Frequently Asked Questions

Please visit the ‘Things to do before your interview’ page to ensure you are fully prepared.

While we do our best to start all sessions on time, we do on occasion experience set backs, which cause delays to the interview timings.

Please do not worry if you are in the waiting room past your interview start time, as the member of the Admissions Team overseeing your interview has been alerted to your presence and will admit you to the meeting as soon as possible.

We will attempt to call you using the phone number on your UCAS account if you are not logged in to the correct meeting, so please make sure you are able to answer this phone prior to your interview commencing.

You must ensure that you are in a quiet location with a stable internet connection.

You should not have any other individuals in the room with you while you are completing your interview.

If you do not feel you have a suitable space or technology to complete your interview at home, we would advise that you contact your school, college or workplace to organise a location for you to complete your interview from.

For an overview of our interview process, please click here.

Interviews will take roughly 55 minutes in total, with 15 minutes at the start of your interview for registration and questions.

Each interview session will have a maximum of 4 candidates. When you are admitted to the Zoom meeting for your interview, the member of the Admissions Team running your interview session will introduce themselves and complete your ID check. You will then be moved to a ‘Holding Room’ in the Zoom meeting until all candidates have been checked in.

You will be able to see and speak to the other candidates in the holding room. For this reason, you may wish to change your Zoom screen name to just your first name before joining the session. You do not have to speak to the other candidates and can turn off your camera and microphone if you wish. This is a good opportunity to meet people you may be on the course with, however, so we do encourage engaging with conversation if you feel comfortable.

Once all applicants have been checked in, the Admissions Team member running your session will join you in the holding room and complete a short briefing before the interviews begin.

We do not allow candidates to use notes, and you will not need to make notes during your interview.

You should not use any recording devices during the interview. If it is suspected that you are making a recording, this will be investigated by our Admissions Advisory Panel and may result in your application being rejected.

The interview attempts to identify whether a candidate has the personal attributes required to become a Doctor, Dentist, Dental Care Professional or Radiographer of tomorrow. We place great value on the following qualities and we are looking for you to demonstrate these at your interview:

• Communication Skills

• Decision Making

• Impact of illness

• Reflection and self-insight

• Motivation and Commitment

• Integrity and inclusivity

• Resilience and Adaptability

• Teamwork

Manual dexterity (dental courses only)

There are no right or wrong answers! You are not expected to showcase knowledge of scientific terminology, simply communicate well and give us an insight into your potential.

We use a range of assessors from different backgrounds to sit on our interview panels. Your interviewers will be from a mixture of the following categories:

- Medical Clinician

- Dental Practitioner

- Diagnostic Radiographer

- Healthcare Professional

- Academic

- Medical Student

- Diagnostic Radiography Student

- Lay Community Member

During your interview, you will only know the first name of your interviewer. You will not be told their surname or profession, and should not ask your assessor to tell you this information.

Your interview score for each question will consist of the following:

1. A numerical score out of 15. This is made up of a score out of 5 for 3 different attributes. You will be asked 9 questions during your interview, and will therefore be given a score out of 135 for your interview.

2. A ‘Red Flag’ response. Interviewers are asked to answer Yes or No to the following question: Did the applicant say something or act in a way that is unsuitable for the programme? If any Yes responses are given, interviewer feedback will be discussed by our Admissions Advisory Panel and may result in an unsuccessful interview.

We know how difficult it is to wait for a response to your interview so we will endeavor to let you know whether you will be offered a place as soon as possible.

As a rough guideline, we expect to provide you with a response in the following time frames:

For all interviews completed prior to the end of January , we aim to send all outcomes by the end of February.

For interviews completed in the week commencing the 28th February, we aim to send all outcomes by the end of March.

Interviews completed after this will be on a rolling basis, and you should receive a response within roughly 2 weeks of your interview taking place.

Please note that the above timings are approximate. We do, on occasion, experience technical difficulties or other setbacks which may delay us contacting you. We will do our upmost to keep you updated throughout the waiting period.

During the shortlisting process, we aim to select only a reasonable number of candidates for interview to ensure that the chance of success following interview is fair.

Although there are a limited number of places available for each course, the number of offers we make is roughly 2-3 times the number of places available.

The exact number of offers made is calculated by our Admissions Advisory Panel based on the number of candidates in previous years who selected the University of Plymouth as their firm choice, and the number of candidates who met the required grades at confirmation. We won’t be able to confirm how many offers will be made until all responses are communicated.

After interviews, all candidates are ranked based on their overall scores, and the top performing candidates are offered a place.

Due to the volume of interviews completed, we will only be able to provide you with the overall score of your interview.

First of all, do not panic! A member of the Admissions Team will try to get hold of you via the phone number on your UCAS application, so make sure you have this phone to hand.

During interviews, access to our phone lines will be limited, as the majority of our team will be running interview sessions. Therefore, if you are unable to get into your Zoom meeting and cannot get through to us on the phone, please contact meddent-interviews@plymouth.ac.uk.

It is your responsibility to ensure that you are able to access Zoom and have a stable internet connection during your interview.

You should visit the Interview Zoom Links page prior to your interview start time to ensure that you are able to access the Zoom meeting. If the link is not working less than 48 hours prior to the start of your interview, please contact meddent-interviews@plymouth.ac.uk.

Please ensure that you do not leave the Zoom link open in advance of your interview and only click to open this at the start time of your interview. We may on occasion need to amend the Zoom link last minute, so this will ensure you are logging in to the correct meeting.

Whilst we hope that you will not experience technical difficulties, we do appreciate that this is sometimes unavoidable.

It is your responsibility to ensure that you are able to access Zoom and have a stable internet connection during your interview.

You should visit the Interview Zoom Links page prior to your interview start time to ensure that you are able to access the Zoom meeting. If the link is not working less than 48 hours prior to the start of your interview, please contact meddent-interviews@plymouth.ac.uk.

Please ensure that you do not leave the Zoom link open in advance of your interview and only click to open this at the start time of your interview. We may on occasion need to amend the Zoom link last minute, so this will ensure you are logging in to the correct meeting.

If you experience connection issues during your interview, it is vital that you communicate this to the member of the Admissions Team overseeing your interview session. We will do our best to provide additional time to compensate for connection issues, and will check how much time was lost with our interviewers. If you do not inform us of connection issues until after the interview has concluded, we will be unable to provide additional time.

On occasion, our interviewers also experience connection issues. We will compensate for any time lost.

If you are completely kicked out of the Zoom meeting, please do not panic! Just try to log back in as soon as possible. The member of the Admissions Team overseeing your session will attempt to get hold of you using the phone number you have listed on your UCAS application if you do not log back into the Zoom meeting. We will do our best to make up for any time you have missed.

While we will do our best to compensate for lost time, if the connection issue is on your side rather than ours or our interviewers, this may not be possible. We complete a maximum of 96 interviews per day and, if connection issues are causing repeated problems which would delay the interviews of other candidates, we will be unable to offer additional time. It is therefore vital that you test your connection prior to your interview start time.