Alex | Founder of Dentfully
03 Jun 7 min read

Ultimate Guide to Glasgow Dentistry Interview (2023) | Questions & Tips


Glasgow Dental School: Overview

Glasgow Dental School is one of the largest and most prestigious dental schools in the UK. The School offers the highest quality teaching in dentistry and operates at the forefront of dental research.

The University of Glasgow is ranked as one of the top 100 universities in the world according to Shanghai Global Rankings. The School has been awarded a gold rating by Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) 2017 and was ranked 1st in the UK for Dentistry by Sunday Times Good University Guide.

Glasgow Dental School offers a wide range of clinical experience opportunities for undergraduate dental students, including an elective during year 4 with an opportunity to do it abroad.

Glasgow is also a great city to live in with lots of things to do and see. There are many beautiful parks and gardens, museums, theatres, concert halls and shopping centres. You can also find many good restaurants in Glasgow which serve different types of food from all over the world.


Selection For Dentistry Interviews at Glasgow University:

🔢 How does Glasgow select aspiring dentists for interviews?

GCSEs & Predicted Grades: Your GCSE & your predicted grades will be checked if they meet Glasgow’s minimum grade requirements. That means that students with predicted 3A* will have no advantage over students with A*AA. If your grades meet Glasgow’s minimum entry requirements, you’ll progress to the next stage of the selection process, which is UCAT screening.

Personal Statement: Glasgow requires you to show in your personal statement that you’ve taken steps to gain insight into dentistry. Since nowadays it may be challenging to obtain in-person work experience, Glasgow will accept any type of activity, such as volunteering or online courses related to dentistry. Furthermore, your personal statement and the reference will be screened again after the interviews, to ensure they meet Glasgow’s entry requirements. You can read about Glasgow’s recommendations regarding the personal statement here.

UCAT: All students who meet minimum grade requirements will be ranked against each other based on their UCAT performance. Around 200 students with the highest UCAT scores will then be invited to a dentistry interview.

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📊 Glasgow Dentistry Interview UCAT cut-off scores:

🇬🇧 Home Students: In the past years the lowest UCAT score to get you an interview at Glasgow averaged around 2500 (2470-2540). However, the score will vary from year to year depending on the average scores of the entire cohort, as well as the number of students applying for dentistry at Glasgow in a given year.

🌍 International Students: For international students, the UCAT cut-off for dentistry interviews is usually mostly the same as for UK students (2470-2540).

📈 TOP Tip: Committed to excel in your Glasgow Dentistry Interview? Get the knowledge, confidence and practice for your interviews by preparing with Dentfully - #1 Holistic Interview Preparation Resource.


📤 When does Glasgow start sending interview invitations?

Glasgow typically sends all interview invitations in December. However, if you haven’t received any information from Glasgow by that time, no reason to worry - if many students apply in a given year, the selection process may get extended.


👨‍👩‍👦‍👦 Glasgow Dental School Interviews: Number of interviews

Historically, around 500 students apply to Glasgow for dentistry each year. Out of those, the top 200 are selected for an interview (40%).


💡 How To Prepare for Dentistry Interviews at Glasgow University?

Preparing for dental interviews is no easy task, especially if it’s your first interview. And the stakes are high. To help you better organise the process, and make it more time-efficient and all-encompassing, we’ve created Dentfully - The Best All-In-One Dental Interview Preparation Resource:

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🦷 Glasgow Dentistry Interview Questions:

Wondering what questions can come up in your Glasgow dentistry interview? Here are a few examples:

Role-play:

  • You were supposed to take care of your friend's cat, while they were on holiday. A few hours before your friend was meant to come back, you realised you forgot to close the front door and the cat went missing. You tried looking around the house but to no avail. Your friend (Max), just arrived home. Break the news to them.
  • You are a 3rd-year medical student. Together with a group of your classmates you've been working on a presentation on the impact of different calcium sources on tooth formation in children. As you prepare the setup you realise you forgot to save your part of the presentation. In turn, your group's presentation is incomplete. Approach your group leader and discuss the issue with them.
  • You are a dentist specialising in Oral Surgery. During a complex procedure involving extractions and applying implants, you notice a worrying lump on the inside of a patient’s cheek. After the procedure is done, you wake up the patient to discuss the need for a biopsy. The patient consents but grows very anxious. The results of a biopsy show the lump is cancerous and very advanced. Break the news to the patient (the interviewer) that they have oral cancer. You may offer them a treatment combining surgery, radio- and chemotherapy, but the chances for success are 30-40%

Discussion:

  • 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?
  • What aspects should a dentist consider when a patient is unconscious and cannot decide for themselves, but requires urgent medical treatment (for instance, during a surgery)?
  • How does smoking impact oral health? Do you think that smokers are more responsible for their poor health than alcoholics?
  • Imagine you were a dentist working in private practice and dealt mostly with cosmetic surgeries. How would you react if a patient came to your practice demanding a new set of veneers, although they have perfectly healthy, white, good-looking teeth?

