I am a student in y9(14 years old) and I want to get into Dentistry when I am older

I have heard many things about how hard it is to get into dentistry and I just want to ask others if I was on the right track to one day get into dentistry. Currently I am on my LAMDA public speaking grade 5. I also help out teaching younger kids kick-boxing and martial arts in addition to now 3 months of volunteering at a charity shop( which is still ongoing). The things I am worried about are I heard that I have to show manual dexterity and currently I do nothing related to that so please could you guys give me ideas on this. I also have the same concern with showing leadership skills as right now I don’t do things related to that too so what are some ideas for showing leadership. Please if you read this could you give me ideas on new things to pick up which would work towards getting into dentistry.

Is it true that I should enrol in competition and challenges or do they not matter too much.

Reply 1

Carrotsroom

Original post by js234

This is just general advice but when it comes to writing up your personal statement for uni (that is if they don't change by the time you apply), is that your current activities are going to make up like 4-5 lines maximum as they don't have anything to do with dentistry. You'll get plenty of advice during sixth form/college on stuff like leadership skills and its something you can learn and write about within a week so there's no point stressing about it in Year 9. You've also yet to start A-levels and that's when most things start to become more real and you have more of an idea of how everything will be like. My advice right now is to not stress about it, you're better off looking for works experience during your Y11 and Y12 summers. When it does come to Y12, they'll be plenty of summer programmes specifically for dentistry, many of which will be free so you can look at them at a future date. Theres very little things for a Y9 student to do at the moment.
Competitions and challenges can enhance your personal statement but it'll probably only be 4-5 lines max again, less if it has nothing to do with dentistry. Specific dentristy programmes such as the summer schools, or even online seminars and ted talks would be more useful.