If you are anything like me, you have spent thousands of hours trying to get into medical school. Endless late-night study sessions, volunteering, spending extra hours in the clinic, and doing research. You’ve probably read over your applications a hundred times fussing over the tiniest details – and now you are finally here!

You made it to a medical school interview!

This means that this school has seen all of your hard work and they like you!

Yes, you.

You stood out on paper against thousands of different applications and they want to see more! The medical school interview is your time to show them that you don’t just look good on paper.

In October, I was accepted into my TOP medical school. My path to medical school has been quite a journey. I had no clue how many hours I needed, what the timeline to medical school looked like, what the MCAT was, or how to even start my med school application. But – I made it! And I want to help you get there too!!

Here are some tips that I learned along the way while preparing for my Medical School Interviews.

Number 1: DO 👏🏼 YOUR 👏🏼 RESEARCH 👏🏼

Schools are looking for applicants that fit their mission statement. Students that align with their values and will continue their legacy.

For each school that I interviewed at, I did at least 20 hours of research. The most important thing is to understand the mission and values that the school is looking for in students.

After you have a good understanding of this, go hop on the school’s website and follow their social media. In theory, you might have done this already to craft your Secondary application, but you’ll need to do more to make sure you’re ready on interview day. On the website, you will find things that make the school unique. What special programs do they offer? What student organizations look interesting? Do they do a lot of volunteering? What areas of research do they focus on?

If you have a school you are really interested in, go to a preview event, go on tour, go meet students, and schedule an online meeting with a member of the admissions committee. For my top medical school, I scheduled a meeting with admissions a few months before the application opened – around the end of February. We met for about 15 minutes online and I was able to ask more questions about the school before I started working on my application. I don’t think that this meeting was taken into consideration at all for admissions but I had my foot in the door when I went to tour the school at a preview event.

A preview event is kind of like an open house where you get to hear from the dean, admission committee, and students, and meet other interested applicants. I knew TWO people on the admission committee because I scheduled an online meeting a few months before. I was able to greet them by name and shake their hands when I walked in to tour the school. Preview events are by no means required for admission to medical school, but I was glad had the opportunity to go for two reasons. First, I got to write about going to the Preview event on my secondary application showing extra interest in the school, and second, it really confirmed my love for the school. This school really aligned with my values and I was better able to highlight my experiences and how I would be a good fit for the school on interview day. All of this information I found on the website later but I liked seeing the faces behind the Instagram posts and webpages.

Instagram is also a great way to learn more about the school. Some schools post daily about student orgs, awards, and big events that the school has going on. This type of studying for your interview can be mindless. Just follow and check out their cool events.

Number 2: Craft Your Answers

Once you learn more about the school it’s time to highlight parts of your application that align with their values and write down your responses. I call this part, “crafting your answers.”

You want to respond to the interview questions in a way that highlights each of the qualities the school is looking for. They know that most of the students being interviewed will become good physicians, but they want to find which students will be a good fit at their school?

My top school had a large focus on holistic health care and their mission statement focused on creating healthier communities, so in many of my responses, I talked about my experiences that grew my passion for public health and people-focused healthcare.

How do I know the questions that they might ask me?

To answer this question you need to know what type of interview the school is conducting.

From my experience, there are 2 common types of interviews –

The Traditional Interview and the MMI.

The traditional Interview

The Traditional Interview is probably what comes to mind when you think of… interview. There is usually one applicant in a room (or over Zoom) with 1 to 4 members of the admission committee. The session lasts from 30 min to an hour and they ask you questions about yourself and your application.

Applications will be open or closed.

An “open” application means that the interviewers have read through your application. They know about all of your activities, grades, test scores, personal statement, etc. Other Traditional Interviews can be “closed.” This means that your interviewer had not reviewed your application ahead of time. They don’t know your test scores, extracurriculars, or personal statement. Sometimes interviews can be half open. Interviewers will know some things about you but may not have looked at test scores.

These Traditional Interviews usually ask questions like… “Tell me about yourself” “Where do you see yourself in 10 years” “Why do you want to be a physician?” “Why this school?” “If you couldn’t be a physician, what would you do instead?”

The Multi Mini Interview

The other type of Interview is the MMI or the Multi Mini Interview. This interview looks a little different from the traditional one. MMIs are typically divided up into stations. You will do a “Mini” interview one-on-one with about 5-8 different interviewers. These Mini interviews usually last about 8 minutes each. You are given a prompt which can be an ethical scenario or a question, you have about 2 minutes to read over it and think of a response, and then you have about 6 minutes to discuss your response with your interviewer.

