How do you handle stress?

Whether you have real coping infrastructure. Dental school is genuinely hard and they've watched students break.

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

The trap

'I work well under pressure' as the entire answer. That's a claim about outcomes, not a description of method — and it tells them nothing about whether you'll survive a bad semester.

How to structure your answer

Acknowledge stress honestly → name specific strategies you actually use → an example of them working under real pressure.

Name concrete practices, not vague 'I stay positive'
Include at least one social or support-based strategy
Give a real example from a hard stretch
Show you know your own warning signs

A weak answer

What most people say

Honestly, I work well under pressure. I've always been the person who gets calmer when things get busy, and I think that's a big part of why nursing suited me. Stress doesn't really throw me off. I put my head down and get through whatever's in front of me.

A claim about outcomes with no method underneath it.

A stronger answer

What lands

Stress absolutely gets to me, and my first sign is that I stop eating lunch. I figured that out during a stretch last winter when our unit ran short three nights a week for about two months. So I got concrete. I run four miles Tuesdays and Saturdays, I'm off email after nine, and I call my brother on the drive home, which is when I actually say the bad parts out loud. I got through that winter. I was not particularly gracious at home while it was happening.

Names a warning sign, three real practices, a person, and a hard stretch.

One answer says stress bounces off. The other one knows what the first symptom is, which is the only self-knowledge that helps you in March.

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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