Hi everyone and welcome back to the channel. If you're new here, I'm Prateekm a dentist and specialty doctor and
in this video we're going to be looking at how you can smash your personal statement to give you the
best chance in your dentistry application. If you want to see more educational content similar to
this please make sure to hit the subscribe button. Now I applied to four universities and I got four
interviews. I applied to Sheffield, Leeds, Kings and Barts so I like to think that my personal statement
was relatively good. Now what is a personal statement? A personal statement is a summary of you
and why you want to do dentistry. It's your opportunity to almost sell yourself
and stand out from other candidates who may be applying. It's usually about 4,000 characters long
or 47 lines whichever comes first and in dentistry you can only have one personal statement for all
your application so all the universities will get the same personal statement so don't tailor your
personal statement to a particular university. Tip number one - have a clear reason as to why you want
to do dentistry. It's a long course and there are lots of candidates applying, so you need to make
sure that you have a very obvious reason as to why you want to do the course. Then following on
from this, everything you mention in your personal statement should link back to the reason why
you want to do dentistry. So even if you mention that you do a team sport, you need to mention why
that becomes relevant to a dental course so part of the preparation for your personal statement
should be to look at some of the qualities that a good dentist needs because then everything
you mention in your personal statement, you can start applying to these qualities. And also it's
a very common interview question so it's good to have a good think about it now early on in your
application so that later on in interviews you have obvious reasons as to why you want to do it.
Just make sure you're honest and you're not cliche about anything. Let's move on to tip number two.
Tip number two is basically making sure you stand out from the crowd and this is making sure that
your personal statement has some little nuggets of information that will make you different from
the next candidate. So if you're thinking while you're doing your personal statement you have
that really strange hobby or something slightly different that you do to the average person,
don't just discount it thinking it will look odd in your personal statement - it might actually make
you stand out a lot more than all the other candidates who have done the Duke of Edinburgh
course for example. Ultimately, as long as you can relate what you're saying to dentistry, then you
should include it - it's only going to give you extra points. Everyone will have got the
right grades or predicted grades to get in, most people will have done some team building stuff,
almost everyone will have done work experience, so if you've got that odd hobby that will make you stand
out and make you memorable, make sure to include it. Ultimately, the university wants to know why you
should come to that university, what will you bring to the university. Tip number three is reflecting
on what you've done. So yes it's fine saying that you've done Duke of Edinburgh or you've done work
experience at a dental practice, but you then want to reflect on this and say what you learned from
what you did and how again that links back to dentistry. Again as I've said, dentistry is a long
course but reflecting and looking back on what you've done is a lifelong aspect of dentistry
and so demonstrating these skills and qualities early on is really, really important when it comes
to your application. Tip number four is that you want to show that you're more than just a dentist.
Yes ultimately you're going for a dental degree but you want to show you're a well-rounded student
and that's the most common phrase that you'll hear people using when it comes to describing personal
statements. Again you want to be showing what are you going to bring to the university apart from
just studying to do dentistry. Everyone will have got the grades and so you need to see what are you
going to bring that's different whether it's a hobby, an interest, could you start a society
those types of qualities which again will be looked at at interview stage. So some key
things to maybe consider with regards to showing you're well-rounded. Dentistry is
a stressful course and a dental career can be quite stressful so one of the key things
is to make sure that you can deal with stress and so that's something that you can demonstrate quite
well. For example, I said that I play guitar and that's one way that I deal with stress that shows
that I do something apart from dentistry and the sciences but also I could then link in qualities
as a dentist - so manual dexterity, coordination those types of skills and so again despite showing
that I have got other factors to my personality and to my character, I'm still linking those back to
dentistry. So although I'm mentioning something that isn't dentistry related as such, I'm able
to link back the qualities and skills needed for that back to a dental degree, so I'm dealing with
both aspects of my personal statement at the same time. Next is tip number five and this is very, very
basic that you want to make sure that you have the right structure and you check your spelling and
grammar. The last thing that you want when you hand in your personal statement is to have spelling
mistakes on there or issues with your grammar. I know from my experience of conducting these
interviews that immediately as soon as we see a personal statement that has spelling mistakes that are
really obvious, that immediately loses points for that candidate. Make sure you check and check again
ensuring that there aren't any spelling mistakes or grammar issues. With regards to the structure,
there's a very common layout that can be followed obviously feel free to deviate but you want a good
introduction, you want information on your work experience in relation to dentistry, then you
want to follow this up with your extracurricular activities and the other things that you do and
then finally a really strong conclusion to sum everything up and sum you up as an individual.
Tip number six is to start early. Although the deadline for your application is mid-October,
you have plenty of time beforehand to start working on your personal statement. The last thing
you want to do is work on it the week before and it'll have issues with spelling, you won't have the
right content, getting feedback from other people becomes difficult and so you're then ultimately
going to hand in a personal statement that isn't of a good quality. Make sure you start months in
advance because you're going to go through six, seven, eight drafts of this to make sure that
is absolute ideal piece of work that you could hand in and this leads on to tip number seven -
getting feedback. The sooner you start working on your personal statement, the sooner you can start
getting feedback from people to see whether what you're writing actually makes sense and whether
it's relevant to dentistry and it's important to get feedback not from just your teachers or people
at school, but also people who aren't related to dentistry or to education because they may pick
up other things that you may not notice such as the spelling and grammar. Hand it to family, hand it
to friends, anyone else that you can find because the more feedback you get, the better. Obviously you
don't have to take all the feedback on board but it gives you different views and opinions on your
personal statement to try and enhance it further. Tip number eight - don't lie. It's the last thing that
you want to do in your personal statement. Firstly, because why would you want to start the journey
of identity career based on lies but also when it comes to your interview, should you get picked for
interview, you then may be asked questions on things you've said on your personal statement
and if you've lied that's probably going to be found out and it does not reflect well on you
as a candidate. And finally tip number nine - don't copy. Now in the process of getting feedback from
other people, you may send your personal statement to people doing a dental degree or people who have
done dentistry already, they may send you their personal statement to look at - make sure you
don't copy and paste. It's so obvious if someone has copied and pasted. Firstly, these personal
statements usually go through plagiarising software and so you'll be picked up straight away and that
may be the end of your application but also again you may copy something and not realise that there
are potential lies in there that do not apply to yourself. So it's just something not worth doing
and especially because it may jeopardise your entire application just don't go down that route.
So there were nine key tips to get the most out of your personal statement. So make sure you start
early and you gradually build the information and the feedback into your personal statement
so you can get the best bit of work at the end of it. I hope you found those nine tips useful.
If you do want any advice regarding your personal statements, make sure to contact me either on here
or on instagram or facebook and I'll be happy to help anyone who needs it. Until the next video - take
care