What concerns do you have about dental school?
Realism and self-awareness. An applicant with no concerns hasn't looked closely.
The trap
'None, I'm just excited.' It reads as either unserious or unreflective. The applicants who admit a real concern and show they've thought it through score higher, consistently.
How to structure your answer
Name a real concern → why it's real for you specifically → what you're doing to prepare for it.
- Pick something genuine: debt, the pace, hand skills, the clinical transition, being far from support
- Explain why it's specifically yours
- Describe your concrete preparation
- Show it's a concern, not a fear that would stop you
A weak answer
Honestly, I'm mostly just excited. I know it's going to be hard, and people keep telling me the first year is brutal, but I've wanted this for a long time and I work well under pressure. If anything, my concern is that I'll be impatient waiting to get to the clinical part, because that's the part I've been picturing for years.
'No real concerns' plus a disguised strength. Nothing here can be checked.
A stronger answer
The didactic first year. I've been out of a classroom for six years — I was a medic, and everything I learned was hands-on, one problem at a time. Sitting through eight hours of lecture and still retaining it is a different muscle and I wasn't sure I still had it. So this spring I took anatomy and biochem together while working full time, on purpose, to find out. I got through both, but my study system was a mess until about week five. I'd rather have found that out now than in October.
A specific concern, a real test he ran on himself, and an honest cost.
One answer says he can handle anything. The other names the exact thing he wasn't sure he could handle, and what he did to find out.
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.
Try one interview freeGet the guideMore fit questions
- Why did you apply to our school?Fit
- What will you contribute to our class?Fit
- If we admitted you, what would you want to get involved in here?Fit
- What other schools are you considering? If we accepted you today, would you come?Fit
- Is there anything we haven't asked that you'd want us to know?Fit
- Why should we pick you over an applicant with the same GPA and DAT score?Fit