Alex | Founder of Dentfully
21 Jun 8 min read

King's College London Dentistry Interview 2023 Guide | Questions & Tips

King’s College London Dental School: Overview

ing's College London School of Dentistry is consistently ranked as one of the best dental schools in the UK. Dentistry at King’s was ranked 1st in the UK in the 2021 QS subject rankings and 2nd globally and has been consistently ranked in the top five UK dental schools since they were first published in 2015.

State-of-the-art clinical, simulation and technical facilities are housed within three world-renowned teaching hospitals: Guy's Dental School, King's Dental Institute and St Thomas' Dental Institute, which are affiliated with King's College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. The dental school also works closely with other academic departments at King’s including Anatomy & Human Biology and Medicine to provide students with a wide range of learning opportunities beyond dentistry.

The partnership with these world-famous hospitals means that dentistry students at KCL benefit from working alongside internationally renowned clinicians and researchers who are experts in their fields.

King’s College London has also one of the largest dental schools in the UK admitting over 150 future dentists every year.


Selection For BDS Dentistry Interviews at King’s College London:

🔢 King’s Dentistry Entry Requirements (A205):

A-levels: Grade A*AA or higher, with at least an A in Biology or Chemistry, as well as an A or above in one of Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics or Psychology.

Personal Statement: The personal statement doesn’t form a significant element of the selection process, but it is always screened for evidence of commitment to dentistry, insight that you’ve gained into a profession, as well as the desirable skills of a dentist.

UCAT: UCAT scores form a significant element of the selection process at King’s. You will be ranked against other candidates based on a mix of our total UCAT score and achieved grades. The SJT is also taken into account when selecting students for dentistry interviews.

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📊 What is the UCAT cut-off score to get an interview at King’s College London?

Each year KCL sets a UCAT cut-off score, depending on multiple factors, including the number fo students who applied and the average scores of the cohort. For the 2021 entry, the lowest UCAT score to get a dentistry interview at KCL was 2260, while the interviewees’ mean was 2680. However, don’t rely on this data too heavily, as the cut-off scores tend to change from year to year.

📈 TOP Tip: Want to boost your chances of securing that dream offer from King’s? Use Dentfully to prepare for your dentistry interviews - gain knowledge, draft model answers, and practice with flashcards and 5 mock interviews.


📤 When does KCL start sending interview invitations (BDS dentistry)?

First students can expect to get invited to dentistry interviews around late November 2022. In the past years, KCL sent out interview invitations on a rolling basis until early March of the application cycle.


👨‍👩‍👦‍👦 BDS Dentistry Statistics: Number of interviews at KCL

Just under 1000 students apply for dentistry at King’s College London each year and the top-scoring 350 candidates (35%) usually get invited to a dental interview.


💡 How To Prepare for Dentistry Interviews at King’s College London?

Preparing for your dentistry interviews is no easy task if you are trying to do it on your own. It’s normally a very time-consuming, laborious process, requiring intentionality and determination. To make your interview preparation more structured, fun and easy, we’ve created Dentfully - the first all-in-one dentistry interview preparation tool:


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🦷 King’s College London Dentistry Interview Questions:

Motivations for Dentistry:

  • Why would you like to study dentistry and not medicine?
  • How are you suited to dentistry?
  • We’ve had just under 1000 applications for dentistry this year, but we can only give offers to around 170 students. Why should we choose you, over other students with similar grades and UCAT scores?

Dentistry at Kings College London:

  • In your view, what makes studying dentistry at King’s special?
  • If we give you an offer to study dentistry at our university, how will you contribute to our student community at King’s?
  • What do you know about our dental course and how would it suit you?

Work experience:

  • In your personal statement, we’ve read that you’ve taken some steps to find out if dentistry is the right career choice for you. Tell us a little bit more about your work experience and what you learned from it.
  • What are the things about being a dentist that appeals the least to you and how are you planning to approach them?
  • What have you learned from your work experience at XYZ?

Dental ethics & Scenarios:

  • A patient who is a heavy smoker comes to you and requests a dental implant. Would you give it to them, knowing that they may waste the resource?
  • You are a 5th-year dental student 3-weeks into a surgical rotation in a new hospital. While shadowing one of the specialist dentists, you realise that they regularly omit washing hands between patients. What would you do in that scenario?
  • A young mother comes with their 12-month-old child to your dental practice for a checkup. During the checkup, you discover that the girl’s pulp is severely damaged and infected and recommend root canal treatment. After hearing the name of the procedure the mother nervously takes the child’s hand and says “We don’t want any treatments. Ginny, let’s go home”. Both the mother and the girl are clearly anxious. However, you know that the treatment is necessary. How would you act in such a situation?

NHS & Hot Topics:

  • How would you explain the Band system to a patient who only recently moved to the UK and doesn’t know anything about NHS dentistry?
  • Why aren’t dental procedures free under the NHS, like all other medical treatments? In your opinion, should all dental procedures be free?

🚀 TOP Tip: Having trouble answering any of the above questions? Create structured and charismatic answers with Dentfully - the first all-in-one dentistry interview preparation tool. Learn from our interview guide, take inspiration from example answers and consolidate your responses with automated flashcards or 5 mock interview simulations.

Please note that these aren’t questions that have been asked at King’s in past years. Publishing such information would be against KCL’s policy. The above questions are adjusted for the interview style at King’s College London and are meant to give you a broad sense of the questions you may face.


King’s College London Dentistry Interviews (2023 entry):

🗓️ King’s College London Dentistry Interview dates (2022):

This year’s dentistry interviews at King’s College London will most likely take place between December 2022 and March 2023.


💬 Interview format at King’s College London School of Dentistry:

For the 2022 entry, KCL conducted online panel interviews for their BDS dentistry course. The interviews were held by 2 interviewers and around 4 general, open-ended questions were asked. Each of the questions was marked out of 20. Half of the marks were given for the content of the answer and the other 10 for communication (including non-verbal aspects).

Before interviews were moved online in 2020, KCL conducted standard MMI interviews for candidates applying to dentistry. The MMIs at KCL usually involved 6 stations, each revolving around a different topic and each conducted by a different interviewer.

It is still not known what form will this year’s interviews take. Once it’s confirmed, it should be published on KCL’s official website and communicated to those invited to the interview in the invitation email.


🏆 King’s BDS Dentistry Statistics: How many offers?

Following approx. 350 interviews, KCL aims to give out offers to 175 students (reserving 15 offers for international students). This means that your chances of getting in once you’ve been invited for an interview at King’s are about 50%!


⏳ KCL Dentistry Interviews: Waiting for offers

In the past years, the admissions team at King’s only sent back responses after all interviews have been conducted. Therefore, you can expect to hear back from KCL by the end of March 2023 at the earliest and May 2023 at the latest.


✅ King’s College London Dentistry Interviews: 5 Tips

😁 Smile!

Your communication abilities (including your non-verbal communication) constitute as much as 50% of your total interview score. Instead of just talking about how passionate you are about dentistry or starting your studies at King’s, demonstrate it - keep an open posture, talk in a passionate tone and smile!


❄️ Make Your Answers Genuine!

Do not bend the truth trying to signal some of your extraordinary qualities, or skills or trying to fit in your work experience into every answer. The admissions panellists can easily recognise insincerity and don’t perceive it well.


🧠 Think Positively:

Whenever you feel stressed or anxious in your KCL dentistry interview, recall a situation when you were stressed, but you succeeded. Think of any relevant exams (GCSEs, UCAT), any competitions you took part in or anything that involved an obstacle which you eventually overcame. If you've done it once, you can do this again in your interview.


📖 Reflect On Your Work Experience:

The steps you took to find out more about dentistry, whether through volunteering, work experience or other activities, are an important element of your application. Before your dentistry interview at King’s, you should refresh your memory of what you did - dig out your personal statement, a reflective diary or some notes you took. Recall what you saw, what you learned and how it made you feel. Write down some questions based on your work experience and try answering them.

If you are unsure how to approach work experience questions, you can sign up for a free account at dentfully.co.uk and check our Dentistry Interview Guide for example work experience questions, tips, mistakes and answers.


🎓 Do Your Research

Prepare for questions about your motivations to study dentistry at King’s. Make sure you know why you chose KCL over other schools of dentistry, how can you contribute to the student community at King’s, what makes the course at King’s special, what facilities they have etc. A great way to learn about all of that is to reach out to current KCL dental students (try looking on TSR or Reddit) to get an insider's perspective.


Fingers crossed for your KCL dentistry interviews! You've got it!

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