Dental School Loan Repayment: Your Monthly Payment at Every US Dental School

Cost-of-attendance pages talk in totals. Your bank account will talk in monthly payments, for ten or twenty-five years. This guide converts the four-year cost of every US dental school in our model into the number that will actually leave your account each month, using the 2026–27 federal Direct Unsubsidized rate of 8.07% and standard amortisation.

Two honest caveats before the table. First, since July 1, 2026 federal loans are capped at $200,000, so a large share of most balances will be private debt at whatever rate you qualify for; 8.07% on the whole balance is therefore a floor, not a forecast. Second, the balance at graduation includes interest that accrued in school, which our model computed at the older, lower federal rates. Real balances will run higher. Use the loan calculator to set your own rate, term and scholarship offsets.

On the figures in this guide: dollar amounts from our cost model are estimates built from published cost-of-attendance data circa 2022, and unless a row says in-state they are out-of-state or private figures. Where we say “projected” we have grown the 2022 figure at 4% a year to 2026. Federal loan rules, interest rates and program terms are quoted as published for 2026–27 and can change; confirm anything you plan around with the school’s financial aid office and at studentaid.gov. Nothing here is financial advice.

Monthly payment for all 64 schools

Balance at graduation is the four-year cost with in-school interest, projected to 2026. The 10-year column is the classic Standard plan. The 25-year column is what the new Standard plan actually gives borrowers with balances over $100,000, and the last column is the interest that 25-year plan costs you over its life.

What those payments mean against a dentist's income

The BLS median wage for a general dentist is $176,110 (May 2025), roughly $14,676 a month before tax. At the median seat the ten-year payment is $7,793, or about 53% of gross median pay. Stretch to 25 years and the payment falls to $4,972, but total interest paid rises to $851,261: you buy a tolerable monthly number with a second house’s worth of interest.

At the cheapest seat the ten-year payment is $4,888. That is the difference between paying it off before you are 35 and paying it off before you are 50. Same licence.

The repayment plans available to the class of 2030 and later

• Standard. Fixed payments; the term now scales with balance, and any balance of $100,000 or more gets 25 years. This is the 25-year column above.
• Repayment Assistance Plan (RAP). The single income-driven plan for new borrowers: payments set at a percentage of income that rises with earnings (roughly 1% to 10%), a small minimum, unpaid interest waived so the balance cannot grow, and forgiveness of any remainder after 30 years. It qualifies for PSLF.
• Refinancing. Private refinancing can cut the rate for high earners with strong credit, at the cost of every federal protection. Sensible for some associates after a few years; irreversible.

Private loans, which will carry the gap above the federal cap for most students, have whatever terms the lender wrote. Read them before you sign, not after.

The cheapest way to lower every number in this table

You cannot negotiate the rate on a federal loan. You cannot shorten the amortisation formula. The only inputs you control are the balance, and the balance is set almost entirely by which seat you take. The spread between the top and bottom of the table is $5,234 a month for ten years. The variable that most decides which end you land at, on a finished application, is your DAT score. Eight weeks of serious practice against a decade of payments is not a close call.