Interview Tips

If a medical school decides you are an acceptable candidate based on everything it sees about you on paper, you will be invited for an interview. Interviews differ in format from school to school. Most schools will have at least one individual interview, some may have a group interview and a few do speed interviews. The interviewers are normally members of the admissions committee. They can be clinical faculty, basic science faculty, residents or medical students. Sometimes the interviews are blind which means that the interviewer does not look at your file. No matter how good you look on paper, a bad interview can keep you from being accepted.

A few things you should keep in mind:

1. You should research the school before your visit. Study it like you would study for a test.

2. You need to have good communication etiquette in all of your dealings with the medical school. Make sure that any emails you send them use correct greeting, grammar and punctuation. Don’t forget to have a subject in the Subject line. All of your voice mail greetings should be inoffensive. If you have a personal webpage or a Facebook/Instagram/TikTok, make sure it does not contain any offensive material and/or limit access to it. Be sure to treat everyone (including receptionists) you speak to on the phone or in person with courtesy and respect.

3. From the minute you get on campus you will be scrutinized very closely. You must treat everyone with respect, from the secretaries to the medical school students to the other students interviewing that day. The admissions people will even look to see how well you interact with the other interviewees at lunch.

4. Turn OFF your cell phone. Do NOT check your cell phone when waiting for an interviewer. Do NOT check your cell phone when on a campus tour. Do NOT check your cell phone during lunch. You may check it once or twice, but be sure to make it very brief and not in front of other interviewees or representatives of the medical school (just step outside for a minute).

5. Most of the interviews are just conversations. Interviewers will seldom have a long list of tough questions to ask you. You need to be familiar with your AMCAS and secondary applications since they will often ask questions about things you have written. Be sure you review both before your interview.

6. Some common things that you could end up discussing are why you want to be a physician, interesting things you have done, the current state of health care in the US, and current affairs. You can get some idea about health care in the US by reading any of the weekly news magazines or major newspapers.

7. Think about the five specific experiences or qualities that you possess that you want an interviewer to know about you and try to steer the interview to those things. For instance, you may have some really good experience in a hospital and you want to make sure that interviewer knows about it. Always try to bring up a specific story to support a point you are trying to make. Don’t just say “I have good communication skills” without bringing up the fact that you may have studied abroad and you really developed your communication skills in that setting.

8. The Student Doctor Network website has listings of common questions from all of the different medical schools.

9. The AAMC also has a lot of information on medical school interviews.

10. Often the interviewer will ask you if you have any questions. You need to have a list of good questions to ask! Do not ask questions which have answers you could have gotten from the medical school website (like residency placement, board pass rate etc.).

11. At the end of an interview ask for a business card from the interviewer. A few days after the interview, you should send formal thank you letters to the individual interviewers. These could be emails if the interview said it was OK, otherwise send a formal note.

12. There are several good websites with how to dress for an interview.

• Cracking Med Admissions

• Med School Insiders

You will interview with the HPAC in the spring and they will give you some feedback on the answers you are giving. Centre students who have been rejected on the basis of the interview usually came across as too arrogant or too shy. On very rare occasions a Centre student has had trouble with one of the interviewers (the interviewer asked inappropriate questions or was not paying attention to the student). If that happens, tell Dr. Paumi or Dr. Young and one of them will contact the medical school.