Dental School Sample Interview Questions & Answers

[DentalNucleicAcid]

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Hey Friends,

Congrats to everyone here whether you're applying this cycle or not, because we're all working towards an amazing profession 🙂 For those of you applying this cycle, this is an exciting time! I wanted to share with you a list of sample answers to some of the most commonly asked dental school interview questions. Shoutout to @Faux for producing the list of interview questions that have helped many students including myself. Here is the original thread for the interview questions:

My list of interview questions for upcoming cycle!

When I was preparing for interview season last cycle I came across that thread and made a document in which I wrote out outlines of all of the responses I planned to use in the event that I was asked any of those questions. Now of course, my responses during real interviews were not verbatim (or even nearly verbatim) from the responses I wrote (some of my real responses I completely changed actually due to heat of the moment/panicking lol). I just wrote out all of my responses beforehand so that I'd have a general idea of what I wanted to say. That being said, I wouldn't recommend writing out your own responses to these questions the way I did. I'd recommend that you write them out in bullet point format, so that when you get asked such and such question, you know that you're going to talk about topics X, Y and Z. This also prevents you from MEMORIZING ANSWERS, do not do that- it looks very rehearsed and your interviewers will notice. BUT, having bullet points of topics that you will talk about will not look rehearsed and it feels much more natural. I didn't follow my own advice and fell into the trap of memorizing answers early in the cycle but I noticed how much more natural it felt to just use bullet points during later interviews.

Make sure to use your own judgement when deciding how you want to answer these questions, as the way I answered them might not be the way you would like to answer them. But I hope this gives you an idea of how you might want to approach a question if you're stuck! Good luck!

 

[Faux]

 

[BasicG]

This is going to be really helpful when interviews start rolling out!

 

[DentalNucleicAcid]

bump

 

[setdoc7]

I have some very strong opinions about the interview process, and I will start off with saying that they are entirely my own, and are not meant to be an indictment on anyone else's opinion.
It has always been a sore point for me that most pre dents, and dental students for that matter have so few resources when it comes to interviewing for DS or moving forward into post graduate education. This is not true for other students. For example, business and finance students, as well as the MBA's are given formal instruction on resume writing, and interviewing. Why not pre dents and dental students?
All that tuition in dental school....and no help with getting training or a job after. Seems like something the student government or student member of the academic affairs committee could bring up with administration.
Many of the dental schools are part of larger universities with an affiliated business school. I'm sure some professor from the business school could provide the same instruction to the dental students. And how about some small business administration courses while they're at it?

How about a writing course in dental school? The law students all take a legal writing course freshman year. How about a medical/dental writing course so your charts make sense and your consults sound professional? Just some thoughts on how things might be improved. IMHO.

BTW, UCSF DS has some excellent resources from their professional development office. At least some place gets it.

 

[matthewbernard9]

Thanks for this! These are super helpful! I’ve been seeing a lot of similar questions from people interviewing at different schools — seems like there’s definitely a core set most places ask.
I ended up starting to use this prep guide called Denterview that pulled a bunch of these together from this cycle. It actually helped me organize my thoughts and feel a lot less scattered going in. Think it was like $7 or something.
Definitely recommend prepping behavioral stuff early — feels like schools are leaning even more into that this year. Biggest advice I’d give is to prep your stories and examples early — once you’ve got those locked in, answering any question becomes way easier.

 

[Mr.Smile12]

Thanks for this! These are super helpful! I’ve been seeing a lot of similar questions from people interviewing at different schools — seems like there’s definitely a core set most places ask.
I ended up starting to use this prep guide called Denterview that pulled a bunch of these together from this cycle. It actually helped me organize my thoughts and feel a lot less scattered going in. Think it was like $7 or something.
Definitely recommend prepping behavioral stuff early — feels like schools are leaning even more into that this year. Biggest advice I’d give is to prep your stories and examples early — once you’ve got those locked in, answering any question becomes way easier.

Aside from MMI/Casper questions for which you must respect the NDA, there is a core set of questions, and you should be able to answer them authentically and without it sounding over-rehearsed.

We have a very recent poll that show situational questions are definitely most remembered type of questions asked in the process. We have a free Casper/PREview/SJT forum with 50 free questions that were written by peer-applicants (generally medical school) preparing for Casper. Make sure you reflect on the questions there. But showing you can answer a question that shows your problem-solving skills is very important.