Dental loans worth it?

Hey fellas I’m a junior in high school and gonna apply to colleges next year. I’m planning to be a dentist or something of the sort (optometrist, orthodontist, dentist specialties, whatever figure it out later)

Anyways that would be great, but dental school is super expensive. Is the profession really worth taking on all that debt?

My unweighted gpa is 3.4 and weighted 3.8 with a 29 ACT and retaking in June for a 30-31. I’m in state for Illinois and gonna apply to UIUC, University of Iowa, University of Indiana Bloomington and maybe Purdue.

Realistically though I’m between UIUC and Iowa as UIUC is the cheapest (36k) and Iowa is my favorite and second cheapest(47k). Probably gonna major in biology or chem or psychology.

So 188k-144k is only a 44k difference minus whatever scholarships from Iowa. 10k per year scholarship makes up the difference so I’m not worried. (also have guaranteed admission to Iowa)

Also maybe Oboe scholarship possible to either???Idk I’ll look into it since I’m pretty good

The problem here is dental school. Average dental school debt for a graduate is 280-300k IN STATE. and that’s not even counting undergraduate I think. I don’t even want to know out of state costs. Of course, the starting salary will be like 175-200k out of grad school.

After college fund and scholarships it’ll be like 350-400k. Is it really worth it or am I putting myself into crazy debt that I can never recover from? Or should I look into a different profession with a cheaper schooling price? Maybe they are all ridiculously expensive and this is hell. Who can say.

Sorry for kinda long post. Pls answer.