MMIs typically don’t ask you questions about your application but they try to assess your response to specific ethical scenarios or ask questions that examine your values. These can be similar to the CASPER exam that is required now by my medical schools.

The staple example for MMI ethical questions is the “birth control example” –

“You are a pediatrician treating a 14-year-old girl who, when her father steps out of the room, asks you for birth control… How do you respond?”

I found through an internet search that many websites have a 5 step method for breaking down these questions, but I found what really helped me tackle them the most was reading a book called “Multiple Mini Interview: Winning Strategies from Admissions Faculty 2nd Edition” This book was written by Dr. Samir Desai and Dr. Rajani Katta, two faculty members from Baylor College of Medicine who have sat through endless medical school interviews. They interviewed many other Admission Committee members across the nation and they tell you EXACTLY what schools look for on interview day.

I found that most of my interview MMI questions were not ethically directed but more behavior. “Tell me about a time you had to deal with a difficult coworker,” or “Tell me about a time you failed.” A few prompts simply gave a quote and asked us to respond to what the quote meant to us. Common themes were around failure and resilience.

For interview questions catered to your specific school, I suggest browsing Student Doctor Network aka “SDN”. Type in “’School Name’ Interview Student Doctor Network” to your search engine and a webpage should come up.

Many students who have interviewed at the school in the past few years will write comments about how interview day went for them and you get a breakdown of if the interview was open or closed, MMI or traditional. Some really helpful stuff! I took many of the sample questions that the school asked about in the past, put them in a big document, and wrote some of the responses I would say. None of the same questions were asked on my interview day but I got a good sense of the types of questions they would ask.

With MMI questions it is important to not only what you would do in an ethical situation or behavioral situation but how you would come to that decision. This is the perfect way to tie your past experiences into an 8-minute interview and stand out. A “How to be successful at MMIs” blog is coming soon! I will walk through some of my responses to common questions that I feel really made a difference for me on interview day.

Number 3: Watch Mock Interviews

One of the ways I learn the best is by watching what other people do and taking away things that I like about their approach. For your interview do a quick Youtube search of “Mock Medical School” interviews to get a sense of what interview day will look like for you, and how others respond to common questions.

Number 4: Do Mock Interviews and Video Yourself!

My fourth piece of advice is to PRACTICE. Doing mock interviews and recording yourself is so important.

This is because you will not be perfect at first, and that is okay. – For most people – these things don’t come naturally – but with practice you can improve! – It’s all about a growth mindset 🖐🏼🌈🖐🏼

One of the Medical Schools that I applied to had a one-way Video interview response required for part of their secondary application… and I was incredibly unprepared for this. It was August, I had a stack of secondary applications to finish, and that “2-week” turnaround period was past due. So, after I submitted the written part of this school’s secondary, I went straight into completing the video portion with no prep.

I recorded the one-way interview at 8 p.m. in my dark room over the computer. The screen popped up with a question – I had 30 seconds to read it and then the screen started recording. All of a sudden my 30 seconds was up and the question disappeared. I was just staring at myself. Trying to compile my thoughts and make a good first impression for the Medical School. I remember saying “um” over 20 times… It was so embarrassing, but it gave me the motivation to not make the same mistakes on interview day.

I practiced my interview responses in the car, in the shower, and on walks. Some of my co-workers even helped by asking me interview questions throughout the day.

It is important to “Craft Your Answers” and write perfect responses on paper, but on interview day, your answers will look a little different. In the interview, you will want your ideas to appear fluid and natural. Each time you answer the same question out loud, your response will be different but that’s okay as long as you get across the desired quality or message each time. Remember the experiences that you have hand and what themes want to highlight and practice those stories with friends, family, co-workers, and alone in your room to see how they could flow in conversation, and get comfortable with that.

These are things that helped in my Medical School Interviews but there are many more helpful tips out there! I encourage you to practice and seek other advice from your friends who have been through the process, YouTube videos, and websites!

Below I have posted some of the links that helped me the most to prepare for my interviews.

Remember, you have come so far in this process and all of that hard work is about to pay off!

Good luck guys! You got this!

♡ Z

Multiple Mini Interview: Winning Strategies from Admissions Faculty 2nd Edition

The Medical School Interview: Winning Strategies from Admissions Faculty Kindle Edition

Helpful MMI Question Banks – (But the books are the most helpful!)

• Princeton Review
• Shemmassian (I did not use the question-answering formula they walk you through. Just a few of the questions)
• BeMo
• Cracking – Current events (I found the cultural competency article the most helpful. For MMIs is can be good to be up to date on current events and ethical issues. I browsed through these a little bit before my interview, but again, most of my questions were not ethics-focused.)