Birmingham Dental School: Overview

University of Birmingham Dental School is a fantastic place to study dentistry.

As one of the best in the UK, Birmingham Dental School has been ranked among the top 25 for dentistry in the world in the QS World University Subject Rankings 2022.

Just a mile from University's main campus is the Birmingham Dental Hospital and School of Dentistry, which features modern, cutting-edge facilities that you’ll use as a dental student throughout your degree.

As a city, Birmingham is also a fun, affordable place to live with plenty to do. The city centre is home to a thriving nightlife with plenty of pubs and bars within easy walking distance of campus.

Selection For Dentistry Interviews at Birmingham:
🔢 Birmingham Dentistry: Selection process

GCSEs & Predicted Grades: Your GCSE grades and predicted grades will be checked against the entry requirements. If you meet Birmingham’s minimum entry requirements, you’ll proceed to the next stage of the selection process, which is the UCAT.

Personal Statement: Although the Personal Statement doesn’t constitute a significant element of the selection process at Birmingham, it will be screened for evidence of work experience, evidence of voluntary work and a general passion for dentistry (i.e. you won’t get in if you write your personal statement about finance and economics).

UCAT: Once Birmingham verifies that your obtained and predicted grades meet their minimum entry requirements, your UCAT score will be considered (excluding the SJT score, which Birmingham doesn’t use). Those students who meet minimum entry requirements will be ranked according to the UCAT score and the best 300 students will be invited to an interview.

📊 What is the UCAT cut-off for dentistry interviews at Birmingham?

Since the UCAT is the only element used by Birmingham when ranking students against each other, you need to have a fairly competitive UCAT score to get an interview for dentistry at Birmingham. For the 2022 entry, the lowest UCAT score to get an interview was 2690 and the mean score was 2822 (~top 12%).

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📤 When does Birmingham send out interview invitations?

If you’ve applied for dentistry at Birmingham you can expect to hear something from them between January and February of the application cycle.

👨‍👩‍👦‍👦 How many candidates get interviewed for dentistry at Birmingham Dental School?

Around 700-800 students apply for dentistry at Birmingham each year and exactly 300 get interviewed (~40% of all students who apply get interviewed).

💡 How To Prepare for Dentistry Interviews at Birmingham?

Dreaming of studying dentistry at Birmingham? Prepare for Dentistry Interviews with Dentfully and secure your place at your dream Dental School:

🦷 Birmingham Dentistry Interview Questions:

If you’d like to practise for your Birmingham Dentistry Interview, here are a few questions that you can use:

Motivations for dentistry:

• Why would you like to study dentistry and not medicine?
• What would you do if you didn’t get in?
• What challenges do dental students face? Follow-up: How are you planning to deal with these challenges?

Communication:

• How would you respond if a patient asked you to do a procedure that you think is not necessary (from a clinical point of view) and involves high risk?
• What has been the impact of Covid-19 on dentistry in the UK?
• How would you explain the NHS Band System to a patient who just moved to the UK and is new to the system?

Empathy:

• How would you approach a patient who denies necessary dental treatment because they have had bad experiences with dentists in the past?

Personal insight:

• How do you maintain a healthy balance between work and other aspects of your life?
• What holds you back? What would you like to change about yourself?
• What’s the difference between constructive and unconstructive criticism? Can you remember the last time you criticised someone?

Ethical reasoning:

• Why is the water fluorised?
• Should smokers and alcoholics be treated differently in a dental practice? If yes, how?
• During a routine checkup, you realise that a patient needs to have 2 teeth extracted. You explain that need to them and inform them about the cost, risks and benefits. The patient, however, reacts angrily saying he won’t wait so long and won’t be able to afford the next visit. He says he’ll do it himself at home with a string and a doorknob. How would you respond?

Manual dexterity:

• Grab a sheet of paper (A4) and follow these instructions to fold an origami crane.

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

Birmingham University Dentistry Interviews (2023 entry):

🗓️ Birmingham Dentistry Interview dates (2022):

Dental interviews at Birmingham usually take place during the half-term week in February (February 2023 for those applying this year).

💬 What’s the interview format at Birmingham Dental School?

Birmingham uses the MMI format, which usually consists of 5-10 different stations (mini interviews), each lasting 5-10 minutes, depending on the topic and the number of questions in each station. The entire interview will, therefore, last around 60-90 minutes.

🏆 How likely is it I’ll be given an offer after an interview at Birmingham?

Each year around 170 out of 300 students receive offers after being interviewed for dentistry at Birmingham (57%). So the interview: offer ratio is around 1.7:1 for dentistry at Birmingham.

👀 Birmingham Dentistry Interview: Areas of assessment:

During your Birmingham Dentistry MMI you’ll be assessed in the following areas (not a comprehensive list):

• Motivations
• Communication
• Empathy
• Self-insight
• Ethical reasoning
• Manual dexterity
• Leadership

⏳ How long does it take for Birmingham to respond?

If you aren’t invited to an interview, you’ll hear back from Birmingham in January 2022. Those who have been interviewed will hear back from Birmingham within a few weeks of their interview (around March 2023).

✅ Birmingham Dental School Interviews: 3 Tips

😄 Treat it like speed dating!

The MMI may seem to be this monstrous, daunting obstacle on your way to dental school. But it doesn’t have to be! You can treat the MMIs like speed dating - a series of friendly conversations, revolving around dentistry, where you have to convince strangers to like you. Sounds much better than a series of mini-interviews, doesn’t it?

Treating the MMIs more like a conversation will help you ease your nerves and make your personality shine through. And that’s all that the MMIs are about - learning more about who you are!

⛷️ Don’t plan any holidays for February

Just in case you are invited to a dentistry interview at Birmingham, you should be available in February. Keep it in the back of your mind that the MMIs at Birmingham are conducted in the half-term week in February and don’t plan any holidays for that time. You don’t want to have to choose between a dental interview and a ski holiday!

😭 Don’t let a bad station affect the next ones

In an MMI, you enter each new station with a clean slate: Unlike in a panel interview, where you are assessed on the whole picture by the same group of interviewers, here the interviewer won’t know how well (or how bad) you did on previous stations.

Use that to your advantage. If knock wood, you mess something up in one of the stations, don’t let it affect your performance in the next ones. You may think “simple”, “obvious”. But it’s much easier said than done. Remember about that in your MMIs and if one station doesn’t go to plan - take a deep breath, walk in with confidence and try to focus all your attention on the question in front of you.