Acing Your Medical School Interview - Tips from Interviewers

Chinn officers from around the country with us this evening my name is Mandy McManaman I'm the communications and engagement manager in am cap which is the centralized application for medical school I'll be the moderator this evening just to cover a couple of housekeeping notes you should be able to hear us so hopefully those who are not hearing that fatha screen change will be able to use the chat panel to get help with any technical problems if you experience any technical problems during this session please also use the chat panel for assistance if you have questions for our speakers tonight or for the WMC please use the Q&A panel we will allow questions between each speaker we'll take one question between each speaker and then there should be plenty of time at the end to cover the remaining questions just as a reminder we will email a link to the recording of this presentation after about a week after this session it will be posted to the AAMC student hub we'll e-mail that link to you when it's available just to recap who we have with us tonight we have dr. Lena Mehta from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine we have dr. ed Daniel from Moore Thani college of medicine at the University of South Florida and we have dr. iris Gibbs from Stanford University School of Medicine again I'm Mandi McManaman and am caps and I have my colleague Katie post who will be feeding your questions for me to share with the panelists throughout the presentation so again use the Q&A panel when you have questions so without further ado we will go ahead and get started and I'll introduce dr. Mehta dr. Lena Mehta is the associate dean for admissions of the Case Western Reserve School of Medicine and has served in this role for nine years a graduate of Northeastern Ohio medical universities BS MD program she's also an associate professor of radiology at university hospitals case Medical Center where she practices in her subspecialty of nuclear radiology dr. Mason has held many administrative roles in the context of both of these positions including having served as the chairperson for radiology risk management and quality at university hospitals of Cleveland and serving for several years on an interim vice dean for medical education team at the School of Medicine she's a strong believer in the power of mentorship and as a faculty mentor for the American Medical Women's Association chapter and radiology interest group at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine without further ado I will hand it over to dr. Muto thanks Mandy good evening everyone thanks for joining us on this call I know that we've got some great tips for you in the context of interviewing successfully in medical school so as you're going to hear tonight and as you're probably well aware from having done your research which I'm sure you've done about interviewing for medical school you will encounter multiple different types of interview on the interviews on the interview trail they're going to range from one-on-one interviews which we do at our school and I'll expand on more in a moment to panel interviews potentially a couple faculty members and one interviewee a couple interviewees and one faculty member you may see the MMI which are going to hear about later this evening and you may see some hybrids of any of those permutations regardless of the type of interview that you see though there are some basic things that most medical schools are looking for most goals are looking for such things as maturity are you ready for the challenges of medicine and balancing life together resiliency are you able to recover from difficult situations which you will see in the practice of medicine the ability to collaborate is something that we think is very important in our school and I know other schools do as well the concept of the team is a very important one in the practice of medicine medical errors frequently occur when the team breaks down so the ability to collaborate and to work well together to be able to give and take constructive criticism if something that's very important strong interpersonal skills are also very important the best and most effective physicians tend to be the best communicators both in the written and the spoken words and that's something that we're certainly looking for at our school and then emotional intelligence which is defined in broad ways by people but refers to the ability to understand one's own emotions and other emotions and to act appropriately is something that we're looking for as well now as I mentioned at our school Case Western Reserve School of Medicine we conduct one-on-one interviews we have faculty and student interviews for our interviewees we have three programs at Case Western Reserve we have our more traditional four-year MD program called the university program which is pretty big we have 173 students per class we have a five year program for physician investigators at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine and we have an MD ph.d program in MSTP that has about 12 to 13 students in that the university program you get one faculty interview in one student interview for the college program two faculty and one student and for our MSC P 1 School of Medicine faculty interviewer one student interviewer and depending on your research interests between 6 & 8 interviews with research mentors and pis so you can see there's some variety of experience there but regardless of the program for which you're interviewing all of our interviewers are trained in similar ways I think candidates regularly find it interesting to know that we actually do train our interviews and we have templates for how we like things to go our interviewers are trained to keep things fairly conversational and low-key we're pretty low-key school our interviewers are trained to really spend time getting to know the candidate as a person and letting the candidate get to know the interviewer and what the school is all about as well we also use our interview time to clarify parts of the application and we have two structured questions that our faculty members need to incorporate in and those will vary from week to week our interviewers are trained to have an opening to set the candidate at ease to sort of set the groundwork for how things are going to go and to start to engender some good conversation the lion's share of the time is spent on information exchange or interviewers are trained to ask open-ended questions and to let the candidates speak the majority ie 75% of the time at least we also leave some time for closing and reliefs in time for questions a few words about how to prepare yourself for the interview day so you've applied the RAM cast you've got your secondaries your letters are in everything's complete you're reviewed by the screening committee and you get invited for an interview what do you do next well do your homework about the school in the city treat a medical school interview as you would a high-level job interview if you were interviewing for an investment banking company or a fortune 500 company you would do your homework about that inspect company you would evaluate their infrastructure you would know their mission their egos what their product is what their expectations are what their culture is similarly you should research the school before you show up for the interview our curriculum is based on team-based learning and every year I'm really surprised to hear an applicant who shows up and says your Timbers limp do you base learning here we're also a research intensive Medical School we do have research built into all of our tracks and when a candidate says yeah research built into your curriculum we wonder why they apply to us so make sure you do your homework about the school even before you apply and certainly before