Queen Mary Dentistry School (A200 BDS) 2026

Queen Mary's Dentistry Minimum Age To Start Course

All students for our undergraduate medical and dental degree programmes must be 18 years old or over by the start of the course (mid-September)

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Queen Mary's Dentistry Interview Questions & Topics for 2026 entry

Several topics are more likely to come up at the University of Queen Mary's Dental School Panel Interview, which can be derived from past Queen Mary's Panel stations, including:

• There is a video component in the dental (A200) interviews, where applicants watch a video and give their observations on its content. They may also have an article that they use in the interviews.
• Work experience
• Problem-solving ability
• Knowledge of common dental problems and their presentation
• Understanding of dentistry issues
• Organisation skills
• Problem-solving and analytical skills
• Enthusiasm, interest and motivation to study dentistry
• Communication and interpersonal skills
• Teamwork
• Manual dexterity skills
• Contribution to student/university life

Other things looked at:

• Motivation and reality of a career in dentistry
• Initiative, resilience and maturity
• Teamwork
• Organisation and problem solving abilities
• Contribution to university life
• Communication skills

Feedback

Requests for feedback after an interview should be made in writing by email to the Admissions Office. Candidates should indicate their full name and address, UCAS number and the programme for which they are requesting feedback. Feedback will normally be provided within 20 working days of receipt of the feedback request. Requests should be sent to smdadmissions@qmul.ac.uk and must be made directly by the candidate and not a third party.

Barts and the London Interview Scoring 2026 Entry

At QMUL you will be marked on:

• Empathy and Integrity
• Evidence of Commitment and Interest (including work
• experience)
• The realities of Dentistry
• Teamwork and Leadership Skills
• Communication Skills
• Overall Global Score

Queen Mary's Interview Questions -2026 Entry

These are suggested practice questions based on publicly available information and past trends. They are not official questions from the University and may not appear in your interview. Use them as part of a broader preparation strategy.

Motivation to study Dentistry

1. Why Dentistry?
2. Why Queen Mary's?
3. What did you learn from your dental work experience?
4. What qualities of a dentist did you see from your dental work experience?
5. What do you know about the Queen Mary's Dentistry course? How is it taught?
6. Why do you think you will be well suited to this course?
7. Why Dentistry and not medicine or nursing?
8. Tell us about your volunteering.
9. What does professionalism mean to you?
10. What are your hobbies?
11. What are the negatives of a career in Dentistry?
12. Are there any societies you would like to join at Queen Mary's?

Personal Insight/Qualities

1. Why should patients trust you?
2. What are your best qualities?
3. How do you manage stress?
4. With limited interview places and many academically strong candidates, what single experience best demonstrates your suitability for dentistry?
5. Which workforce or access pressures do you think most affect NHS dental patients today?
6. How do you decide when to share responsibility with a team rather than doing a task yourself?
7. Tell us about a long-term project you stuck with despite repeated setbacks.
8. Give us an example of a time when you demonstrated teamwork.
9. What are your strengths and weaknesses?
10. How would your friends describe you?
11. If a supervising clinician disagreed with how you carried out a task, how would you respond?
12. Describe a time you adapted after an initial approach failed. Why does adaptability matter in clinical dentistry?
13. If you do a precise hands-on activity, such as model-building or playing an instrument, how has it sharpened your fine motor control?
14. Tell us about an article that you have recently read.

Dental Situations

1. A patient wants the quickest possible fix, but the best long-term option takes more visits. How would you reason through your recommendation?
2. How would you prioritise treatment for a patient who has several problems but limited time and money?
3. If a patient becomes unresponsive in the dental chair during a routine check-up, how would you assess them?

NHS & Local Area

1. What role does the Care Quality Commission play in regulating dental care?
2. What do we mean by aerosol-generating procedures?
3. What is the role of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence?
4. What does the General Dental Council do, and why does it matter to patients?
5. What do you understand about how NHS dental treatment is funded and banded for patients?
6. What are the NHS values, and why are they important?
7. What does a typical working week look like for a general dental practitioner?
8. How should public health bodies tackle widening inequalities in access to dental care?
9. What do you know about the local area here in Queen Mary's?
10. What workforce or funding issues do you think will most shape UK dentistry over the next decade?
11. How has COVID changed the way that dental practices operate?
12. How does oral health differ here compared to other areas in the UK?

Ethical Scenarios

1. Understanding of the four ethical principles
2. How important do you think a dentist's overall presentation and demeanour are to building patient trust?
3. If you suspected a colleague was working while impaired by alcohol, how would you act?
4. Who can you escalate concerns to within a practice?

Other Stations including Manual Dexterity

1. How much understanding of the science behind restorative materials do you think a practising dentist actually needs?
2. Talk us through this article - what do you know about the authors? What are they arguing here?
3. Photo: an intra-oral image showing significant gum recession - describe what you can observe here.
4. How do you keep your hand control reliable when you are tired or working under time pressure?
5. Tell us about a time you had to master a fiddly practical task. What helped you get better at it?
6. Role play: the nurse leaves the room to attend to an emergency, and speak to the patient (general talk)

👉🏼 Read more: 230+ Dentistry Interview Questions

How to prepare for your Barts and The London (Queen Mary University of London) dentistry interview (2026 entry)

1. Barts gives you an article a few days before your panel interview and builds questions around it, so practise active reading: summarise the piece in two sentences, extract the dentist's role, and predict the science behind any claim. Candidates have been asked to summarise the article on the day and then explain a mechanism from it, so rehearse this out loud using our free mock interview generator.
2. Because the pre-released article often touches a clinical-science topic, drill the specific mechanisms applicants report being grilled on, such as how acids from dietary sugars demineralise enamel, and how systemic conditions like diabetes interact with oral health. Build a small bank of these from our 200+ dentistry interview Q&A guide so you can explain them in plain English.
3. Barts panellists like to test applied science, so be ready to reason about why prompt dental treatment matters and how oral health connects to general wellbeing, explaining it clearly in plain terms. Show breadth of understanding rather than memorising a single fact.
4. This is a panel, not an MMI, so expect a sustained two-part conversation with the same assessors rather than a circuit of timed stations; role-play is far less central here. Still, our ultimate MMI preparation guide is useful for the underlying station types (ethics, data, communication) that feed Barts' article and discussion sections.
5. Barts repeatedly probes how scientific the course is, so be ready to discuss why a strong grounding in biology and physiology underpins safe practice in its science-heavy first year. Prepare a concrete answer linking, say, tissue healing or local anaesthetic action to clinical decisions, and revisit what the training pathway actually involves via our career in dentistry guide.
6. The panel probes professionalism directly: what it means, why it matters even as an undergraduate, and an example of unprofessional behaviour. Anchor your answer in GDC Standards (patient confidentiality, honesty, raising concerns) and have a real, specific example ready. Our guide to answering ethics interview questions shows how to structure these without sounding rehearsed.
7. Topical questions at Barts have included AGPs (aerosol-generating procedures), the CQC, NICE and the current challenges facing dentists, so prepare a short briefing on each. Know what these bodies regulate or recommend and tie them to real pressures like NHS access, the dental contract and post-pandemic backlogs. Work through these with a tutor in 1-1 dentistry interview coaching if you want feedback.
8. Social media in dentistry is a recurring Barts discussion topic, so form a balanced view: professionalism and GDC guidance on online conduct, patient confidentiality, advertising/cosmetic claims, and misinformation versus public education. Practise arguing both benefits and risks rather than landing on a one-sided answer.
9. Expect the classic Barts differentiation challenge: with so many strong applicants, why should they choose you over someone with identical grades? Prepare two or three distinctive, evidence-backed reasons tied to your experiences rather than cliches. Rehearse this against the bank in our practice dentistry interview questions.
10. Barts wants you to connect work experience to the skills of a dentist, asking which dentist skills you actually observed. Map specific moments (manual dexterity, communication, managing anxious patients, attention to detail) to named placements and reflect on what you learned, using our dentistry work experience guide to structure that reflection.
11. Although Barts does not run a formal dexterity station, panellists ask you to identify the skills of a dentist, which includes fine motor control. Be ready to evidence your own manual dexterity (model-making, sewing, a musical instrument, suturing practice) and applicants are sometimes asked about a creative or hands-on hobby, so have a genuine example you can discuss naturally.
12. Show you have researched the Barts course specifically: candidates are shown an outline of the course and asked what its biggest challenge will be, plus which societies they would join or research topics they would pursue. Read the official programme structure and entry requirements so your answer is concrete, and check how Barts compares on our UK dental schools hub.
13. Barts likes resilience and conflict questions such as a time you were resilient and how you would handle complaints and criticism. Prepare STAR-structured stories that show reflection and improvement, and frame complaint-handling around listening, taking responsibility and patient safety rather than defensiveness.
14. Treat your personal statement as fully fair game, since the panel cross-examines it (your hobbies, your work experience, your motivations). Re-read it and prepare follow-ups for every claim; if you want it tightened before interview, our dentistry personal statement help and full application packages cover both document and interview.
15. Finally, simulate the full Barts experience under pressure: take a short article, give yourself a few minutes to digest it, then deliver a summary and a science explanation followed by a values-and-experience discussion. Run repeated reps on this same page's #mock-interviews tool and read our dentistry personal statement guide to keep your answers consistent with what you wrote.