Do you see yourself owning your own practice one day?

Whether you've thought past graduation. Ownership is the traditional path in dentistry and it's changing fast — your answer says a lot about how realistically you're planning.

Written by Victoria Young, DDS · NYU College of Dentistry '24 · Penn Dental Medicine

The trap

Answering as though ownership is automatic. Running a practice is running a small business, and applicants who talk about it as a lifestyle upgrade rather than a job reveal they haven't looked at it closely.

How to structure your answer

Give your honest current answer → what draws you to it or away from it → what you know about the practical side → what would help you decide.

It is fine to say you don't know yet, if you say what would decide it
If yes: acknowledge the business reality — a practice loan on top of student debt, hiring, payroll, marketing
If no: give real reasons, like wanting to focus on clinical work or valuing flexibility early on
Show you know associateship is where nearly everyone starts
Mention what you'd want to learn first — most schools teach almost no practice management

A weak answer

What most people say

I'd like to eventually, yes. Owning a practice gives you a lot more autonomy, and you're not answering to somebody else about how you want to treat your patients. It also seems like the stronger path financially over a career. I'd probably associate for a couple of years first and then start looking at buying something.

Autonomy and money, with no sense that ownership means running a small business.

A stronger answer

What lands

Probably, but I'm in no hurry, and that's because of how I grew up. My parents ran a dry cleaner for nineteen years, and what I remember isn't autonomy. It's my mom doing payroll at the kitchen table on Sundays, and the year the boiler died and they borrowed against the house. So I know a practice loan would sit on top of student debt, and that hiring and firing is the hard part, not the dentistry. I'd associate first, three or four years. And I'd want to learn to read a P&L and negotiate an insurance contract, since school teaches neither.

Ownership as a business with debt and payroll, plus a realistic runway through associateship.

One answer wants the title. The other watched what the title costs on a Sunday afternoon.

These are illustrations, not scripts. An answer you memorize sounds memorized — the point is the shape and the specificity, in your own words and about your own life.

Reading it isn't the same as saying it.

Most people can explain a good answer and still fall apart saying one out loud. Admitted asks you all 100 questions in a faculty voice, records you, and scores your pace and filler words.

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