My Route to Dentistry

My professional background had been in technical IT sales. It paid very, very well and I was good at it, however, in order to be as successful as I was, I found myself giving up evenings and weekends and devoting too much of my time and attention to my job, neglecting, amongst other things, my girlfriend. So I decided to retrain and go down another path in hope of a better work/life balance.

I wanted to do something that was academic, as I had been a bright lad that went to grammar school but had underachieved when it mattered, something that was going to lead directly to a profession, something that rarely presented a need to 'take work home with you'. and something that would allow me to resume a similar lifestyle financially once I had qualified. Dentistry quickly presented itself as the ideal route to take.

When I first started out on this road I found it really difficult to find and contact people who were either attempting to do something similar or who had managed it and were now studying at uni.

It kinda suited me, as there was little evidence to suggest it couldn't be done and I could just focus on the information I could get, which tended to be from the universities themselves and was mostly entry requirements. If I could hit them, I had as good a chance as anybody.

One of the first decisions I had to make was whether I wanted to do an Access the HE diploma or A levels.

There are pros and cons to both, which I will outline in another post at some point, but I opted to go down the Access route. The main reason being that with the 24+ loan and the fact it only takes a year, it provided a cheaper, shorter way to get to uni. However, I was very restricted in terms of what universities I could apply to as the Access Diploma is far less versatile than A Levels.

 

If you do decide to go the access route it is also important to make sure you are doing the right course for the universities you wish to apply to. I learned this lesson the hard way. With the combination of my very modest GCSE's and the Access to Science course (as opposed to access to medicine or dentistry) that I chose to do, I was limited to only 2 universities to put a sensible application to.

Most Dental and Medical schools require that you take an entrance exam before applying. Most of the ones that do want you to take the UK Clinical Aptitude Test, usually abbreviated to UKCAT. Again, this is something that I will cover in more detail in a separate post at a later date. The average score for UKCAT is meant to be around 600, however the year I took the test, 2013, the average was 660. I managed to score 728, which was a strong score and put me in the top 20% of test takers that year. More UKCAT stats from 2013 can be found here. Getting such a strong score was really important as it meant I was much more likely to secure interviews. Do not obsess over the UKCAT, you are much better off enjoying your summer then committing 2-3 hours a day for 2-3 weeks before your exam preparing. Any more than that is overkill and counter productive.

 

 

Once I had taken the UKCAT the next step for me was to enrol at college. Anybody reading this who has plans to get onto a Dentistry or a Medicine course via an access to science course BRACE YOURSELVES because this is the point that multiple people who know nothing about you or what you are capable of will try and tell you that you will not achieve your goal, and try to convince you that you should aim for something more achievable like radiography, haha. Ignore them. Don't allow anybody to limit what you are capable of. If you are anything like me it will just make you more determined to get there, and also make sure you hunt these people down first to tell them when you get interviews, offers and then finally when you have managed to meet the conditions of your offer.

 

The next thing I had to do was write a kick ass personal statement! I think I succeeded here and I was really pleased with how the final draft turned out. This is an area where it pays to work with career advisors you have available to you as they have an idea about what admissions like to see. Also, this video is a great place to start.



 

 

 

On the strength of my UKCAT score and personal statement I was able to secure interviews at both the Universities I applied to, Manchester and Newcastle. If you have interviews, well done! You have survived the most competitive part of the process. Enjoy it for a moment but do not make the mistake I did and think the hard work is done, it isn't. I went into my interview at Manchester far too confident, why not? I had plenty of experience in interviews, being both an interviewer and an interviewee and I had done my research. what could go wrong? I let myself down because the momentousness of the occasion made me nervous, and because I wasn't prepared enough the nerves affected my performance. I was lucky enough to have a second interview (although I didn't know this at the time of my Manchester interview) and I prepared properly for that one and bagged myself a place at Newcastle!

 

I got my results a few weeks ago and was delighted to see my offer go from conditional to unconditional on UCAS and I am looking forward to starting the course!

 

I hope that was in some way helpful to somebody out there. If you have managed to real through all of this and have any questions, feel free to ask them in the comments below.