Interviews: Preparation

General Information Preparation Sample Questions Impermissible Questions

This is the final hurdle and usually one of the most important parts of the application process, especially when competitiveness for admission to medical school is near an all-time high. For students invited for an interview, it may count anywhere from almost zero to almost 100% depending on the institution and the strength of your credentials. Therefore, you should prepare for the interview with as much care as you get ready for an important examination, and you should go into it with a game plan, i.e., with a well-thought-out plan of how you can best present yourself. At many institutions, your interviewer will be expected to act as your advocate before the full Admissions Committee so it is within your interest to provide him/her with the best ammunition.

I. In order to present yourself in the best way possible you need to be aware of your own strengths and weaknesses. Thus, you will want to be familiar with:

All parts of your application; your personal statement and your responses on the secondary are often the basis of the interview, whether the interview is blind or open, and you should bear this in mind when writing them. You do not want to lead the interviewer into areas where your knowledge is limited or which might prove embarrassing to you.
What interviewers are mostly looking for:
1. Would anybody go to you for professional help?
2. Do your answers support the image created in your application? Interviewers are very unlikely to question particular grades in your academic record, but it could happen.
3. Are you honest?
4. Are you someone they can live with for four years?
5. Do you communicate well?
6. Are you stable and self-confident?
7. Are you well motivated?
8. Are you knowledgeable about the demands of the profession and how you can meet them?
9. Are you an interesting person?

II. The Health Careers Office can help you in several ways:

Micro-interview (a videotaped mock interview);
Reports on each school based on visits or feedback from students;
Names, e-mail addresses, and phone numbers of students or alum who can put you up or give you advice;
Advice regarding scheduling, canceling, or combining interviews;
Advice regarding regional versus on-site interviews.

III. The key to all interviews is to be professional in appearance and behavior while still being yourself.

Appearance: Dress, haircut, make-up, cleanliness; if in doubt, be conservative and dress professionally. Remember that you do not want to make a statement with your dress, jewelry, hairstyle, perfume or deodorant.
Early arrival: Don't put extra pressure on yourself by cutting your arrival too closely. Also, assume you are "on camera" as soon as you arrive at the campus or hospital.
Good behavior: Secretaries, student-hosts, student-interviewers should all be treated as having input.
Knowledge: You want to be informed about:
1. The institution you are visiting; there are brochures in the Health Careers Office, Career Services, or the library, and you may wish to write away to the institutions for their catalogs, especially if you are applying for the MD/PhD. Also make use of institutional websites.
2. Current issues in the profession (malpractice insurance, public health, HMO's, managed care, patient's bill of rights, universal health care, maldistribution of physicians, educational costs, AIDS, hospital mergers, assisted suicide, genetic and stem cell research, conflicts of interest). You will certainly want to be aware of developments that warrant front-page newspaper coverage, and you should get into the habit of checking stories about medicine that hit the front page. You may also wish to look at the Health/Science section in the Boston Globe and the Science Times and Personal Health sections in the New York Times. Other interesting items can be found in the health and/or science sections of weekly news magazines (Time, Newsweek, U.S. News & World Report) and monthly magazines such as Discover, Scientific American, and Science. All of these highlight important articles that appear in the New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of the American Medical Association, Nature, etc. Many of these are available in the Carlson Science Library. Remember, physicians frequently have narrow interests, and they may feel more comfortable talking about medical issues.
How you feel about yourself is important; if you go in thinking your whole life depends on your interview, you'll blow it.
Nervousness: It may well happen, especially in your first interview, and need not be a problem if you get over it fairly rapidly.
Eye contact: It is important that you make eye contact because, if you do not, this will often be construed as lack of self-confidence. You do not want to stare constantly at the interviewer, but most interviewers will be concerned if you have to turn away while framing answers.
Think before you answer. Although it may seem like a lot of "dead air time," it usually is not, and it is both appropriate and wise to take a few seconds before answering questions that require thought.
If asked an inappropriate question, try to avoid confrontation. But if you are unable to do so and do not want to answer it, politely ask the interviewer if there is some need for him/her to know the answer.
Do not bring up topics that might prove embarrassing to you.
Introduce yourself properly, shake hands, get the name of the person who is interviewing you, and use formal address. Remember this is a first meeting.
Somewhat analogous to a first date, remember that unless you seem sincerely interested in the institution, the interviewer will not be interested in you, but don't exaggerate your level of interest.
It is not a good idea to try to control or manipulate the interview, but you should make use of opportunities to present information about yourself that is favorable to you and relevant.
The best way to judge appropriate length of an answer is by maintaining eye contact and being sensitive to the interviewer. You do not want to go on so long as to bore your audience nor do you want to give monosyllabic answers so that the interviewer runs out of questions and takes you out onto thin ice.
Be understanding if questions seem strange; some interviewers are new or just not very good at it. If you don't understand a question, ask. Some common questions are:
1. When did you first get interested in medicine?
2. What specific field interests you? Need not be answered definitively.
3. Where do you see yourself in ten years? This means professionally.
4. Tell me about your family.
5. Why did you choose this medical school?
6. Why did you go to Clark?
7. Which courses did you like (dislike) most and why?
8. What will you do if you do not get accepted?
9. How do you plan on financing your education?
10. What would you most like to change about the profession? Be careful not to insult gratuitously.
11. What do you most fear about medical school? Don't indicate your own insecurities or suggest you're afraid of the work load. They won't like it.
12. Ethical questions: Remember your responsibilities to the patient, to the law, and to the profession. These often involve a conflict of values so it might be wise to indicate that you really do not know the answer, but indicate your best judgment.
Avoid trying to snow an interviewer, especially about research; you may be talking to an expert in the field or someone who thinks he/she is.
It is a good idea to ask questions about the institution since this shows both interest and self-confidence. But don't ask questions whose answers you should already know from their literature or website or from items presented in a general session or a tour, and don't ask anything that questions the value of the school, such as where their graduates get internships. It is generally not a good idea to ask when you will hear the results, as this may be interpreted as nervousness. You may ask about:
1. Clinical clerkships away from the institution;
2. Research opportunities;
3. Joint programs and/or courses outside of the medical school itself;
4. Cultural, social, and athletic opportunities;
5. Their particular strengths: i.e., programs, curricular approach (traditional, organ systems based, problem based), specialties;
6. Courses that you might still try to fit into your curriculum.
Don't try to give an answer which you think the interviewer wants to hear. A proper answer is one that you can logically defend, and you may be very wrong about where an interviewer stands on a particular issue.
It is not smart to duck questions by being indecisive. Sometimes that is appropriate, but remember that physicians need to make decisions.
If you feel your interview is a disaster (e.g., there is open hostility), it is generally a good idea to report it immediately and request another interview. This happens very, very rarely.
Report your interview to the Health Careers Office. We can often judge better whether you have handled yourself well or not and can provide constructive advice on how to take subsequent interviews.
You want to be self-confident but not arrogant, and you also want to avoid being defensive.
Interviews are less stressful if you know what to expect.

