USM DDS Interview 2020 (COVID-19 Edition)

To give you an insight about my UPU choices, USM DDS was my fourth choice starting with UM BDS, UITM BDS and the third one is UKM DDS. I did not have any exact reason as why I came up with this kind of order but one thing that I was sure of- I really wanted to get into a dental school. Perhaps, I am sure the one that reads this also have the same dream as mine, may we achieve our dream together :) 

I didn't expect to receive interview call from USM as it was my fourth choice but all and all I was blessed and grateful. Here are some of the requirements that I need to fulfill prior to the interview session. Every year, the requirement are differ, and as for the year 2020 this is what my batch needs to do, so if there's similarity in terms of requirement for next intake, you could implement my tips & ideas that are provided in this post.

1) Write a Personal Statement

The personal statement has to be in Arial 11 and with a maximum of 4,000 characters including space. Not only that, It has to be in Malay language. The scope given for the personal staement is regarding knowledge and experience in dentistry.

Tips&Ideas:

• Search about personal statement that relates to dentistry to have some insight about how it's written.

I found this video was very helpful throughout my preparation process:
> https://youtu.be/USR-tkKnLlc

• Think of a genuine story on your own (describe a certain event that sparks your interest in dentistry)
• Express the qualities that you have to show how your qualities matches with the dentist's/dental student's (e.g: good in manual dexterity, have a sense of responsibility towards helping other people, excellent in communication skills..)
• Write it with a heart full of passion towards dentistry field. When you write it wholeheartedly, I am pretty sure the readers can also sense the love you have for dentistry and eventually they will pick you.

2) Prepare a Video

The video that I need to prepare has to be in English with duration of 3-5 minutes. There are several things that need to be covered in the video; self-introduction, declaration regarding the choice of dentistry, and the next one has to be chosen among these three, share your first experience attending dental clinic, what do you know about specialties in dentistry, talk about your curricular activities. I chose the latter as I found it's quite an easy task for me.

Tips&Ideas:

• Again, watch any video resume related to dentistry to have a general idea on how it's going to look like.
• Prepare your speech as to prevent your time from being wasted during filming session.
• Learn how to edit your videos through youtube (for me, any editing apps can be used as long as you know how to manage it). 
• Give a touch of creativity during editing process as the panels would love to watch a creative video. Some creative elements that I can think off are including background music, wording, photos/videos taken from activities you have carried out (act as a proof whenever you utter a  statement, e.g: In my video I said I was good in communication skills, then right after the statement, I attached a video of me joining debate team) 
• Speak with confidence.
• Wear proper clothes. (Please don't wear casual clothes)

Notes++

All these Tips&Ideas solely come from my experience, there's no right or wrong. I hope these tips can be used as a guideline during your preparation process. Up till today, there's no follow up from USM. I was not sure it this is the only phase that they have but if there's another phase, I will update about it soon.

If you want to see my personal statement and video, kindly fill up the contact form, I'd love to share them with you via email.

Next post is going to be about the remaining interview sessions which are BDS UM, BDS UITM and DDS UKM!

Till then, thank you for making it this far <3