Ah, where do I begin?! Well firstly to those applying or who have applied and are awaiting a response, I hope you choose Belfast! I am currently going into 3rd year dentistry at Queen’s University Belfast and I must say the clinical opportunities you get from day 1 is truly amazing! You get the opportunity to interact with patients from your 1st year and do some basic clinical techniques with the mannequins. From 2nd year you get the opportunity to administer a local anesthetic to patients. 2nd year was a big jump from 1st year. In my 1st year at Queen’s we had only 3 modules, later in 2nd year we had 5 modules which included a lot of more clinical hours where we were observing older year students treating patients and clinical techniques lab. In the clinical technique’s lab in 2nd year you get to do tons of stuff from drilling on the fake teeth to filling them up with amalgam and composite. It was quite tricky for some of us in the beginning, but you get to do it so many times so that by the end of the year it becomes much easier as the instructors in the lab will teach you different techniques. In addition, all your examinations are so well structured and organized; you get assessed on what you are taught. The dental hospital where you will eat, breathe and practically live is an amazing place as you will always feel at home and it is very welcoming. I can go on forever about the academics, but I will also like to mention some aspects of living in Northern Ireland. The cost of living in Belfast is one of the cheapest in the UK and the people in Northern Ireland are fantastic. There’s so much history in Belfast to be discovered like the Titanic museum, the Troubles, recently Game of Thrones was filmed here (if you are a fan that is) and many more amazing places to go and see. Belfast is a small city with all the aspects of a big city. I do not regret coming to Belfast to do Dentistry at all! If you are looking to live in Belfast the university offers excellent accommodation which was just recently built this past year (2018/19) which is located right in city centre in the middle of all the action you are close to tons of restaurants, cafés, pubs/bars etc. I highly recommend studying dentistry in Belfast you get an experience you never would get from any other city/school. One of the awesome aspects of being in Belfast is the fact that you can go down to Dublin in about 2 hours by bus/train and at the same time you have very cheap flights to England.