you show up for the interview take the time to know what the format of the interview is going to be if you show up thinking it's the one-on-one interview but it's actually an MMI probably going to be an uncomfortable day for you so take the time to know what your interview day is going to look like review your application particularly if you're going to a school that has one-on-one or conversational interviews every year and I do a lot of interviews for our school every year somebody sits across the desk for me and can't remember what their research is they can't remember an extracurricular activity in which they engage they can't remember their essay and of course I'm sorry to tell you my first thought is boy did they make that up how do they not have that instilled in their short in their long term memory base but the reality is you get busy you forget so do review your application before you show up next practice being interviewed but don't rehearse your answers now that is not actually contradictory what I mean by that is don't memorize can rehearse answers they come across as disingenuous they come across as rehearsed and every now and then a candidate will answer a question that they've clearly memorized but which isn't really the one that I'm asking so so don't memorize your responses but what I mean by practice is spend some time sitting with a mock interviewer your significant other your roommate a professor a parent a mentor your pre-health advisor practice being asked questions and we're not typically not in tune and with talking about ourselves in an open-ended fashion so questions don't have to be even medically related they could be something along the lines of tell me your earliest memory what does it tell us about your favorite act tell me about your favorite extracurricular activity what's your favorite movie and why just get used to answering questions as you're doing these mock interviews pay attention to a few things think about the handshake handshake is your first opportunity if your first point of contact with your interviewer is it nice and firm is it wimpy is it cold is it so bone-crushing that the interviewer is going to have to go to the IDI when you're done have a nice moderate handshake eye contact is also important when you're engaging with patients it's important to establish that communication and eye contact is very important are you able to look appropriately at your interviewer when you're speaking and when they're speaking to you think about your body language are you somebody who sits slumped in your chair with your arms crossed that's the posture that's typically associated with defensive Nisour anger or do sit up straight with an open posture where you're receptive to giving it giving and taking the information do you have any nervous habits do you twirl your hair do you fiddle with your watch do you have any what I call verbal tics you say like or you know or and whatnot after every sentence those will all distract from your communication style think about your speech cadence I tend to be a very rapid speaker and it's something I've been working on through the years think about how rapidly or how slowly you speak look for cues from your interviewer are they leaning forward intently and looking at you and clearly wanting you to go on or are they leaning back in their chair and flipping through papers indicating to you that it's time to wrap it up and let the neck next topic come on my big advice to you is turn your phone off don't be that person whose phone rings in the middle of the interview don't be that person please who's surreptitiously texting as they hold their phone under the table during the director of admissions information session we can tell please don't do that if you're there's an emergency or expecting an important call let people know we understand we're humans too but for the most part please turn your phone off be present and be engaged for your interview day so what do you wear on your energy I know that so my colleagues are going to talk about this as well but we each have our own perspective we're pretty laid-back school we have high academic expectations of our students but we're pretty laid-back people and we think it's okay to add a personal spark if you had to have a funky tie or you want to wear some cool socks or you want to wear a brightly colored blouse go for it but do err on the conservative side you never know who you're going to meet and not all schools feel the way we do make sure your suit fits do please try it on before your interview day when I talk to people about practicing interviews I said put your suit on get in the mood get in the mode getting your game to get on your game face put your suit on would you do some of your mock interviews that will you make sure it fits and you know how it feels every year we do have a couple candidates to lose their luggage and they show up to their interview day and the jeans and sweatshirt that they traveled in we're okay with that we know that life happens but the candidate feels badly and it may get them off on a row a bad foot where they feel a little bit below the top of their game so think about if you're flying if you want to carry your suit on the plane with you to avoid that potential situation wear comfortable shoes most schools will give you a tour and if it's a large institution as ours is you're going to be walking so we're some comfortable shoes our school is located in a place that has seasons we have summer fall winter and spring so make sure you check the weather make sure that you dress warmly for winter days and that you're not dressed too warmly for summer day so do check the weather report before you show up and one thing that I like to throw in that sometimes candidates don't think about it go easy on the fragrances you're presenting a very professional demeanor and you don't want to smell like you're showing up for a first date and not to mention you don't want to hurt anybody that may have some fragrance sensitivities and that's something to think about too as you move forward in your clinical rotations our employee handbook at the hospital prohibits two strong fragrances so think about that as you move forward on the day of the interview know where you're going know what time we need to be there every year we have a couple people who call five minutes after they're supposed to be there and say now what time am I supposed to be there now where are you located we get it we understand life happens but you're going to be stressed if you're that person so know where you're going if you have time go do a trial run show up where you need to be and double-check the paperwork or the email or whatever did you get that tells you one you need to be there bring with you a list of questions think about when you go to see your physician I know I'm a physician but when I go see my doctor I forget what I wanted to ask though I write my questions down write your questions down bring them with you if you have any updates to your application this is a good time to share them I recommend bringing a snack with you I have to tell you I'm one of those people who can get pretty hangry if I go too long without a meal we gave you breakfast we'll give you lunch but sometimes that's too long so bring a little snack with you to make sure that you keep your energy levels up if you're prone to headaches or have any medications but you need to bring with you be sure to do so and above all bring would keep a good attitude by the time you get to the interview for the most part you can deemed an academic good fit for that institution so from there on out you're interviewing us as much as we're interviewing you you have that good attitude you made it you got right you got to the point of the interview so so look forward to it and try and enjoy it as much as you can this is your time to shine and to