Manual dexterity station:

  • For this station, you’ll need to prepare a square piece of paper. Next, watch this YouTube tutorial on making an origami flower. Follow the instructions carefully, and fold a flower. You aren’t allowed to pause the video.
  • If you have a sewing kit at home, take a banana, open it and then try stitching the peel together.

Motivations for dentistry:

  • Why would you like to study dentistry at Glasgow?
  • Why did you choose to apply for a dental course, and not for medicine?
  • Name 3 pros and 3 cons of studying dentistry.

🚀 TOP Tip: Wondering how to formulate a convincing and structured answer to any of the above questions? Head over to Dentfully and check our interview guide for free!

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

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Glasgow Dentistry Interviews (2023 entry):

🗓️ Glasgow Dentistry Interview dates (2022):

Glasgow’s dentistry interviews will most likely take place over a weekend in late January/early February 2023 (exact dates for 2023 entry not yet known, follow this website for latest updates).


💬 Interview format at Glasgow Dental School:

The University of Glasgow conducts Multiple Mini Interviews (MMIs), which are usually comprised of 7 stations and last around 45 minutes in total. As an interviewee, you’ll rotate around the different stations until you complete the entire circuit. At Glasgow, you are given 1 minute of reading time before each station and you’ll have 5 minutes inside each station with the interviewer.

Each mini-interview will be conducted by a different interviewer, who won’t know anything about you, and will revolve around a different topic. You can expect to face 3 main types of stations in the Glasgow dentistry MMI: role-plays (stations where you impersonate a role and the interviewer is an actor playing their role), discussions, and stations testing your manual dexterity.

Before your Glasgow Dentistry Interview, have a look at this sample dentistry MMI created for you by Glasgow University: Glasgow Dentistry Sample MMI.


🏆 Glasgow Dental Interviews: How many offers?

Each year, Glasgow interviews 200 top-scoring students. Out of those, around 130 will receive an offer (out of those 130 offers, 20 will be given to international students).


👁️ What will the interviewers at Glasgow look for in candidates?

During the dentistry MMI, you’ll be assessed on a range of qualities and skills, all of which are related to dentistry (often, these are skills and qualities that you’ll want a model dentist to possess). Here’s a list of characteristics Glasgow will test you on (source):

  • Be diligent and ethical
  • Demonstrate having a caring nature, are empathetic and respectful of the views of others
  • Demonstrate good communication skills
  • Work in a team and have the capacity to act as a leader
  • Be self-critical and self-motivating
  • Capable of independent thinking
  • Plan and think on the spot and enjoy problem-solving
  • Show strong evidence of manual dexterity, creativity and spatial awareness


⏳ Waiting for interview outcome: Glasgow Dental School

You should receive information about the outcome of your dental interview by the end of March 2022. If you haven’t received anything by that time, check the spam/offers folder, as emails from institutions sometimes land there. UCAS should also inform you about the outcome of your interview, separately, via UCAS track.


✅ Glasgow Dental School Interviews: 3 Tips

🎭 Prepare for a role-play

At least one role-play station is guaranteed to come up in your dentistry interview at Glasgow. Although challenging for most candidates, interviewers love role play stations, as they allow them to assess your skills and qualities, such as communication, empathy, or teamwork in action.

Make sure to dedicate some extra time to practise role plays alone, as they require a totally different approach from usual questions. If you sign up with a free account at dentfully.co.uk you’ll find a comprehensive guide to dentistry role-plays, including our top tips, common mistakes, example answers and more.


👋 Start each station with a clean slate

In the MMI you start each station with a clean slate. The interviewer won’t know anything about you and will formulate their assessment solely on your performance on a given station.

Use that to your advantage. If you get really nervous at one station or don’t do yourself justice, don’t waste time and energy worrying about it during the MMI, as this can negatively affect your performance on the following stations. Simply enter the new station as if nothing ever happened, as if it was a new chance for you to do your best.


⚖️ Become best friends with Dental Ethics

In your dentistry interview at Glasgow, you can face several stations where you’ll be asked to discuss an issue with the interviewer. The questions may vary - you may be asked about your opinion about a certain topic, to lay out pros and cons, say what you’d do as a dentist/dental student in a certain situation or discuss the ethical implications in a given scenario (we’ve outlined a few example questions below).

To answer these types of questions, you need to become best friends with Dental Ethics and the GDC’s 9 Standards. These will help you break down any type of scenario and give you a sturdy foundation to better organise your answer.


Good luck in your Glasgow Dentistry Interview!

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