What dental schools ask and how they interview

Dental school interviews ask why you want to be a dentist, what you learned from shadowing, how you'd handle ethical and patient-care situations, and how you work with other people. The format depends on the school: a traditional one-on-one or panel interview, or a multiple mini interview (MMI) made of short timed stations, and some schools, such as ATSU's Arizona School of Dentistry & Oral Health, use both on the same day.

ADEA, which runs the ADEA AADSAS application, tells applicants to read the interview invitation so they prepare for the right type, whether that's group, one-on-one or virtual (ADEA Dental School Interviews Dos and Don'ts). That's the right first step, because the same question plays out very differently in a 30-minute panel and an 8-minute station. Confetto isn't affiliated with ADEA, the ADA or any dental school.

Interview formats at seven dental schools

Everything in this table comes from each school's own admissions page as of October 2026. Only UIC's page names a cycle (2026-2027); the others describe their current process without one. Formats change from cycle to cycle, and these are examples, not a pattern every school follows. Check your own invitation.

School	Format the school describes	Source
UCSF School of Dentistry (DDS)	Two one-on-one interviews, one with faculty on Zoom and one with a student, plus a 30-minute writing exercise. Closed file.	UCSF
UIC College of Dentistry (DMD)	Typically closed file, one interview with 1 or 2 faculty members. Virtual for the 2026-2027 cycle.	UIC
University of Florida College of Dentistry (DMD)	One open-file interview with 3 or 4 Admissions Committee members, about 20 to 30 minutes, in person.	UF
Boston University GSDM (DMD)	Remote: a Zoom interview with an admissions committee member, plus Zoom sessions with students and staff.	BU
UMMC School of Dentistry, Mississippi (DMD)	Multiple mini-interviews with members of the Admissions Committee.	UMMC
ATSU Arizona School of Dentistry & Oral Health (DMD)	A panel interview, 3 MMIs, a manual dexterity test and a group exercise.	ATSU
University of Alberta (DDS, Canada)	MMI. Each station takes 10 minutes: 2 to read and prepare, 8 to respond. A written personal statement the same day.	Alberta

Open file vs closed file

This changes how you prepare. UF's interviewers have your file. Expect them to ask about a specific activity, a grade or a gap, so reread your application the night before. UCSF says its interviewers don't have access to your written application, and UIC says its interviews are typically closed file. In those rooms, nobody knows your shadowing hours or your research unless you tell them, so have two or three experiences ready that you can describe in under a minute each.

Schools that also require Casper

Some dental schools also require Casper, an online situational judgment test run by Acuity Insights. Three that say so on their own pages:

Western University of Health Sciences requires all DMD applicants to complete Casper, which its 2026 checklist describes as an online, open-response test of about 65 to 85 minutes (WesternU DMD Checklist).
The University of Utah School of Dentistry requires the United States Casper 2 assessment in the 2026-2027 cycle (Utah Casper).
The University of Alberta requires Casper 2 for DDS applicants, with results due January 2 (Alberta DDS).

The pages we cite for the other six schools in the table don't mention Casper or PREview. That isn't proof they don't use one, so check each school's requirements page. Confetto isn't affiliated with Acuity Insights. Our Casper practice questions cover the current test format. If you're still deciding where to apply, the average GPA for dental school article covers the numbers side.

14 practice questions by category (written by Confetto)

We wrote these for practice. They aren't questions from any school's interview. Two per category, each with a line on what a good answer needs.

Why dentistry

What can you do as a dentist that you couldn't do as a physician or a dental hygienist?
Tell me about the moment you stopped considering other careers.

Name something specific you saw or did. "I like working with my hands and helping people" fits a dozen careers.

Shadowing and dental experience

Describe a patient interaction you watched while shadowing that you'd handle differently.
What part of a dentist's day surprised you most?

Interviewers want to hear that you watched the parts that aren't drilling: scheduling, insurance calls, sterilizing instruments, a nervous patient in the chair.

Manual dexterity

What have you done with your hands that took months to get good at?
Tell me about a time something you built or fixed didn't work the first time.

Pick something real, like sewing, an instrument, model building or lab work, and talk about the practice it took, not just the result.

Ethics

A dentist you shadow recommends crowns on several teeth that look fine to you. What do you do?
A friend asks you to write a glowing review for a dental office where they work. You've never been a patient there. How do you respond?

Don't jump to accusing anyone. Say what you'd want to find out first, then what you'd do with the answer.

Patient care and communication

A child refuses to open their mouth and the parent is getting angry. You're the dentist. What do you do?
How would you explain a treatment plan to a patient who doesn't speak much English?