really share with us all the hard work that you've put forward through the into the previous years now remember the interview begins not the day use not o'clock when you show up in my office but the interview begins with the first point of contact and it continues until you're accepted if you call our front desk beckretary we actually have a human who picked up the phone and you're rude to err we're going to know about it if you send us an email or a written communication that's unprofessional we're going to notice the interview begins with the first point of contact and continue so be nice be professional at being the way that you were probably raised to be be polite and kind to everybody whom you meet so I'm going to close here with my last slide this is my most valuable pearl of wisdom for you if you come to interview at our school always always laugh at the deans jokes thanks so much after your attention and enjoy your interview process I'm going to pass it back that's great um we're going to go ahead and we have one question how much should a student stay for flights hotels clothes and other things necessary for interviews that is an economic question there hop in on that as well okay I'll answer that that's a great question and I have that in my usual applying to medical school slide it can be really expensive and that is money you cannot put on a financial aid package it's either going on your credit card or your your the goodness of your parents or somebody else they're going to help you through that we did a little calculation with medical students in our office and we anticipated that if you have 10 interviews you fly to half you drive to half you buy your suit you're looking at probably 1,500 to 2,000 dollars so it can be very expensive so you know it's going to vary depending on where you're flying in the country of course but it's pretty pricey so it's definitely something you need to prepare for this is Edie Daniel with USF Missoni College of Medicine I agree without the meta completely with the travel we try to help students who are interviewing by offering up some of our current students offer the hosts the applicant the day before on their interview to try to alleviate the hotel cost just cut down a little bit so up exactly what dr. Mehta said but just sometimes you know somebody in the area you can stay with you can try to save yourself some additional money with the hotel cost and that's a great point a lot of schools do you have hosting programs ours included you okay I'm difícil head and introduce dr. Daniel next edge when Daniel PhD is the director of m.d. Admissions at the University of South Florida or Sony College of Medicine dr. Daniel received his BA from Chicago State University and his meed and his PhD from the University of South Florida as the USF alumnus dr. Daniel brings over 15 years of experience in admissions student affairs and higher education in 2011 dr. Daniel received a mentor of the Year award from the office of diversity initiatives at the University of Central Florida he enjoys working with students peers and building relationships with external constituents that help achieve his overall goals stuff that I will go ahead and pass it salsa Daniel for his words of wisdom for you all well enjoy good evening everyone thank you so much humanity for the introduction I'm really excited to speak with you this evening and talk to you a little bit about your interview day and on how to survive them that stressful day that we know is high-stakes for you and we try our best to make it really comfortable so that you can really put your best foot forward a lot of my slides are going to be v piece of what you heard and got to meta some differences because we do have a hybrid interview style with us because of our differences differences in our medical school but I'll try my best to long give you all the information you need so that when you're interviewing you can be very successful and them and we can see that in our in our applicants I always start with this slide that we showed to many of our applicants on their interview day and not really with you by proving the learning journey of our students we will improve the medical journey of our for our patients in what we mean by that is many students love to come on their interview day and just talk about all the great things they've done and how smart they are and their accolades and we kind of know that about you from the application but we really want to talk about is how you're going to take that information and help students or help patients in the future or how do you see yourself helping people in the future and if you can somehow try to navigate the conversation on your interview day for showing us your humanism and the type of this position you see yourself I think that goes a long way in your interview was really leaving your interview feeling confident about you and the type of position you want to be and whether or not this is a place for you to be the next four years and be successful and so with that I'm going to give you some points that I think are very critical that you should understand when you are looking at your interview day and how to survive I'm going to talk about seven points and I'll just go from 12 o'clock around I'm going to talk about the need for you to do your research arrive early dress up professional professionalism the actual interview day in the actual interview with the interviewer the importance of asking questions in the thank-you letter when we talk about doing your research it is kind of a little bit of both between doing your research for the interview and doing your research before you even apply like dr. meadow said earlier it's good to know that when you come to your interview that you know a lot about the school and the you did your research it shows the interviewers and the admissions team that you're really serious about the school that you are applying to if you look at the website a lot of information is out there about the medical school we many schools put so much time and energy and resources behind making sure the website is comprehensive it's a shame that not many students actually visit the website before they actually apply USF we do have two programs a lot of people don't know that we have a core program and we have a select program the core program is four years at USF we have tremendous teaching hospitals in the Tampa Bay area tremendous faculty who are committed to educating our students we have great research opportunities through our scholarly concentration you can get involved in electives with your medical curriculum such as law and medicine public health or medical humanity biomedical research health disparities we have so many different electives that we can provide you to supplement your your path to becoming a and many students really love that about our medical school we also have the Select program which is a 2+2 program with the Lehigh Valley Health Network in Allentown Pennsylvania where students would do their first two years of medical school at USF Tampa Pass step one and then literally moved to Allentown Pennsylvania and complete year three for at the Lehigh Valley Health Network it's a tremendous opportunities for students to who have tremendous passion in leadership and emotional intelligence something that the meta mentioned earlier I'll talk a little bit about the interview for both programs because they are a little bit different with the core program we have a traditional one-on-one interview style in which you will have a faculty member called the table from you this faculty member will have access to your complete file your essay your recommendation letters your academic profile and questions can range from what's on the application to basically why do you want to be a physician with the Select program the interviewer will be two faculty members