How to excel in your in-person dental school interviews!
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With restrictions being lifted and in-person activities resuming, dental school interviews are on the horizon. This is an extremely exciting time for applicants — a time to show off just how great you are! Below are some helpful tips for interviewing applicants written by Isabel, a current dental student who has gone through the interview process!
1. Ask thoughtful, meaningful questions.
This is just as much a time for you to learn about them and to see if you want to attend their school as it is a time for them to see if they want you. Ask questions that are meaningful and important to you. Also, asking unique, thought-provoking questions is another way to impress your interviewer. I had 3–5 general questions memorized, waiting in my back pocket, that I was able to use depending on the interview. In addition, I also had 1–2 school specific questions that allowed me to show the interviewer that I had done thorough research about them and their school. Lastly, while it is important to memorize and have these questions at your disposal, make the conversation natural. You do not want to sound like a rehearsed robot. Ask follow-up questions to your questions and add anecdotes to the answers they provide.
2. Know everything you wrote on your application and be prepared to talk about it.
This was one of the most helpful tips I ever got before my interviewing season, and it proved itself to be one of the most relevant tips I received throughout my process. Some interviewers have read your entire file, while others have only glanced at your name, and you may or may not know what kind of interview you are walking into before you enter the room. A LOT of the questions you will get will be questions that you have already answered in your application, but NEVER assume your interviewer knows what you wrote in your application. So, use all of the information you wrote about in your application! I also got some interview questions about small, inconsequential things I had written about in my application that I thought I would never be asked about. So be prepared to talk about anything in your application. The last thing you want to do is be inconsistent with what your application says — you need to know what you wrote like the back of your hand.
3. A follow-up to above: have a few key experiences in your back pocket to use as examples.
A lot of interview questions are worded differently but can be answered using the same common experience or the same common life event. Know the most important, transformative, and exciting experiences that you want to highlight in your interview and be able to adapt them to different kinds of questions (for example: using a volunteering experience to talk about empathy, compassion, team work, community, etc.). You should always follow up an interview answer with an example.
4. Do some research about the school’s interviews before yours.
There are a lot of candid resources online about specific schools interviews and what kinds of questions have been asked in years past. A lot of my interview questions were ones that I had already seen online, so I was prepared to answer them. For the schools that are notorious for asking obscure questions, while I may not have been given the exact same question, I was prepared for obscure questions because of the online research.
5. Follow-up.
Always, always ask for their card or email at the end of the interview in order to follow up with them and thank them for their time. When I was interviewing, I had a notebook in my bag that when I would get back to the main room from an interview, I would write down a few key points that differentiated that one interviewer (like something they said, passions that were shared, career experiences, etc.). After the interview day, I would then go back and write a personalized thank-you note to them using the points I had jotted down.
Want more interview prep? CrackDAT offers interview preparation and a list of 175 dental school interview questions to help you shine during your interviews. We wish you the best of luck during interview season — you’ve got this!
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