Real questions from UK BDS interviews — MMI, panel and online — curated by tutors who recently sat them. Browse by category below with the tips on how to approach each one, or open any question to answer it out loud and mark yourself against the examiner rubric.
Six timed dental stations, self-marked against the examiner rubric. No sign-up.
Applying for medicine instead? The 621-question medicine bank is here.
Each question below has its own page: the prompt, the likely follow-ups, what strong answers do, and the same examiner rubric NextGen MedPrep tutors mark against.
These are locked examples — a look at what's inside. Practise the free, self-markable questions above, then unlock the full bank with model answers and tutor marking on Prometheus.
Questions sourced from UK medical and dental school interviews in the last three cycles.
Selected by current students and recent applicants who sat the same interviews themselves.
Need questions matched to a specific school? Unlock 1000+ on the paid bank.
Why medicine, why dentistry, why now. Tutors want a specific, evidenced answer — not a cliché.
Do you have the personality that it takes to do dentistry?
Why should we take you rather than someone else?
Why are you the best person?
What shows your commitment and dedication to dentistry?
28 more Motivation questions locked
Plus model answers, follow-ups and university-specific banks on Prometheus.
Explore Prometheus →Reflective questions that test what your shadowing and volunteering actually taught you.
What did you learn from your work experience?
How important is communication in dentistry?
Do you feel you possess the necessary skills a dentist should have?
What are the negative aspects of being a dentist?
14 more Work Experience questions locked
Plus model answers, follow-ups and university-specific banks on Prometheus.
Explore Prometheus →The four pillars (autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, justice) applied under interview pressure.
If you are approached by the police for information regarding one of your patients, can you provide it?
The mother of a 17-year-old boy patient telephones and enquires whether her son has been attending his appointments with you. What would you do?
What are your thoughts on the Tony Nicklinson assisted suicide case?
Does the patient have mental capacity to make this decision?
142 more Ethics questions locked
Plus model answers, follow-ups and university-specific banks on Prometheus.
Explore Prometheus →Current healthcare issues, health-system structure, policy debates — show you read beyond your textbook.
Whom would you regard as part of the dental team?
What did you learn from your work experience abroad in India?
Should the Government put an obesity tax on food?
What is the Future of Dentistry?
52 more NHS & Hot Topics questions locked
Plus model answers, follow-ups and university-specific banks on Prometheus.
Explore Prometheus →Resilience, teamwork, communication, self-awareness — your personality, evidenced with stories.
What are the qualities of a good leader?
What are the qualities of a good team player?
How would your friends describe you?
Name three adjectives that you think best suit you?
109 more Personal Qualities questions locked
Plus model answers, follow-ups and university-specific banks on Prometheus.
Explore Prometheus →Curriculum-style questions and university-specific motivation. Always research the course.
What is Dentistry?
How does medicine compare with 50 and 100 years ago?
If you were a career guidance teacher, how would you put someone off a career in dentistry?
What are Mercury Fillings and are they safe?
37 more University & Academic questions locked
Plus model answers, follow-ups and university-specific banks on Prometheus.
Explore Prometheus →Empathy, structure and active listening under timed-station pressure.
You dyed a suit the wrong colour; what would you say to the client?
Your friend asks you to forge his signature for compulsory seminars; how do you handle it?
Your friend Sarah comes to school with a black eye. What would you do?
How did she get the black eye?
70 more Role Play & Communication questions locked
Plus model answers, follow-ups and university-specific banks on Prometheus.
Explore Prometheus →Practical reasoning, graphs, numerical and abstract problems under time pressure.
What can go wrong in a team?
What are the advantages and disadvantages of working in a team?
Which question would you most want to ask if you were the interviewer?
Which medical advancements over the last ten years should receive a Nobel Prize?
1 more Data Interpretation question locked
Plus model answers, follow-ups and university-specific banks on Prometheus.
Explore Prometheus →1. Read widely. Skim every category above and identify which feel weakest. Most applicants are strongest on motivation and weakest on ethics, NHS current affairs, and role-play.
2. Build frameworks, not scripts. Memorising specific answers is fragile - when the wording changes, you freeze. Build a 3-step framework for ethics (four pillars), a 4-step framework for breaking bad news (SPIKES), and a STAR framework for personal qualities.
3. Read our free guides. Ultimate Medical Ethics Guide covers the four pillars with 40+ scenarios. Interview hot topics covers NHS pressures and current affairs.
4. Practice out loud. Reading is not enough. Record yourself answering each question for 90 seconds and play it back. You'll notice filler words, weak structure and repeated points you'd never catch on paper.
5. Get a mock interview. MMI mock packages and panel mock packages put you in front of a current dentist for structured, honest feedback. Or rehearse first with the AI mock interview — MMI or panel, photoreal interviewers and a rubric-scored debrief in about two minutes.
Prometheus is our paid bank: past questions from King's, Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol and all the other UK dental schools — with model answers, AI-marked mocks, and one-to-one tutor feedback.
Also included with any AI mock credit pack or interview package with mock credits.
Dental interviews cover the same eight areas as medicine but weighted differently: motivation for dentistry specifically, work experience reflection, ethics, healthcare and professional current affairs, personal qualities, university and academic questions, role-play and communication, and data interpretation. Ethics, personal qualities and role-play carry the most questions in this bank, because so much of dental practice is a one-to-one relationship with an anxious patient in a chair.
The formats overlap heavily — MMI, panel and online interviews all appear in both — but the content diverges in three places. Dentistry asks about manual dexterity and why you want a career built around a practical, procedural skill; it asks about the commercial reality of mixed NHS and private practice in a way medicine rarely does; and its ethics questions lean towards consent for elective and cosmetic treatment, treating anxious patients, and the dentist as a small-business owner as well as a clinician.
Name what dentistry uniquely offers rather than what medicine lacks. The defensible answer is usually some combination of the procedural craft — you diagnose and then personally treat with your hands, often in the same appointment — the continuity of seeing the same patients over years, and the immediacy of the result. Then evidence it with something specific you observed or did, and be respectful about medicine: interviewers are listening for an informed choice, not a rejection.
Give a concrete example of a fine-motor skill you have practised over time — an instrument, a craft, model-making, sport, anything genuinely hands-on — and then do the part most candidates skip: explain what practising it taught you about your own learning. The examiner is testing self-awareness about how you acquire a physical skill, including how you cope when your hands will not yet do what you want, far more than the specific hobby.
Answer them out loud rather than reading them, then mark yourself against the same rubric NextGen MedPrep examiners use — each core and extra skill scored 0-3 with a note of your evidence. Every question in the index above opens its own practice station with the prompt, the likely follow-ups, what strong answers do, and that rubric.
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