- My wife makes fun of me all the time for never doing anything casually. If I'm prepping a dish for
dinner for the first time, it has to be incredible. If I've made it 12 times, well, I have to tweak
it and make it better. Same thing if I go out to eat. You'll never hear me say,
"Ooh, this place looks good! Let's try it!" without
having fully researched it. I'll read reviews, browse photos,
gather intel from friends. Recently, I was looking
into buying new audio and video equipment, so
I read tons of guides and watched tons of videos
before making a decision. I loved the process, but
it took so much time. My wife sometimes asks, "Is
it exhausting being you?" Sometimes, yeah, it kind of is. I consider my work ethic to be
one of my greatest strengths. It's helped me get to where I am today. It's also helped me understand one of my greatest weaknesses. When I work so hard to
get things just right, I sometimes have trouble letting
go if something goes wrong. "But I tried so hard", is a
kind of catchphrase of mine and I need to be reminded, sometimes what you've done is good enough. Sometimes, you need to just move on. So there, I did it. I told you mine, can you tell me yours now? Okay, you're probably wondering what exactly I'm talking about. Why am I sharing this? I'm Dr. