Admitted

Have you had a chance to look around the campus or the clinic yet? What did you think?

Whether you're observant, engaged, and capable of a specific compliment rather than a generic one.

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

The trap

'It's beautiful, everyone's so nice.' Every applicant says this. It is the conversational equivalent of white noise and they stop hearing it by 9am.

How to structure your answer

Yes/no honestly → one specific thing you noticed → what it made you think or feel.

A weak answer

What most people say
Yes, we had a tour this morning. It's a beautiful campus, honestly. Everyone has been so nice, and the students walking us around were great. You can tell people are happy here. I was impressed by the facilities too. It seems like a really supportive environment.

Every applicant says this; it stops registering by nine in the morning.

A stronger answer

What lands
We went through the sim lab about an hour ago. What I noticed is that the mannequin chairs actually recline. The ones I trained on were fixed, so we all learned to prep standing at a strange angle. I've been assisting for three years and I've watched two new grads have to unlearn their posture. Chairs that behave like real chairs mattered to me more than it probably should have.

A detail only someone who has stood at a chair would notice.

The first compliment could be pasted onto any school in the country. The second proves she was actually looking.

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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