What do you think is the hardest part of being a dentist, and are you ready for it?

Clear-eyed realism. Applicants who only see the upside worry admissions committees.

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

The trap

Naming a fake difficulty like 'the long hours of studying.' Also, claiming total readiness. The confident answer here is the honest one.

How to structure your answer

Name a real difficulty → evidence you've seen it up close → honest assessment of your readiness and what you're still building.

Pick something substantive: patient anxiety, the physical toll, running a business, isolation, the weight of causing pain
Show you've observed it, not just read about it
Be honest that you're not fully ready — nobody is

A weak answer

What most people say

I think the hardest part is the workload. Dental school is demanding, and then you're running a business on top of treating patients all day. It's a lot of hours for a long time. I've always been a hard worker, though. I carried a full course load while working thirty hours a week, so I'm confident I can handle it.

Names studying as the difficulty, then declares himself already finished.

A stronger answer

What lands

Causing pain to people who came to you voluntarily. I was a hospital corpsman for five years, so I've held people still for things that were helping them, and that does something to you nobody warns you about. In the office I shadowed, one extraction on an anxious patient took forty minutes and the dentist was gray afterward. Am I ready? I'm ready to keep working while somebody is uncomfortable. I don't know yet whether I can do that four times a day for thirty years.

A real cost, observed twice, and he won't claim he's finished.

The first answer promises he can handle it. The second names the part he isn't sure of, which is the half she'll believe.

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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