who are interviewing you they will not have access to your file they were asked to three standard questions and they are going to assess your emotional intelligence and whether or not the suspect program is ideal for you and that's pretty new for a lot of students who go through is a select interview because it means individuals interviewing you are not going to be biased towards your academic profile or what you put on your paper on your application because they didn't review it and so it's really unique it's a great program it's very competitive and that's something you should know about our medical school before you come on your interview day especially if you're coming for selected of you to be prepared for that type of interview star which is are not not usual for those who are applying to medical school dr. Mehta said earlier it is important to arrive early a lot of times I tell students if you come tonight before we have a meet and greet with our current students you will have an opportunity to meet with them at Jason's Deli or Panera and just ask them any and all questions you have the students will be there on your interview day also too long to provide you more information if need be but the night before is a great opportunity you to get to know all about your interview day and exactly what you need to do to be prepared sometimes the tools will let you come on campus they'll take you to campus they'll walk you around the medical school they'll tell you where you should Park they tell you where your interview is going to be where you're meeting in the morning so you can really get a leg up on what to do them the next morning in the event there's traffic I thought the Med estate is bad whether it really helps you save as valuable those precious seconds that make sure that you are on time and not late many of the interviewers and the admissions folks get very stressed out when we see applicants come late to their interview it really doesn't send a positive message for you I would really urge you to take all precautions to not be late in the steps on the slide asks ouch style j'tia on the student admission leadership group that you will meet the night before the day of and they are very helpful in making sure your interview day is smooth dress professionally I have seen some very creative things on the interview day as my colleague said earlier if you have a funky tie you can wear that I would advise you in a sense not to do that although some people may enjoy the ties somebody may not like it and I don't I wouldn't advise you to take the risk on your interview day a lot of times we've seen applicants try to make a fashion statement and I've always said earn the side of conservatives on the dr. Mehta said it's very it's very important that you understand you don't know who's interviewing you you don't know their beliefs you don't know their their basis for making a decision and you would hate because you were a very bright colored suit that it just sent the wrong message to the interviewer I just say why take the risk so just make sure you wear a business suit clean professional make sure your hair is looking nice I'm conservative colors and so it always helps to have something about the school it's not a make-it-or-break-it tough situation but it does add a little bit of element to the interview that says while you took the time to get a pen or tie from USF it is really kind of you know shows that you really love the school and you're getting involved in school spirit so on that that's a nice touch to add professionalism is very big as you can see from the picture that chose to put on here you wouldn't believe how many times I've seen interviewers literally fall asleep or not off during the morning presentation and as much as you have come to tell us who you are and talked about your candidacy while Medical School we're using this opportunity to tell you what we're about so that you leave here knowing all about the medical school and what we feel we're good fit for you it is a little bit disingenuous and concerning when you show up and you're nodding off or you're texting or you may have realized that somebody in the interview room is a friend of yours from your school and you to that time to engage in conversation while somebody is presenting or not curriculum or our diversity it really doesn't send a good message to you sometimes we actually try not to interview people from the same schools on the same day because of that but sometimes we can't help it and it happens and they choose that time to engage in conversation so be professional be personable but don't be a comedian don't try to make people laugh don't think that's going to get you in on be alert and attentive and very respectful to each other meaning the your fellow interviewees and the admissions team and as the meta said earlier the person at the desk if you disrespect her or him Amy come back to bite you and there's no need for that choose to be very professional during your interview the actual interview itself I cannot tell you the importance of speaking confidently really believe in yourself you wouldn't have been chosen for an interview if we didn't think you were already a good applicant come on in and believe in yourself and show us how great you are and I think that will go a long way in you getting a positive decision quick answers I would say don't do that many times an interview where they ask you a question and you say yes and that's just not long enough and you can't go too long either you can't start with I want to be a doctor it was 15 years ago I remember I was in the pool and I remember having a vision and a vision you know now you're getting too long-winded and the interviewer may begin to get a little bit frustrated by your answer so be very careful not to be too quick or too long I always stay at a good tip answer the questions then elaborate answer the question and then elaborates do not elaborate first and then answer the question you might forget what the question was when you are done always ask questions it's good to have some questions in your mind coming into the interview day that you feel you want to know about the school or with your interviewer before you leave the interview please do not ask how did I do the interview is not going to stay that you did a great job you're in and the interview is not going to stay at all the job I don't know why you came in today those they're not going to say that to you they're just going to say thank you for your responses and don't you know hopefully everything goes well but they're not going to give you any feedback on the spot also do not interview the interviewer please do not stop asking them why did you go to medical school what would you change about about the about the health field how do you feel if you a might see how you'd answer these questions you are very hard not to interview the interviewer it can come across negative sometimes and finally of course the thank-you letter many of you always decide to send a thank-you letter which is very nice and very polite and very good but try very hard not to read interview in your thank-you letter please do not read it er 8 oh by the way I forgot to mention when I interviewed that and now you're answering a question please do not do that do not provide any additional information unless we ask for you to do so that's very important and do not be offended if your interviewers do not reply to your thank-you email or your letter sometimes they faculty chooses not to do that because we just want to make sure we're not giving you any type of inclination that you did well or you didn't so sometimes just choose not to reply so don't perceive that as a negative and so I leave you with that we really hope that you can picture yourself here USF and I'm still looking forward to seeing some of you at our interview day and