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Applying to University

Multiple Mini Interviews for Dental Hygiene and Therapy

13 December 2024
Sophie Robinson

Sophie Robinson

Hiya, todays blog in my series is about Multiple Mini Interviews (MMIs)!

I was invited to interview in around March of 2022 and, just like for my personal statement, I felt clueless, so today I’ll be speaking about my interview experiences and tips.  The dates of the MMI interviews in Cardiff are published on the website.  Due to the number of applications the school need to consider, you may hear close to the time of the interviews.  The Dental School will try their best to give you at least two weeks notice before the interviews begin.

So, before we begin, what is an MMI interview? As the name suggests, MMIs are a style of interview where you move round a room (at Cardiff we do them in our clinics and move between bays – bays can be seen in the featured image) and complete mini interviews at multiple different stations. Each station was roughly 5 minutes with 2 minutes of preparation time and 1 minute to move between stations. The timings are signified by buzzers so it’s very simple to know when to move on. In the preparation time, there is usually a laminated sheet with information about the station, and in this time you can make notes in anticipation of any possible questions. Each station is made to assess if you have the skills and qualities of a Dental Professional. It’s really hard to prepare for these interviews as you have to problem solve on the spot, so todays blog will help you prepare for this, and remember, the more you do, the better you get!

 

What I did in preparation for my interviews

  • I researched common questions for MMIs – I found the medic portal really helpful for this. The UKCATPeople website has a good bank of questions as well that you can practice from and get used to the format and timings. I practised these common questions with a friend who was also applying to dental school, though you could practice with anyone. At first, I tried to just answer the question, and then as I improved I tried to limit my time.
  • If you are invited to interview, Cardiff University will provide you with previous MMI stations for you to use as practice.
  • For each University, whether it was MMI or panel, I tried to learn about their courses and considered why I liked their course in particular.
  • As mentioned above, take notes in preparation time and clear your mind between stations to prevent them from influencing each other!
  • MMIs are all about evaluating if you have the right skills to become a Dental Professional so I strongly advise you research the GDC principals and NHS core values to help you gain an idea of what could be assessed. Think of these characteristics and then present yourself in this manner. Despite being terrified for mine, I tried to keep a friendly professional tone of voice and made sure my body language reflected that I was confident.
  • Just like for any interview, you should know your scope of practice, why you want to do it, and why you think you’d be good at it.
  • I receive a lot of questions about whether you need prior knowledge, for example if you need to know about instruments and procedures. To my knowledge if anything that is dental related comes up, all the info you need will be provided in the preparation station. When I was preparing, I looked into some dental hot topics at the time so I could have a little background knowledge if anything like that did come up.
  • Keep your answers concise – you only have five minutes for the station so you need to make sure you can get your views and reasoning across effectively.

 

My experiences-

I had never really been interviewed for anything before, let alone done an MMI, so I was unsure how to prepare. I was interviewed by a few different Universities and I found the more I did, the easier it got. Initially for my first MMI I was really nervous, and I got really flustered on a station and just rambled and ran out of time. To avoid this, I highly recommend writing notes in your preparation time, in which case if this does happen hopefully your notes can get you back on track! Because there are multiple stations, if you do feel like you’ve messed up like me, try to clear your mind for the next station. Each is a completely blank slate with a new interviewer, so you don’t want to carry any negative energy over to the next station. It’s a difficult format to get used to, especially if you’re not a super confident speaker like me, but you must try to stay calm, clear and confident. Looking back this was a total façade for me as I was panicking inside, but since coming to university my communication skills have massively improved through talking to my peers, patients and teachers. If I can do it, so can you! After the first interview, doing the others seemed easier as I became more comfortable answering questions in a professional, yet friendly way and I think this is what ultimately helped me to get into uni.

 

I hope this helps you guys get a better idea of what the interviews are like. Below I have linked some useful sites I used during my preparation for interviews. Good luck!

 

Useful links: