Reapplying to medicine/dentistry after gap year

[mubarak86]

Ds unfortunately didn't get any offers for dentistry and doesn't want to do his non dental offer. He's applied for dental nursing to gain more clinical experience and intends to reapply next year.
My questions are:

When writing your PS after a gap year do you still talk about your A levels in depth?
Who should your referee be?

If anyone else's dc is in the same situation this can be a support thread.

I'm an admissions tutor for medicine rather than dentistry, so don't take this as gospel for dental applications, but we're usually not interested in what applicants have to say about their A-Levels anyway. This is something that schools tell students to do because it can be important for other subject applications. He should find out whether any of the dental schools he wants to apply to actually read personal statements anyway and, if so, how they use them, as it might not be worth expending too much anxiety & effort on it.

Experience gained in a dental nursing role (if he's done enough of it by the time he reapplies) that involves dealing with anxious or dissatisfied patients, offering appropriate reassurance and conveying information that it's important for the patient (and/or parent if the patient is a child) to understand should be valuable. Make sure he's making clear what he did, what he achieved and what he learned. Remember STA*R: situation, task, action, result.

Ideally, reference should still be from his school, as these are generally looked at as academic references. If he would find this difficult and wants to provide an employer reference he should really check this with the dental schools before he applies. It's possible some will require academic references.

Sorry, asterisk fail. Should have been asterisks between the letters of STAR but two of them changed the T into bold instead.

@NoNotHimTheOtherOne thank you so much, that is very helpful. Very good to know STAR is applicable in interviews too. He got his interview ranking from the two universities and they were very low, despite him thinking they'd gone well. He did a lot of research beforehand but he's a 'man of few words' and I suspect probably didn't talk enough.

Just bumping this incase anyone else has been in same situation and can offer any advice.

(med school) I know someone who did this last year, no offers at all, spent the year out doing great work experience and practising like mad for the ukcat, and got a place at Oxford for next year!
Once he has his grades, he can apply to places that prioritise whatever his skills are - good grades, good ucat, good experience ... perhaps rather than those that focus on interview? Or also work on his interview skills?
It's a good opportunity to really shine. He may do really well in next year's applications

Thanks @lassof@lassof
I just hope that next year will be his year! Must admit though it's soul destroying to read on TSR students who have been rejected twice and three times. Hell definitely need to brush up on his interview skills, at least hell have the exams out of the way so there's less pressure.

Don't know where the apostrophe in he'll disappeared to 🤔