then good luck with the entire process Thank You dr. Daniel I'm going to talk another question out for our presenters um all of you are fine you're doing great with the questions we have so many to go through so I'm glad we'll have times en keep the questions coming through the Q&A box all right the question this time is is it important to relate everything I do to medicine I would I would say no as a matter of fact don't relate everything you do to medicine a lot of times we just want you to be yourself and just relax and just answer the question and sometimes experiences outside of Medicine Julian to medicine I would always urge your responses to be genuine don't make anything up don't lie always speak from the truth always speak from the heart and just let the day happen don't try to force it down on down a particular goals like have to make sure everything ties to medicine so just be yourself be confident in your responses and just let things happen I agree with dr. Daniel is dr. Maeda we like hearing about people who have lives outside of medicine I have a life outside of medicine and I think it's important to be able to balance both we don't want a class full of pre-med BOTS who all think the same way and do the same way we want to admit a class of unique individuals and so feel free to talk about your life and yes you do not need to relate everything to medicine you okay I am going to go ahead and move on to our last speaker for this evening dr. Gibbs dr. iris Gill is the associate dean of MV admissions at Stanford medicine and associate professor of radiation oncology dr. give to earned her MD degree at Stanford School of Medicine and also completed her radiation oncology residency training also at Stanford dr. gives is a fellow of the American border radiology and also a board-certified radiation oncologist she's published more than 100 peer-reviewed articles in their areas of expertise of pediatric and adult brain tumors and radiosurgery doctor gives the dedicated educators who have served as former director of education and residency program director in the department of radiation oncology at Stanford as associate dean of admissions dr. Diaz is committed to recruiting a diverse student body difficult Stanford's mission to be a premier research intensive medical school that improves health through leadership diversity collaboration and innovation and patient care education and research so without further ado dr. dibbs please take it away thank you very much Mandy and thank you all for for coming today it's a wonderful pleasure to welcome all of you as you embark on your journey to medical school so a lot of information has already been shared I may reiterate some points just to highlight a few things but my focus today would will be focusing on the multiple mini interview which is a interview process that we adopted here at Stanford several years ago so you've heard a bit about the types of interviews and I'll also share some some tips the only word I'll say about the types of interviews I saw a couple of questions come through about the amount of time that is devoted and that's that varies from school to school and typically on a traditional interview it can be an interview of a single or series of individual meetings with staff administrators faculty and/or stood it or even a panel that can last anywhere between about 15 minutes to about 60 minutes each and also that the traditional interviews can also be structured or unstructured they can be blind or open and so those are things to keep in mind about about the those interviews but my focus today will be eventually on the multiple mini interview so just in terms of a few basic tips so the other panelists already have emphasized the being punctual being appropriately dressed clean and friendly there can sometimes be challenges to these basics especially if you find that your your luggage is lost but if you're traveling I can't emphasize this enough to really bring your clothing and toiletries with you on the plane if you can the other point that all of the penalties have made is to be is to do your homework and to be prepared and this is definitely a point of emphasis I think that your interview should not be all cookie cutter if you are interviewing at a range of different institutions you should know exactly what type of interview that you are about to embark on but also it's very important to understand the vision and the mission of that particular institution has been as has been highlighted already it's important that you somehow align your own feelings of and passion with the mission not in a disingenuous way but to be able to align that in a way where you know what kind of institution you're walking into and it's also important to know your own portfolio folks will come in having documented a particular interest or even a particular skill I've heard one of our admissions officers mentioned that someone had mentioned that they were fluent in Japanese so they were paired with a Japanese speaking interviewer and lo and behold that person to determine that that person really wasn't so you want to be very careful about knowing what you've documented and since our institution is very very research intensive it is important that you're able to coherently discuss the basics of the methodology and the results of any research that you list in your application all of that is going to be fair game it's important not to practice your responses in a way that you appear to be rehearsed because if you appear to be rehearsed you can be judged as being disingenuous or insincere and also as you're asking some of those questions that Ed had mentioned be sure not to have your question so pre rehearse that I'm someone that your interviewer would have already either answered it as part of some of the dialogue and you asked the question yet yet again because that because you weren't necessarily listening I can't emphasize enough to be honest and we haven't talked a lot about this so far but we all know that in life there are ups and downs and there may be past problems past mistakes past grades or issues and you need to come reasonably prepared to address those issues there's a delicate balance between accountability between brushing a particular issue off and dwelling on on your mishap to much learn how to strike that delicate balance where it is very clear that you have learned to take some reasonable accountability also in this area of being honest I think it's important because I just as doctor made ahead entrance I mentioned once you get to the place where we're interviewing you then we met those criteria for general academic ready most of us would would absolutely love to see you as part of our class and so if there are struggles that come along whether they be financial or otherwise that preclude you from actually making it to the interview we want to hear about that sooner or later occasionally there can be resources that are devoted to trying to get you to that interview I know for me I start with several thousand applications and if if the several hundred that I invite for interview if they aren't honest with me with regard to those things they may not benefit from some of the resources that we have because we really really would love to have that person come and give us face to face time so think about that as you're going through your interview be respectful everyone has interest has emphasized this all the way from your cabdriver to the receptionist to other students you really do not want to come off as being overly competitive with other other individuals and just know there's really no downtime during the interview and of course as ed mentioned ask questions ask appropriate questions let me get into the reasons why we have deviated a bit from a traditional interview the traditional interview is the mainstay of most most institutions however the knowledge of grades and MCAT scores can you know they can actually drive the entire interview and that may not count into everyone's failure and so knowledge of this type of performance has contributed twice as much to variance as if the interviewer was blinded and in terms of reliability and validity interviewer ratings reflect interview your characteristics and can sometimes create a reader a significant rater effect there can be poor inter-rater reliability in which the raters even in a panel setting agree mainly on the top and the bottom view but the folks who fit somewhere in the middle is a high degree of variation and scores and even in the panel setting there can be this high-risk global assessment errors where by if there's particularly strong or boisterous individual they could potentially lead the panel in one direction or the other and so for all of these reasons I think the traditional interviews tend to have some limitations particularly if it's only a single one if one has a number of different encounters that can minimize some of the negative effects of the traditional interview and so what we've adopted in other institutions is a multiple assessment type of interview whereby if you're looking for something that's scalable like communication skills multiple raters analyzing multiple scenarios are better than a single Raider in evaluating the single scenario and early data suggested that these that the reliability is quite good at about point seven and one of the things that we really want to ultimately predict is really how students will perform as a physician and so there's some data to suggest that these multiple assessment interviews can help predict clinical performance which is what we ultimately want you to be as a if it is a physician and so the benefits of this multiple assessment interviews is that the multiple readers minimize the impact of individual bias the structured scenario allows for there to be an enhancement of reliability validity and even fairness and because it is not knowledge-based like the MCAT for example it allows for the rater to gain insight into non cognitive aspects of your beliefs your character and judgments and fairness can be improved by the quantitative nature of multiple independent ratings that are scored separately and this is fully customizable so that each individual institution can focus on the the school specific skills that they would like to see in their interviewees so let's move on to talking a little bit more about the MMI process so the MMI is a it was developed at McMaster in Canada and is it interview format that it assesses your attributes that it would be important to becoming a competent and caring physician so it measures things like communication skills that can't be really measured by your standardized examinations or by reviewing your application per se typically the MMI consists of about 6 to 12 short interviews usually anywhere between 6 to 10 minute speech those that are going to be towards the 10 minute each would have shorter number of stations so that the entire circuit can be done certainly within a 2 hour time frame and you involve these individual stations revolve around a particular scenario applicants have about 2 minutes to review the initial initial stem before entering the room where they will find either an actor or a actual reader has been trained by that institution to evaluate the applicants response but not necessarily to engage them in an active dialogue and then the raters then score the applicants at the end and so it would look something like this where an applicant starts at one station and then rotates after each eight minute or so interview time period to the next station with about a minute in between and again two minutes or so to review the next scenario the types of MMI stations that you might actually encounter are here most are going to be a discussion based scenario whereby a particular domain either ethical and ethical dilemma on something that assesses your self-awareness or the communication skills will be posed and then there are acting scenario some institutions use paid actors who are there to engage you in a set up scenario and a Raider who's evaluating your response in that acting scenario there's a collaboration station which we call that the teamwork and as dr. Maeda and mentioned earlier we all are in healthcare leaning towards a team-based approach and so it's vitally important whether you're going to be in laboratory research for in the clinical environment that collaboration and teamwork are assessed well so we pretty much always here at Stanford include a collaboration station where two applicants are in a room with one or two Raiders and the applicants work on solving a problem together during the MMI session there are some institutions that use in si we actually don't use an SI where you're responding to a prompt in writing and then the all-important recitation sometimes these MMI days can go quite long and having a few minutes of rest in between may be helpful to rejuvenate yourself and so if we look at a few sample scenarios beans are the types of things that we might encounter so a collaboration scenario of an origami to applicants will collaborate to create a paper folding or origami project one applicant who has a depiction of the final product will verbally guide the other who has a blank sheet of paper into the completion of the origami project the applicants will sit with their backs toward each other and after a few minutes about five minutes which is an eight minute scenario then they will be allowed the final three minutes to discuss the product and so the Assessors who are there or the Raiders will be there to observe their teamwork and the communication between the two and then a more standard type of discussion based scenario might look something like this liberation therapy a vascular operation developed to potentially cure multiple sclerosis is certain in certain patients has recently come under some serious criticism delaying its widespread use among other experimental flaws critics cite a small sample size in the original evidence used to support LT as a health policy maker your job is to weigh the pros and cons and approving novel drugs and therapies please discuss the issues you would consider during an approval process for L T now as you're thinking about this one of the aspects of MMI are this we do not require that you come in with some a priori knowledge of let's say liberation therapy I think as you're approaching MMI it's important that you're relying on general basic principles not necessarily getting nervous because hey I don't know anything about this particular therapy on the success of MMI really relies on your being able to deconstruct the basics of your general thought processes in handling a brand new problem and so that's what these sample scenarios will do how well do you communicate with someone else not only in terms of giving instructions but also receiving instructions and gathering from that other individual information that is important for you to be able to to be able to complete the task because at least with a club collaboration scenario for example one might say well hey I performed pretty terribly because the person who has given me instructions was not that good remember they're two usually two Raiders one is really evaluating you if you're the receiver to evaluate how well you are able to gather some of the information that you feel you might actually need so that's why that works both ways so with that I will ask if there's any questions and thank you very much thank you so much doctor gives another great set of information for our applicants chickens that are lots of questions to get through so I have chosen ones that we've seen for lots and lots of questions about so these are really seems and any of our presenters feel free