What makes you different from the other applicants we're interviewing today?

Whether you know your own value proposition and can state it without arrogance.

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

The trap

Two opposite failures — hedging ('I'm not sure I'm that different') and empty superlatives ('I'm the hardest worker you'll meet'). The first wastes the question, the second invites them to disprove you.

How to structure your answer

Name the specific combination that's yours → prove it with evidence → what it means for their class.

Claim a combination rather than a single trait — combinations are actually rare
Prove each piece
Frame it as contribution to their community
Say it with confidence and no apology

A weak answer

What most people say

I think what sets me apart is my work ethic. I've had to work for everything I have and I don't think anyone in this building today is going to outwork me. I'm also a strong communicator, and I genuinely care about the people I'd be treating.

An unprovable superlative, which invites the committee to go looking for exceptions.

A stronger answer

What lands

Three things together, not one. I spent eleven years as an HVAC tech, so I've been working with my hands in tight spaces, upside down, since I was twenty-two. I did about half of it in Spanish, in houses where people were nervous about what the bill was going to say. And I'm thirty-three, which means I've already had the years where I learned how to be wrong in front of a customer. I don't think any single piece of that is rare. All three in one class might be.

Claims a combination, evidences each piece, and states it without inflating it.

Nobody can check hardest worker. Anybody can check eleven years, two languages, and a customer you had to face after a bad call.

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 free Get the guide