What do you see as the biggest issue facing dentistry today?

Whether you follow the field. Many applicants have no idea what's happening in the profession they're joining.

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

The trap

Having no answer, or a shallow one. This question is where prepared applicants separate from unprepared ones, and it's entirely fixable with two hours of reading.

How to structure your answer

Name one issue → show you understand its mechanics → discuss it from more than one side → where you'd fit.

Have a real one ready: access to care, student debt versus practice economics, DSO consolidation, oral-systemic health integration, workforce shortages, Medicaid reimbursement
Show mechanism, not just headline
Acknowledge the legitimate view on the other side
Be honest about complexity

A weak answer

What most people say

I'd say access to care. There are a lot of people in this country who can't get to a dentist, whether that's cost or because there simply aren't providers where they live, and I think the profession has a real responsibility to address that. It's honestly a big part of why I want to go into dentistry in the first place.

A real issue named and then abandoned — headline with no mechanism, no second side.

A stronger answer

What lands

The collision between what a new graduate owes and what a practice can charge. You come out with a mortgage-sized loan, so you need volume, but many of the patients who most need care are on Medicaid, where reimbursement in a lot of states doesn't cover the cost of the work. So the rational move is to practice where the paying patients are, and the shortage areas stay short. To be fair, a state is looking at an entire budget, not one fee schedule. I did seasonal tax prep for three winters and watched people choose between a filling and a transmission. Service-linked loan repayment is the lever I'd use.

Explains the mechanism, concedes the state's position, then names one specific lever.

The second answer explains why the problem persists. Caring about it was never the part they were scoring.

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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