools and Technology

Learning how to become an orthodontist isn’t just about what you learn in the classroom.

Your formal education carries a lot of weight in this industry, but so do your personality traits, skills, and proficiencies.

So, to know whether or not you’re suited to work as an orthodontist, you must have or be willing to develop the following qualities:

Personality and Skills

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) lists down personality traits like patience, detail orientation, and skills like dexterity as being crucial to work as an orthodontist.

Firstly, orthodontists spend long hours working with their patients.

Patience is crucial to do that successfully, especially with patients that are uncomfortable or scared of orthodontic treatments.

Besides that, you’ll be working on front teeth and surrounding parts which are small in size. Being detail-oriented is important to notice differences in tooth colors and shapes.

Lastly, you’ll be working with small dentistry tools and other equipment targeting very small areas inside the patient’s mouth.

Your manual dexterity ensures that you can reach the areas you need to with all that equipment.

Credentials and Proficiencies

Strong proficiency in medicine and dentistry, biology, and personal service are crucial for your work as an orthodontist, according to the Occupational Information Network (O*Net).

Your understanding of dentistry forms your foundation as an orthodontist treating a patient’s teeth and overall mouth area.

However, an overall proficiency in medicine also matters for understanding the diseases and treatments that are associated with that part of the human body.

Those proficiencies are also supported by your understanding of biology, which teaches you how cells and tissues in and around the mouth function.

Lastly, always remember that your patients are human beings.

Being proficient in personal service allows you to communicate with them clearly to understand their needs and manage their expectations throughout the entire process.

How Does an Orthodontist Find Work?

As you go through the journey of learning how to become an orthodontist, it’s also crucial to know where you’ll find work.

The best way to do that is to focus on the employers that hire orthodontists the most.

They’ll have more positions for orthodontists, so your chances of landing an interview and a job will be much higher.

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) shows that orthodontists work in 2 areas more than anywhere else, which are:

Dentist offices
Hospitals (both general and surgical hospitals)

You can begin your job search by identifying dentist offices and hospitals in your area, especially those that offer orthodontic care to patients.

Then, you can search for jobs by:

Checking the office or hospital’s website for job listings.
Calling or emailing them directly.
Visiting the place in-person to find out about orthodontist job openings.

Whenever possible, be sure to provide the potential employer with a copy of your resume or CV for them to keep on file.

Even if they don’t have any job openings right now, they could contact you later when an orthodontist job opens up.

Find An Orthodontist Job Near You!

What is the Average Salary of an Orthodontist?

Learning how to become an orthodontist will require you to invest a significant amount of your time and resources.

So, it helps to know how much you can earn when you work in this role.

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) finds that orthodontists earn an average salary of more than $208,000 a year.

That same data by the BLS also shows that:

The top 90th percentile of orthodontists earns beyond $208,000 a year, though they don’t have specific figures.
The bottom 10th percentile of orthodontists earns an average of $95,940 a year instead.

Where Do Orthodontists Get Paid the Most?

The BLS also collects data that shows which states pay orthodontists the most.

That data shows that these are the top 5 highest-paying states for orthodontists where the average salary is all above $208,000 a year:

Connecticut
Iowa
New Hampshire
Oklahoma
Washington

How Do You Earn More as an Orthodontist?

There are 2 ways that you can maximize your earning potential as an orthodontist.

The first method is to open up a private practice, either by yourself or with a partner.

That will increase your chances of earning more compared to working for a dental practice that’s not yours.

Besides that, you can also earn more by specializing in more complex and higher-level orthodontic procedures.

As you’ll see later in this guide, there are 3 levels of orthodontics, each serving a more complex patient need than the last.

Those levels are:

Level 1: Aesthetics
Level 2: Aesthetics and Bite Alignment (occlusion)
Level 3: Aesthetics, Bite Alignment, and Jaw Alignment

Each level of orthodontics requires more specialized knowledge to treat patients with more severe dental issues.

By expanding your skills and knowledge to levels 2 and 3, you’ll be able to conduct more complex treatments and earn more as a result.

Orthodontist Job Outlook

The Occupational Information Network (O*Net) projects that the orthodontist role will experience 5% to 10% growth until 2030.

They consider that growth to be ‘average’ when compared to other industries and career paths.

That’s excellent news for you and anyone else interested in learning how to become an orthodontist, as there’ll be an increasing number of jobs in the coming years.

Once you graduate and start working in the dental industry, you can expect a moderate level of competitiveness for existing jobs.

What Are the 3 Categories of Orthodontics?

Being an orthodontist means that you’re a specialist in the field of dentistry.

However, orthodontics is itself made up of 3 different categories or levels of specialization.

You’ll spend your career developing your skills and knowledge on all 3 levels.

Then, the treatments you provide to individual patients will depend on which level of orthodontic treatment they require,

The 3 levels of orthodontics are:

Aesthetics: The first level or category of orthodontics is aesthetics. At this level, your focus is on straightening patients’ teeth to improve their smile. You’ll accomplish this with treatments like braces (e.g. metal, clear, or ceramic braces).
Aesthetics and bite alignment: You’ll work with patients facing more complex dental issues at the second level. Here, your focus is on aesthetics and bite alignment or ‘occlusion’. Your work will help patients correct their bite and prevent related health issues like the erosion of teeth, chronic headaches, and more.
Aesthetics, bite alignment, and jaw alignment: Patients with even more severe problems caused by skeletal issues will need third-level orthodontics. You’ll require more complex skills at this level to treat the misalignment of the mouth, jaw, and surrounding parts. In addition, this level will involve corrective surgeries and other intensive treatments.

Each patient you work with will have unique needs. Some can be solved at the first level of orthodontics with standard braces.

However, specializing in higher levels of orthodontic treatments will allow you to work with patients needing more intensive care.

Read our related articles, How to Become a Dental Assistant and How to Become a Dental Hygienist. If you’re open to other positions in dentistry, these guides are for you!