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Seeking fellow mature students wanting to study Dentistry, required to start at gcse

Hi all,

I’m 31 and have always wanted to study dentistry.

Looking to now start my journey and get into the profession. I am looking for fellow mature students who are also starting their journeys to study dentistry. Ideally looking for 2023 or 2025 entry to university.

Looking to build a support group, to find out what paths people are taking, how your finding your journey. Tips and tricks for interviews or ucat.

I did my GCSEs I have 2As 6Bs and 1 C
English language b, science BB mathematics C. This was back in 2006.

Now I’m looking to do A levels or access? First dilemma. If I do a levels I have to do GCSEs first. As my GCSEs were years ago and no college in London will accept GCSEs taken in 2006. Or I will have to sit an exam from the College to get into the a level course. But as you can imagine I last studied science and math in 2006, 16 years ago, I would not pass. I don’t remember a thing.
I know of one college offering the gcse course I need, it’s 2 hours away from me. Second dielemma, where can I study a full time gcse course for adults at a reasonable cost?
I need a b in math gcse, so would still need to do math gcse.

Access, most universities accept access to medicine. It’s hard to pin point if the university will accept the college access to medicine course I pick, just because the College calls the course access to medicine by varying names, like access to biomedical but has a medicine pathway etc.

Get in touch, let me know if you have any suggestions or just let me know your back story and difficulties.

Reply 1

junedfile

Original post by Stephanieoo

Hi there. What I did in the first instance was compile a list of all the dental schools in the UK and research their entry requirements with respect to:

- GCSEs
- Level 3 course (A-Levels, Access course, etc)
- Admissions tests (UCAT, BMAT, etc)

Personally, I wanted to go down the Access route because it's a 1-year course and found schools that accepted this (e.g. KCL, Liverpool, Bristol, Newcastle, Manchester, etc). Then I looked into their GCSE requirements (most require min. B grade in English Language, Maths, and Science). I then sent emails to the individual unis that I wanted to apply to, outlining my circumstances, whether I met their minimum requirements, and whether the Access course I'm doing meets their requirements. Some unis want mature students to have been out of education for xx years (Liverpool ask for 5 years) before starting an Access course. And unis also want a certain number of Access course credits in biology and chemistry (usually 15 in each). Generally speaking, an Access to Medicine course should be sufficient but do check the credits that are offered.

For the unis I was interested in, they required UCAT. I highly recommend doing this in the summer prior to starting an Access course so that it's out of the way. The first time I did the UCAT I spend ~6 weeks preparing for it using Medify. I had a lot more time available back then, and so on avg. I spend ~5 hours a day prepping which may be overkill, but I didn't want to make any excuses for myself. One of my top tips for UCAT prep is the reflect on any of the mistakes you make; find out the reason for the mistake and work on it. Good luck with your journey.