What Makes A Good Dentistry Personal Statement?

Writing the personal statement is no easy feat, as it must encapsulate your personality, interest, and motivation to study dentistry. However, this does not mean that it can’t be done successfully; with the right guidance (and all the other articles on our site), you’ll have your final draft written in no time!

What should your Dentistry Personal Statement include?

The aims of the personal statement are primarily to show that you have a keen interest in dentistry, a mature understanding of what the field entails, and that you have the essential qualities needed to enter the profession. As a result, your statement must include some reading, research and work experience you have done, and more importantly, what you learned from that experience.

 How should you start your Personal Statement?

Before even opening a word document and writing your first draft, I believe there is another task you need to complete, that will make the process of writing your personal statement much less daunting: You need to make a list of all the skills, attributes, and characteristics of a dentist, and write next to them where you have shown those skills/attributes. For example, if you were to write “Leadership”, next to it you could write “was the leader of my team that won a business competition at school, I learned about managing people and delegating roles, as well as worked on communication....” This is just an example but the more detailed you can make this list, the easier writing the actual personal statement will be! What you will be doing is building your personal statement from the foundations of dentistry up, rather than starting with the introduction and working chronologically; working on the perfect introduction will come later.

Tip: Learn about the qualities that a good dentist should show in the article “What makes a good dentist?”  

When starting your personal statement, it is crucial to remember that standing out is key; the admissions tutors will read your statement among hundreds, and the best way for you to be memorable is to speak about our experiences, whether that is your personal experience, or something memorable from your work experience. Remember that people may experience the same situation, but your reflections and takeaways are your own; they are unique to you, so use that to your advantage! 

I believe that the best way to start your personal statement would be to talk about a personal experience you have had relating to dentistry, whether it was a treatment you or a family member went through, or an interesting childhood experience you had with the dentist. Adding how you felt, or the characteristics you observed or reflected on will give your introduction a unique twist, making it more memorable! 

What to avoid in your Dentistry Personal Statement?

The first and most important things to avoid – and I cannot stress this enough – are very cliché statements in your opening about how you’ve “always wanted to study dentistry” or that you were “born to enter the profession.” These statements are obviously untrue, and add no value to your personal statement, and when it comes to the competitive application process, it is key that you use all 4000 characters you are given to add as much value as you can, by writing about your experience, qualities, skills, hobbies and other extra-curriculars. 

You absolutely do not want to just list these experiences and skills either; they should just be mentioned, reflected upon, and most importantly, related back to dentistry! If you make the list, as I mentioned earlier, writing your actual personal statement will simply consist of fleshing out your list and adding some structure to it, as well as adding a few other ideas.

What is the best way to structure your Personal Statement?

While there is no one best structure when it comes to writing your personal statement, the best ones will share one characteristic, and that is flow; your paragraphs must flow from one experience, scenario, etc, to the next. 

An important thing to keep in mind is that your work experience/volunteering should make up most of your personal statement, where you include what you have learned about the dental profession from those experiences, or how the skills you have developed are transferable to dentistry. 

If you would like to learn more about the dental profession and give yourself more to write about in your personal statement, then check out our Dentistry Experience Course, linked below. If you are eligible for a bursary then you can take this course for FREE:

https://iwanttobeadentist.com/work-experience-dentistry

One structure that can be useful is the STARR method often used in interviews. This involves explaining the situation, task, action, result and finally reflection. Applying this once or twice when writing about work experience/volunteering will not only highlight your ability to reflect, but also allow you to show off any skills you have developed. In addition to the STARR method, I do recommend that as part of your reflection that you link the skills you’ve done/observed to dentistry. 

Dentistry Personal Statement: FAQs

• How long should it be? 4000 characters including spaces, and I recommend you use as much of these characters as possible, to give you the best chance of getting an interview!

• Should I write about what I want to specialise in? Since you have not yet began your dental training, then you may not be fully informed to decide on what you want to specialise in, and this will highly likely change throughout your dental training. Because of this, it would be better to write that you are interested in a certain specialty, rather than saying you want to specialise in it yet. Perhaps include any further reading/research you have done about that specialty.

• Who can verify your dentistry personal statement? Once you have written a draft you are happy with, it is a clever idea to find someone who can read it and give you feedback. For example, you could send it to a IWTBAD tutor of your choice, and they will read it and analyse and evaluate it for you, scoring you in 10 distinct categories and giving you tailored feedback to improve it! Our tutors are dental students and dentist from a variety of universities and backgrounds from around the UK! Here is the link below if you are interested:

https://iwanttobeadentist.com/dentistry-personal-statement-review-service

If you have any further questions related to this topic, or about the application process in general, send us an email to hello@iwanttobeadentist.com , or DM us @iwanttobeadentist on Instagram, or you can DM me personally @omar_dental_ on Instagram.