If dentistry didn't exist, what would you do instead?

What's underneath the choice. The answer often reveals your real motivation more honestly than 'why dentistry' does.

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

The trap

Refusing to engage — 'I can't imagine doing anything else' sounds devout but dodges the question. They asked a hypothetical; answer it.

How to structure your answer

Name the alternative → the thread it shares with dentistry → back to why dentistry captures it best.

Pick something you'd genuinely enjoy, not a strategic answer
Identify the common thread explicitly
Use it to reinforce rather than undercut your commitment

A weak answer

What most people say

That's a tough one. Honestly, I can't really picture doing anything else. Dentistry is the only thing I've seriously considered, and everything I've done for the last four years has been pointed at it. I guess if I absolutely had to pick something, maybe teaching or research, but it wouldn't be the same thing at all.

Sounds devout, dodges the question, and tells her nothing about him.

A stronger answer

What lands

I'd go back to architecture. I did two years of it before I switched, and what I loved was that a stair riser is either the right height for a body or it isn't. You can't argue a building into working. That's the same thread. An occlusion either fits the person or it doesn't. What lost me was the waiting. I'd have spent three years on drawings before anything got built, and in an operatory you find out in the same appointment.

Answers the hypothetical honestly, then uses it to sharpen the real choice.

Refusing the question protects nothing. Answering it let him name what he's actually after, which is fast physical feedback.

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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