University of Central Lancashire Dentistry Interview Questions & Tips

Past Interview Questions & Tips

SELECT SECTION

University of Central Lancashire Dentistry Interview Key Information & Interview Format

UCLan’s Dentistry course is open only to postgraduate applicants. They receive around 260 applications each year, interviewing between 110 and 160. Of these 160, only 29 will then go on to study at UCLAN each year, making their course highly selective.

Interviews are held in December.

Despite the course being solely for postgraduates, you must still have attained a minimum of 3 A levels at C or above, and GCSE Maths and English Language at B or above. You will also need an academic reference from your personal tutor or course leader.

Strong applicants are invited to sit an MMI (Multiple Mini Interviews) that will include topics like ethics, professionalism, team working and communication skills, and knowledge of dentistry. The interview will last for around 40 minutes. From previous students’ experiences, you should the possibility of a manual dexterity test. The university will contact those that it wishes to interview to inform them of whether interviews will be online or in-person.

Overall Dentistry Application & Interview Statistics

Overall Success Rate (Total Applicants : Total Spaces)

Overall Success Rate

Percentage of Candidates Interviewed

Candidates interviewed

Interviewee Success Rate

Optimise Your Interview Performance

Learn the best interview strategies and practice with past interview questions & model answers.

University of Central Lancashire Dentistry Past Interview Questions

Ethics

What is the role of the General Dental Council?
How have you demonstrated empathy and respect for others in your life so far?
Dentists frequently have to deal with difficult patients. How would you deal with a situation in which a patient shouted at you for making a minor mistake?
Is it fair that so many dentists work privately, despite the huge cost of training them?

Teamwork and Communication Skills

Why are communication skills so important to dentists?
What kinds of patients might be more difficult to communicate with than others?
Tell us about a stressful situation in which your ability to communicate was crucial to the situation’s resolution.
Do you work better independently or as part of a team?
Tell us about a time that you led a team or group through a difficult situation.
Tell us about a team situation in which your communication skills were essential.
What experiences have you had of failing as a team, and how did you grow from these?

Knowledge of Dentistry

What is the role of preventative dentistry?
How have you informed yourself on the career?
What health journals, or other news sources, do you read to keep up to date?
What issues do you think are facing dentists today?
Do you believe that your work experience furnished you with a good idea of what being a dentist is like?
What do you think the toughest part of being a dentist is?
What path would you like to go down in your career in dentistry?
What do you understand to be the principal aims of the dentistry BDS?

Manual Dexterity

Please shape the wax provided into the shape shown on the piece of paper.
Please use the pliers to bend the wire into the shapes shown on the paper in front of you.
Please use your dominant hand to turn over each of the dice so that they all show the same number.
Please use your dominant hand to turn over each disc so that they all show the same colour.
Please remove the pegs from the peg board, then replace them into the lower rows of the second peg board.
Please transfer each of the large marbles from the box into the jar provided. Leave the small marbles.
Use your dominant hand to sort the coins provided into piles of each individual type of coin. The coins are 1p, 2p and 10p.
Please thread the needle with the sewing thread.
Use your dominant hand to place each of the pegs into the correctly labelled position. The pegs are colour coded, and the positions are labelled as such.
Use your hands to bend the wire into the shapes shown on the paper.