Research experience is not required by dental school, but it could reinforce your application if the institutions you are applying to have a research focus,like OSU, UM and UPenn, or if you are particularly interested in conducting research and want to apply to DDS/Ph.D program in some schools.
However, most of the pre-den students who get admitted to good dental school do have some extent of research experience. And publishing a paper is common among pre-dent student. Therefore it is necessary to participate in research during your undergraduate career. While many students think that lab research is most important, experience with social science research is just as fascinating and valuable.
As a famous research institution, OSU encourage undergraduate students to get involved in research and have plenty of research oppotunity. At the same time, most of universities are welcome students from other schools to do research there. You could also land a research job from a company (you could check ASC career service or LinkedIn). Here, we will mainly discuss on-campus research oppotunities. There are three major ways to find an on-campus research position:
If you want to conduct research in specific fields, you could check the corresponding department website. Click on "faculty" or buttons with similar meaning, you could find the department's faculty's information. Most of the faculties list their current/past project and the paper they've published in their biography. They will put a research summary, which including the essense of their research, on the website. Read the summary carefully because you could not read all their projects and papers. You should pick at least 5 faculty members to ask for research oppotunities. Undergraduate Research Office describes every step in finding research oppotunity and applying for that research position. Please check their website for more details.
Undergraduate Research Office (URO) is THE place to help you get involved in the research. You could fina many research oppotunities from their webpage. You can subscribe to the URO email list by sending an email from the email account you want subscribed to: uro@osu.edu. Then you will receive notification when research oppotunity is available.
If you did well in one of the courses (means you got A or A-) and really like the instructor, you should ask the instructors for research postion in their labs. This is the most easiest way to land a research oppotunity because you both know each other and most professors are willing to let students with excellent performance in their class to join the lab.