to hop in and comment upon these as you'd like so the first one is sort of along the lines of well I have a bad grade or some kind of kink if you will in my application so where your tip for explaining that during the interview should I bring it up proactively or only comment if fast this is some Irish Gibbs I would say that you should only bring it up really if it's asked the interview setting is usually quite short overall and so proactively bringing up the question you know may you know that that there may be a circumstance where that may be appropriate but in most instances the you were invited for an interview with that knowledge and if there was more clarification required for that you would probably be be asked about it but once asked about the question I think it's important to show your resiliency to show a certain level of accountability and how you've grown from that particular experience those are the important features that I think you know games like myself want to see we don't necessarily need to hear sob stories about certain from may be important to provide some context but if what if it means that you don't ultimately take accountability for that than that than those types of responses that don't take accountability actually are not helping you yes this is a Daniel USF I agree without the gifts we have a question on our secondary application that asks if you received a grade lower than a b-minus to explain and so if we are inviting you for an interview that means we've read your explanation and we're comfortable with that situation if it comes up just be honest demonstrate a level of intelligence and maturity and the fact that you own up to the grade and what happened but I wouldn't be nervous about it I wouldn't be you know forthcoming with anything just if it comes up answer the question honestly and I'll be confident and believe in yourself okay another big one that was asked around this scene so what what to interviewees typically bring with them should we bring a copy of our application or resume or CV is it okay to bring a notebook or a notepad to take notes during presentations and interviews Daniel I would say you could be the notepad to take some notes and jot down a couple of thoughts I would not walk in with questions already written down for you to ask because of how the interview went that kind of seems a little bit weird but yes you can have a pad with a pen just jot down some notes and don't any of you you notice that when the interview is over you cannot ask some questions just be comfortable so I'm going to respectfully disagree with Ed I'm okay with you bring in questions that you came up with already they may not have been answered in the course of your day and they may be questions you have about the curriculum or they may have been generated earlier based on something else that you heard so I'm actually okay with that I agree can bring a notebook with you I would not you do not need to bring a copy of your application you do not need to bring a CV with you we have all of that information for our school if you have any updates if you have any publications that have happened or anything that's happened since you've submitted your application that's a time where you can bring it with you this is Irish because I think I may agree on both ways but I think there's a delicate balance in terms of the asking of questions to make sure that the even though the interview is a two-way street to not leave the impression that it's such an inquisition that you know that you are just drilling this school to see whether or not they're good enough for you I don't care which school it is you should you should not leave that institution sort of or the interview or sort of feeling that you are coming in with so many questions that that question whether or not you are whether or not the school itself is sort of suitable for you so be careful about how you ask those questions thank you all what are some of the questions or topics that applicants struggle most with or seem to be most unprepared for if I can start on this one it would be for me the most basic question which is why do you want to be a physician I laugh so many times when we ask that question and I just see so many people stumble on that and I my assumption would be that would be the thievius question or the one applicants when we would rehearse the first so I'm just be prepared to answer the question you know why do you want to be a physician why does it matter to you and that would be my response to that question this is when tomato from Case Western I don't I don't typically see a trend the reality as most candidates mature for interviews you're so well rehearse then they've been practicing and prepping that I don't see a general one that spans all candidates I do think that students frequently will have difficult as dr. Gibson that difficulty of dr. Gibbs mentioned discussing deficiencies in their application because they're worried that they're not going to look perfect and we don't need perfect we need somebody who's resilient and has learned from their errors and somebody who maybe had a dip in their application and they've redeemed themselves may actually be stronger because they've learned how to recover from something like that so applicants do get very uncomfortable talking about any potential deficiencies in their record but you really don't need to be as dr. Gibbs indicated by the time we're all aware of this and that you've been invited for the interview anyway so just own up to it and take responsibility I think one of the common you know errors here when you find yourself having been asked a question that maybe you're not exactly readily prepared and prepared to answer is really taking those few seconds to you know relax a little bit and give a reasonably thoughtful response even if you weren't exactly prepared for for the question I think it is not a good idea to just continue rambling you know just random thoughts hoping that something sticks and you just sound illogical and disorganized you want to in the brief time that you have to be able to somehow organize some set of responses again whether it be the MMI or whether it be for traditional interview that skill is going to be observed and you'll do much better if you take a few seconds at least to think about your responses before speaking great one quick question just a general question that I can answer actually is how do you find out about which type of interview this school has fun you can look at the school's website and to the double-a MC has a resource called the medical school admissions requirements MFA are the acronym for that one and far and it has information about all of the medical schools including what type of interview they offer we are running up against time so I'm going to ask a couple more questions if you don't mind sticking around for a minute or two um our interviewer is suspicious of applicants who have decided to pursue the practice of medicine after working and it's in a very different field like law or education I will I will take them that establishes question first those of us who are looking for diversity in their class are looking for what I call transferable skills and sometimes having that additional career or having those additional experiences only enhance that person's ability to sort of transfer certain skill sets into medicine and so I would say that that most of us particularly again that you've gotten to the interview we're not just not necessarily suspicious of that this is window mania I agree with selector dibs but we do they look to see that there's a story that you're not leaving your prior career because you hated it and you just need to find something else to do but instead that you've taken the time to explore medicine and to realize that that is a better path for you but the transferable skills are great we have tons and tons of non-traditional students at our school okay so we really do actually embrace that very much but again we just want to make sure and see that there's some logical progression there South Florida I agree with both my peers all right what are some examples of appropriate question to ask my interviewers you this is Lina Maeda from Case Western I am okay with questions if you have a question asks there's you know questions that are you're just asking for the sake of asking or not going to be helpful but if there's some question that was generated in your mind based on something about the curriculum as I said or a question about the research pieces that we have or student experience or I'm okay with questions as long as they're real and genuine and you really want to know the answer I'm okay with that I don't know that there's a wrong one in my mind this is Ed Daniel South Florida I would always um as an interview who appreciate questions and their needs lead to the lead that you've done your research and they get trying to really connect with the University on we're building a new medical school is going to be built in on in the next two to three years so a question would be are you excited by the new medical school being built or the Select program you know I'm really excited about that how did that come about anything that leads me to believe you really want to learn just a little bit more about the school but you're so intrigued by the day and interview that leave me with leave me feeling like wow the student app identity is very interested in us and I'm really excited so those are just two examples question that um if I heard I would be impressed by and I agree okay what's the best way to incorporate pieces of my personal statement secondary essays and sorry and my secondary essays into my interview answers should I talk about them as if the interviewer has no previous knowledge of my activities or that they have at least the baseline knowledge this was a big theme here so and also in that same round how do I find out if my interviewers have access to my file before I meet them so hopefully ahead of time you you know can find out through the office whether or not the interviews would be will be blind or open and if they are an open interview yes the the interviewing interviewer would have probably seen your file but to remember every single detail that's included in your file is probably not you know not feasible so it is actually okay to highlight don't retail but to highlight some of the major accomplishments that you want or themes that you want the school to be left with when they think about you I always ask this question is if you know by the time that you leave here and we've now done the full circuit what do you want me to remember about you and so if you can think about that ahead of time without retelling all of the details and the context you might be able to highlight the most important aspects of your written applications just for a brief kind of reiteration and up during the interview but not to take all the time in doing so okay I'm going to ask two more questions since we're running a little over how do you deal with difficult ethical questions like euthanasia dealing with terminally ill patients and changing healthcare infrastructure are there right answers that you and the interviewers are looking for I'll take some time I'll just take a brief stab at that because those charts are probably a range of topics that may very well be asked in the setting of an MMI interview and so the take-home message there there is no right answer however whatever is truthful for you and genuine form for from your standpoint you know could be discussed what is probably more important is that you're able to deconstruct a particular dilemma or issue and present it from all sides and so that's probably more important than the necessarily providing what you make me some think is a is a correct answer this is Lena Mena I agree with Iris and I also build on that by saying we ask some of those questions not because we want to know the answer but because we know that you're in tune with some of the hot topics in medicine a lot of the questions that were a lot of the areas that were referenced in that question are ones that are going to impact your career as a physician and if you don't know that health care reform is ongoing or that there are discussions of physician assisted suicide or any of those areas you may not have informed yourself well about the practice of medicine because without a doubt your future career is going to be impacted by many of those yeah and I would just add it's okay to say you know I don't know I mean it's a tough question there are many different perspectives to look at that scenario and I really don't know and that they kind of demonstrate a little bit of emotional intelligence then you see the problem multiple perspectives and I don't want applicants to feel that a question like that you have to commit to one side or the other so just be comfortable saying I don't know interesting questions tough question elaborate a little bit but be comfortable saying I don't know and I think how many of you might appreciate that and to wrap up with one more question so again a theme here what is the acceptable practice if you have coincidentally been put into a situation where you have a conflict of timing for two different interviews at different schools or if you have been offered two interviews in the same geographic area which you'll need to travel to is it okay to contact the admission office of those schools and ask for dates that are close to each other so you can make one trip what's the expect acceptable protocol in those types of situations this is Lina Maeda absolutely in our office you can always call us and let us know that you've got a situation such as that we can't always guarantee we're going to accommodate it but we know how expensive and stressful and long the interview season is so we will work with you to try and make things as easy as possible not at 300% we understand if we're inviting you for an interview that means we we believe very highly in you and think you're a very strong candidate and we're assuming all the other medical schools are thinking the same thing so where we know you're going to have other offices on to be interviewed and we understand the dilemma and the financial implications though that would not be perceived as negatively if you contacted us instead you have two other interviews in the state very close by we just want to kind of merge the data the easier and we'll be as best we can accommodating I agree and just being nice to the staff so some very consistent messages tonight for all of you potential on physicians that's joined us tonight again thank you so much for your time and many kudos to our wonderful panelists tonight thank you so much for your insight and tips to do well in this process again we will post this the recording of this session on to the double AMC Laura and Musa slide to death on to the WMC student hub so we'll send you a quick link if you would if you enjoyed this presentation or didn't enjoy it please fill out the survey that's going to automatically pop up on your screen and also join us on our double AMC pre-med community we're on Facebook and Twitter as you can see here we share lots of information and resources for you there as well so thank you again for your time and do look out for more webinars in the series thank you all and thanks panelist Thank You Mindy thank you good luck to all of you students

Channel: AMCAS

Views: 40,535

Rating: 4.8829789 out of 5

Keywords: AMCAS, medical school, Pre-medical (Field Of Study), medical school admissions, Medicine (Field Of Study), Interview, Exclusive

Id: _NPzieykTF4

Length: 69min 30sec (4170 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 01 2015