There is no shortage of tips for applying to medical school (and there is a shortage for dental school). However, as a prospective dental student I found that much 0f these tips were not very useful and are pretty standard advice. These are the tips and strategies I developed through my experience with the whole application process that helped me secure a place at a top university in the UK.
Read
Research
Write
Reflect
Read
Read lots of blog posts and websites! Yes, I do feel much of what's written on most websites and blogs are pretty standard and not useful advice but you will definitely come across one or two hidden gems. Additionally, there's no harm in having the standard advice repeated- it is standard for a reason.
I would advise you to read the smaller medical/dental bloggers (such as myself!) since they are often written by people in the midst of or having just completed their application process and usually offer non-standard advice on what worked for them. Although saying that, the big names always have great advice too. The sites I used the most were TheMedicBlog and TheMedicPortal. Sadly there aren't many sites tailored to dental students (TheMedicPortal does have some useful info for dental students).
Research
Here I mean read but read books and articles about dentistry and medicine. If you've read my previous post, you will know that I am a huge advocate for reading books and articles around dentistry in order to make your application stand out- see here for the post. Not only does reading improve your knowledge of the subject you want to study and demonstrate your interest in the subject. It is especially relevant with COVID as work experience and volunteering won't carry as much of an importance as before since many students will struggle to obtain placements.
Write
One of the 'standard' pieces of advice that I did not take too seriously was to document everything that could be relevant to your application. Write about work experience, lectures, clubs, articles and books as these things could all help you application. Personally, I did not document as much as I would have liked and so probably missed a lot of valuable things I could have used in my application. This is very important with regards to writing your personal statement, but also your interviews. There is a significant amount of time between writing your PS and interviews so it is necessary to not forget what or disregard potentially useful activities in the meantime. What I found was that in the time between finishing my PS and the interviews I did very little writing on valuable experiences and stuff I read and so interview preparation was harder than it needed to be. Here's a post on how I prepared for my interviews and here on how I wrote my personal statement.
Reflect
Linking on from Write, reflecting on your experiences is perhaps the most important thing you can do for your application. Firstly, it is essential that you can objectively decide whether studying medicine or dentistry is for you. You will hear this a lot but it is a very important piece of advice that I found many disregarded. Applying to medicine and dentistry is a lot harder than applying to other courses and once you start the process, it is pretty hard to pull out, having done so much work to get to wherever you are.
Secondly, reflecting is essential in your PS and interviews. In my post on writing your personal statement I emphasised how important it is to write about what you have learnt from your various activities and experience rather than simply listing them. Admissions tutors want to see what you took away from your experiences and how suited you are to the course. Applying to medicine and dentistry is very competitive so lots of other applicants will have done similar things to you- the difference is what you learnt from them.
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