As I’m sure you know, Dentistry is a 5 year course, whereas most other courses are 3. At first, this may seem like a bad thing, but trust me, once here, it’s great! I’m in 5th year now, and it’s absolutely flown by, I wouldn’t have felt ready to leave after just 3 years, it’s way too much fun!
The 5 years is pretty much split into 2 parts, with the first 1.5 years being purely academic, and the rest mostly clinical. Here at Newcastle, the dental school adopts the ‘traditional’ style of teaching, so, lots of lectures and little self study time, with a few seminars (small group teaching) thrown in. In contrast, somewhere like Manchester, is ‘Problem based learning’, which means quite a few seminars, but hardly any lectures, and you’re expected to go away and do your own reading. I chose traditional as it suits my learning style, I need timetables to stick to, and prefer to be told what to know, rather than do the research myself.

The first 1.5 years, are pretty content heavy, and that’s the hard bit, the sheer amount you need to learn, the actual information isn’t difficult. Just be prepared to put some of your own time aside to go over things and make sure you’ve taken them in. You won’t need to spend all your time doing this, you can still do everything your friends from other courses do, just plan wisely.

A lot of it may not seem relevant at the time, as it’s things like microbiology, pharmacology, and human development, but stick with it, it all acts as building blocks for things later on, like the Human Disease course. A big part of first year is anatomy, at Newcastle this still involves studying dissected bodies and heads, and really getting involved, which is really interesting, but strong smelling!

Also, just as a side note, don’t worry about the essential reading, it definitely doesn’t mean read the books recommended cover to cover, just know they’re the ones to look to for help, and you don’t need to rush out and buy them, the dedicated medical and dental library here in the medical school has plenty of copies.
By Will Holme (5th yr Dental student)