Day in the life of an *international* dental student at Heidelberg University {Dental Diaries ep.1} 

I’m so glad!! Thanks for being here and hope you have a great start in Heidelberg ✨

Yessss! Thanks for joining!! 🥳

Hey Annabella thanks so much and congratulations!! So excited for you to join🙌🏼 So normally in the first semester you have a lot of präparieren (preparing the cadavers in anatomy) and lectures and seminars in chemistry, anatomy, dentistry and medical terminology (Latin) throughout the week. From what I remember, you’d have präparieren twice a week (alongside sessions when you can also just go and practice in your free time if you want), chemistry lectures once a week and seminars three times a week, anatomy lectures everyday, terminology lectures once a week and dentistry lectures also once a week. The lectures weren’t mandatory except for dentistry from what I recall but this was when I was in the first semester so just note that your schedule might look different from mine😉 Anyways, congratulations again and enjoy your time before you start!! You deserve it🍀🍀

Hey @hibizaa yeah all courses are taught in German. So when you’re applying to study dentistry here, you also need to send in your german language proficiency certificate along with your other documents to show them that you can speak and understand the language 😊

Hey sure thing! So I can really only speak for dentistry here but at our uni the first two years as a dental student consists of lectures, seminars, preps in anatomy and lab practicals where you’d have to carry out different experiments for various subjects and write follow-up reports based on your experimental findings. The first two years are basically the ‘preclinical years’ and they’re mainly focused on building a good and detailed foundation on anatomy, biochemistry, chemistry, physics, histology, physiology, biology and dentistry and you also have clinical exposures in the first and second years where you can assist older dental students with their patients. But I’d say the first two years are very theory-based and as dental students study and learn with medical students for the most part, it feels more like you’re studying general sciences/medicine rather than dentistry in fine detail. However, you do have practical dental courses in the second year where you get a taste of what it’s like to do work in dental technology and preventative dental care. There are many written exams in the first two years as well as oral exams and if you’ve passed all exams, course modules etc for the first two years, you can register to take the first dental state exam. After successfully completing the state exam you can then move up to the third year where there’s a lot more practical course modules in different dental specialities in conjunction with lectures and seminars. After the third year, you’d have to sit the second dental state exam and upon passing that, you can start the fourth year where you’re basically in the clinics with your own patients alongside having the usual lectures, seminars and so forth😊 I’d say the standards expected from us students here are quite high and passing tests and course modules can get very strenuous at times, but the teaching staff is always approachable and the community here is great👌🏼 I’m sure you can find out more about our uni and dentistry at our uni’s website so do give it a check if you’re keen for more info! Otherwise, I hope this gave you some insight into dentistry here✨