Talk about what you'd say, word for word if you can. Interviewers can picture a sentence; they can't picture "I'd communicate clearly."

The business side of dentistry

If you own a practice one day, you'll be running a small business. What part of that worries you, and what are you doing about it?
Should a dentist ever turn away a patient who can't pay? Explain.

Admit the tension between running a practice and serving patients. Pretending money doesn't matter sounds naive.

Teamwork

Tell me about a time you disagreed with someone above you and how it ended.
A dental assistant on your team keeps arriving late, and the schedule backs up. How do you handle it?

Show you'd talk to the person privately first, and that you'd ask why before deciding what to do.

For more scenario prompts, our MMI practice questions with answers has a longer set.

Using the ADA's five ethics principles in a station

The ADA's Principles of Ethics and Code of Professional Conduct gives you a ready-made structure for any ethics prompt. It names five principles (ADA Code of Ethics):

Patient autonomy ("self-governance"): respecting the patient's rights to self-determination and confidentiality.
Nonmaleficence ("do no harm"): the duty to refrain from harming the patient.
Beneficence ("do good"): the duty to promote the patient's welfare.
Justice ("fairness"): the duty to treat people fairly.
Veracity ("truthfulness"): the duty to communicate truthfully.

You don't need to recite all five. Name the two that pull against each other in the scenario, then show how you'd balance them and what you'd decide.

A fictional worked answer to an ethics station

The prompt and the answer below are made up by Confetto to show the approach. Neither is from a real interview.

Prompt (fictional): You're a dentist. A patient has a molar that can be saved with a root canal and a crown. She says she can't afford that and asks you to pull the tooth instead. Discuss what you'd do.

Answer (fictional, about 2 minutes spoken): "The tension here is between her right to decide and my duty to do what's best for her health. I'd start by asking what's behind the request. Is it only cost, or is she also scared of a long procedure? Then I'd lay out her options honestly: saving the tooth, pulling it, and what each one means for her down the road. The ADA code says a dentist should explain the proposed treatment and any reasonable alternatives so the patient can be involved in the decision, so I wouldn't just say yes or no.

If cost is the real barrier, I'd look for ways to close the gap before treating extraction as the only answer: a payment plan, staging the treatment, or a referral to a dental school clinic or community clinic that charges less. If she understands all of that and still wants the tooth out, and pulling it is an acceptable treatment, I'd respect her choice and document the conversation. What I wouldn't do is push her into treatment she can't pay for, or make her feel judged for asking."

Why it works: it names the conflict in the first sentence (autonomy against beneficence), asks a question before deciding, cites the ADA principle without turning into a lecture, and offers practical options. It also ends with a decision. A lot of ethics answers list considerations and never say what they'd do.

A drill for a 10-minute MMI station

This drill uses the University of Alberta's published timing: 2 minutes to read, 8 minutes to respond. Other schools time stations differently, so adjust it to what your invitation says. The split inside each block is our suggestion, not any school's rule.

Time	What you do
0:00 to 0:45	Read the prompt twice. Find the real question.
0:45 to 2:00	Note who's affected and which two ADA principles conflict. Pick your first sentence.
2:00 to 4:00	Give your answer: the conflict, what you'd find out, what you'd do and why.
4:00 to 9:30	Follow-up questions. Answer each in under a minute. If there are none, add one consideration you skipped.
9:30 to 10:00	One-sentence wrap-up of your decision.

Run it five times with five different prompts from the list above, out loud, with a timer. The Confetto MMI timer can run the read and response phases for you. After each round, check one thing only: did your first sentence answer the prompt? If you spent the first minute restating the scenario, that's the habit to fix.

Questions to ask your interviewers

ADEA's dos and don'ts tell you to prepare questions in advance and not to ask anything whose answer you could find on the internet. ADEA also published a list of the best questions applicants asked, as reported by dental school admissions officers (ADEA GoDental). Two from that list that work well: how the school teaches students about running a practice, and how it describes the relationship between students and faculty. Ask a follow-up on whatever the answer is, so it sounds like a conversation and not a script.

The same ADEA flyer warns against form answers and against taking over the interview with long responses. That's the case against memorizing. Know your three or four stories well, and let the question decide which one you use.

Practicing with Confetto

Reading questions isn't the same as answering them out loud with someone pushing back. Confetto's dental school interview practice runs mock interviews in MMI and traditional formats, with dental ethics and patient-care questions and "why dentistry" prompts. An AI interviewer asks follow-up questions, then you get rubric-based feedback; it doesn't expect you to know dentistry yet. You can run single timed MMI stations or a full circuit, with feedback per station and an overall summary. You start with 3 free mock interviews, and paid plans come after that.