Most students and parents will grossly underestimate how difficult it is to secure a place at a UK dental school. They may have a general idea that it is not easy, but they will still underestimate the competitiveness of the procedure with so many applicants applying all at once. In a nutshell, you are more likely to get rejected than you are to get a place at a dental school. This is because the success rate is far below 50%. Let’s also not forget that the vast majority of applicants will be high-calibre students with good grades already. This means that you are already competing with the best of the best.
Many students will also unwisely gamble with their applications. For instance, they will write out a personal statement and only ask the school teacher to check it. Although we recommend this in the early stages, once you come to refining your personal statement then your school teacher will fall short of this for two reasons. The first reason is that simply the school teacher will have scores of other personal statements to go through as well as yours. The teacher simply cannot spend the time necessary on each individual personal statement. But let’s also not forget that the teachers do not get specifically paid for checking personal statements, and they are simply doing this out of goodwill in their own free time. This is not a criticism of your school teachers but it is simple facts and statements. The other problem with asking your teacher to finalize your personal statement is that they are simply not experts in the field. They have of course a general idea, and they will have done other personal statements before however when it comes to specifics and fine perfectionist details, they will not be up to the task. The above example is just one scenario where students unnecessarily gamble with their applications and hence reduce chances even further of securing a place at dental school. Students should try to make it as easy as possible for a potential University to accept them and offer them a place. All too often instead we find students actually make it easy for universities to reject them instead. As an example, if you don’t have a certain minimum amount of relevant work experience, you are just giving the university a fantastic excuse to reject you. Universities will therefore look for excuses to reject simply because they have so many students applying, and they have to apply strict criteria. Finally, the competition is so intense that even perfect students are not guaranteed a place or an offer at any of the available dental universities. The best thing that you can do as a student is to simply increase your chances at every stage of the process. To increase your chances, this means using your time efficiently and effectively and asking for experts to accelerate your chances when and where necessary.