UCAT was a pretty hard slog. I was kind of working towards it a year before- emphasis on kind of- and really started to knuckle down 2 months before my date. To be honest, I'm pretty disappointed in my score. I know I could've gotten a lot higher. So far I don't think it's held me back- anything above 2800 lets you be competitive- but I am a bit bummed. Read on for my advice and some detailed tips to acing your UCAT. I did a post a couple of months ago when I was actually in the process of revising for the UCAT about resources I'm using so that might be slightly more useful than me writing a c ..read more

See parts 1 and 2 on active recall, spaced repetition, interleaving and how most people are revising incorrectly. Learning Styles You may be able to tell I'm not happy with what schools teach us on revising for exams. A strategy that schools really like to emphasise is that we should stick to our 'learning style'- this is basically the only thing I remember from lectures on revision. And I've always thought this was slightly dodgy but have never been able to explicitly say why. The authors come up with a very good way to articulate this. Just in case you don't know, schools like to pedal the i ..read more

See part 1 on how most people are revising incorrectly. Recall and Retrieval Retrieval or recall is proven to be one the most effective way to study (numerous studies discussed in the book) and I personally believe that it is one of the easiest to implement. The definition is pretty self-evident- it involves recalling facts and concepts from memory. An example of this is flashcards where on one side of the card you have a question and on the other is the answer. What you do is to look at the question, recall what you think the answer is and either confirm or void your answer. How this contrast ..read more

Repost for exam season Learning is a very intuitive thing that we do throughout your lives. From learning to speak to learning to drive a car, we are constantly putting information into our brain- to learn is human nature. However, many of us are trying to learn new things the wrong way. Gone are the days of your 2 year old brain which can pick up a completely new language, having only lived for a fraction of your life. Our brain doesn't simply soak up information like a sponge anymore and we haven't really been taught an effective way to assimilate new concepts since. I've been at school for ..read more

From talking to my friends and even other prospective dental students, many people seem to think that with a dentistry degree, you are bound to become a dentist. And would be forgiven for believing that, since dentistry is indeed a vocational degree but there are other career paths available, having achieved a dentistry degree. Having graduated from you BDS course, the standard next step is to do become the dentist equivalent of a foundation year doctor. From then, people often specialise in areas such as prosthodontics and endodontics, or they become general dentists. Other areas that a denta ..read more

This is the first post in a short series of posts where I summarise key ideas from a bunch of articles I read for my PS and MMIs. Reading articles can really be a slog and it is this type of post that I wish I had; the type of post that summarises only the important ideas that I can easily bring up in my MMI interviews and write about in my PS. What is MRONJ? MRONJ or Medication-induced osteonecrosis of the jaw is a disease that results from the taking of certain medication. Often, the medication includes drugs that prevent skeletal related events with cancer and bone metastases ( like antires ..read more

Sorry for not posting that regularly recently; I'm currently being swamped up by the grind. So here's a pretty tame post on what I've been reading and what I plan to read in 2021. A quick aside about what I usually read. As someone who is interested in science, I don't read what a humanities student might read, such as classics like Great Expectations. In 2020 I spent most of my time reading books around dentistry and medicine for my personal statement and interviews (find the posts on them here) and I really enjoyed them. I also spent some time reading about self-help and sciencey books. Now ..read more

What is minimally invasive dentistry and why is it becoming more prevalent? Minimally invasive dentistry is around the preservation of the original tissue or 'a systemic respect for the original tissue'. It isn't that well known that certain dental procedures are not long term solutions and are often doomed to fail. An example is root canal treatment, since it is nearly impossible to completely remove the pulp can clean the canal, which becomes increasingly narrower with age. Root canal treatment will often lead to complications down the road- 60% of treatments are due to roots not being compl ..read more

As an aspiring dental student, it was difficult to find books and reading material that I could put on my personal statement and discuss at interviews. If you're wanting to study medicine or any other degree, you don't really have a problem since there are numerous books targeted at you. Here is a post I did at the start of my application process detailing the books I read and plant to read. Dentistry, on the other hand, is comparatively more niche and therefore you will struggle (as I did) to find anything to read. However, after some digging I did manage to find some material to read and use ..read more

Having finished exams, I have a lot of free time on my hands. I haven't really got a lot of academic things to do in preparation for university and so I have been finding 'productive' things to do in the meantime. Here's a list of what I believe to be the best things to do if you've just finished exams and are about to go to university. Plan for university Obviously, the main difference between school and university is independence. The majority of students will go on to live in a different city and it is important to do your research on that city. For me, I am going to study in London and an ..read more