We can tell you something about the interviewing models used by each institution based on the information available in the Premedical Advisor's Reference Manual:

Number and length;
Who interviews;
Individual or group.

Additional Links:

Links to keep up-to-date with developments in medicine and health:
ABC News Health News
Academic Medicine
Aetna InteliHealth Health News
Alegent Health: Health News Highlights
American Medical News
Bioethics Web
Boston Globe Health News
Boston Globe Science News
Bulletin of the World Health Organization
CBS News Health News
Chicago Sun-Times Health News
CNN.com Health
Current Science and Technology Center
Daily News Central Health News
Dental Journals, Newsletters, Publications and Information Sources Online
Detroit News Health News
Digital Library for Students of Medicine
Discover Magazine
Discovery Health
The Doctor Will See You Now: Bioethics Articles
Doctor's Guide - Medical News
Dr. Koop.com
Duke Health Policy Gateway
Environmental Health News
EurekAlert! Medicine and Health News
Free Medical Journals
Global Health Reporting
Harvard Medical International Newsletter
Harvard World Health News
HeadlineSpot.com Health News Links
Health Affairs: The Policy Journal of the Health Sphere
Health and Medicine in the News
Health and Medicine Websites
Health News Digest.com
Houston Chronicle Health News
The Internet Public Library Health and Medical Sciences Section
Issues: Berkeley Medical Journal
Johns Hopkins Public Health News Center
Journal of the American Medical Association
Journal of the American Osteopathic Association
Journal of the American Podiatric Medical Association
KaiserNetwork.org: Health Policy As It Happens
The Lancet
Life Clinic Health News
Los Angeles Times Health News
Mayo Clinic Health Information
Medical Education Online: An Electronic Journal
Medical/Health Sciences Libraries on the Web
Medical News Today
The Medical Post
MedicineNet.com
Medline Plus News
Medscape
MedWeb
Men's Health
Miami Herald Health News
Modern Healthcare Online
MSNBC Health News
The National Academies: Science in the Headlines
National Academy for State Health Policy
National Health Policy Forum
National Institutes of Health (NIH) News
National Library of Medicine
National Women's Health Information Center
Nature
Nature Medicine
New England Journal of Medicine
The New Physician
Newsday.com Health/Science News
News-Medical.Net
Newsweek Healthbeat
New York Times Health News
The Next Generation: An Introduction to Medicine
NPR Health and Science News
Philly.com Health News
Physician's Weekly
Portsmouth Herald Health News
Public Library of Science Medicine
PubMed
Reuters Health
Review of Optometry Online
The Sacramento Bee Health/Medical News
SciCentral Health Sciences News
Science
Science Daily Health and Medicine News
Science News Online
Science Now
Scientific American Health News
The Scientist
Seattle Times Health News
Time Science and Health News
U.S. News and World Report Health News
Virtual Hospital: A Digital Library of Health Information
Virtual Mentor Ethics Journal of the American Medical Association
The Wall Street Journal Health News

Prehealth Study at Clark

Interviews: Preparation

I. In order to present yourself in the best way possible you need to be aware of your own strengths and weaknesses. Thus, you will want to be familiar with:

II. The Health Careers Office can help you in several ways:

III. The key to all interviews is to be professional in appearance and behavior while still being yourself.

Additional Links: