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What GPA do you need to get into Dentistry at Otago?

E

Edwin Tie

2 min readUpdated 8 October 2026

Otago Dentistry has become a lot more competitive in the last few years. In 2022 successful applicants ranged from 88.71 GPA upward. By 2026 the range had tightened to 97.00 to 98.57. If you are targeting Dentistry now, you should be planning around a high-90s GPA, not the high-80s numbers you might find in older threads.

The GPA ranges, year by year

  • 2022: 88.71 to 98.71
  • 2023: 87.00 to 98.43
  • 2024: 90.14 to 98.71
  • 2025: 96.14 to 99.00 (97.00*)
  • 2026: 97.00 to 98.57 (97.43*)

* The bracketed figure is the non-waiting-list minimum: the lowest score that got an offer in the first round, rather than off the waiting list. Otago footnotes it that way in its own statistics PDFs, and from 2024 the headline range folds in waitlist offers, so the bracketed number is the more useful one to plan against.

Look at the bottom of each range rather than the top. It moved from 87.00 in 2023 to 97.00 in 2026. That is a ten-point shift in three years, and it is the single most important trend on this page.

Why it tightened: applications nearly doubled

The places didn't shrink. Far more people applied:

  • 2022: 530 applications, 66 admissions
  • 2023: 596 applications, 86 admissions
  • 2024: 674 applications, 90 admissions
  • 2025: 889 applications, 93 admissions
  • 2026: 1,032 applications, 101 admissions

Admissions grew from 66 to 101, which is real growth. But applications grew from 530 to 1,032 over the same period. In 2022 roughly one in eight applicants got a place. By 2026 it was closer to one in ten, and the competition at the top got much denser.

How this compares to Medicine

People often assume Dentistry is the easier target. On these numbers, that has not been true recently. Otago Medicine's General category has been admitting students from the high 80s to low 90s upward in most recent years, while Dentistry's floor has climbed into the high 90s. Read the Medicine GPA numbers alongside these before you decide your strategy.

What to do with this

If Dentistry is the goal, treat every one of your eight papers as load-bearing. At a 97-plus floor there is very little room to carry a weak paper, which means the paper you are least motivated by is usually the one that decides your outcome.

You can practise exam-style questions for each HSFY paper on Cutline, free to start, including CHEM191 and HUBS191.

Worried about the score? Start with what to prepare.

Dentistry takes the fewest people of any of them, and the score that gets you there comes out of first year. Answer four questions about what you took at school and we will show you where we would start.

Build my free HSFY plan

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