The BDS and how the five years run
Queen's is Northern Ireland's dental school. The Centre for Dentistry is at the Royal Victoria Hospital, with 90 dental chairs for teaching and NHS care, haptic simulators, a Clinical Techniques Laboratory and a prosthetics laboratory opened in 2023.
Dental students also use the InterSim Centre, shared with medicine, nursing, midwifery and pharmacy. At the end of year 2 or 3 you can take a year out for an intercalated degree.
The five years, from Queen's course page
- Year 1
Foundations
Biomedical and behavioural sciences, patient management and ethics.
Laboratories - Year 2
Core clinical skills
Dental health promotion and core clinical dental skills.
Haptic simulators - Year 3 · Patients
Your own patients
Restorative dentistry, assessing and treating your own patients.
Royal Victoria - Year 4
Advanced skills
Advanced clinical skills across the dental specialties.
Outreach clinics - Year 5
Full range
The full range of treatment for your own adult and child patients.
BDS
Entry requirements and how to apply
A-level route
AAA including Biology or Human Biology and Chemistry.
Pathway Opportunity Programme
For applicants with a BT postcode at a school in Northern Ireland: a guaranteed interview and a possible offer one grade below.
2025 interview threshold
Queen's publishes past thresholds: 33 in 2022, 37 in 2023, 38 in 2024 and 36 in 2025.
Widening access
Queen's Pathway Opportunity Programme offers a guaranteed interview and a possible one-grade reduction. See how that compares with the other dental schools.
Clinical training
Specialty teaching
Oral surgery, orthodontics, children's dentistry and special care dentistry, in the dental school, outreach clinics and an urgent care clinic.
Simulation
Haptic simulators, the Clinical Techniques Laboratory and the InterSim Centre on the Lisburn Road site.
A satisfactory criminal records check, and health clearance for HIV, Hepatitis B and C, with evidence of BCG vaccination or a Mantoux test.
Student life in Belfast
Offer-holder day
Queen's runs an offer-holder day for dentistry in April, a chance to see the school and meet students.
Queen's: offer-holder dayTwo sites
Dentistry is at the Royal Victoria Hospital; the InterSim Centre is on the Lisburn Road site.
Queen's: DentistryAn extra degree
At the end of year 2 or 3 you can apply to take a year out for an intercalated degree.
Queen's: dentistry at Queen'sFees and key dates
Queen's will publish 2027/28 fees later, with an annual inflationary increase.
Source: Queen's: tuition fee schedule 2026/27; Queen's: how to apply for dentistry
Key dates
Funding and support
No funding specific to this school is listed here. What you can get depends on where you live and where you study.
Strengths and things to plan for
- A balanced score. GCSEs and UCAT combined, so one can offset the other.
- Published thresholds. Interview scores for every year since 2017.
- Lower NI fee. £4,985 a year for Northern Ireland students.
- AS grades. Used for applicants educated in Northern Ireland.
- Places. 45 for the UK and Ireland, 15 international.
- Health clearance. BBV screening and BCG evidence before you start.
- International fee. £41,500 a year in 2026/27.
Who to believe, and in what order
DentiSpark is not the authority on any of this, and does not want to be. Queen's University Belfast's own pages are the authority on what it will ask of you; where anything here disagrees with them, the school is right and we are not. Entry requirements, deadlines and course codes change from one cycle to the next.
Check these before you apply:
The regulator
The General Dental Council decides which degrees lead to registration as a dentist in the UK. Its list of approved providers is the only place to confirm where a programme stands.
GDC approved providers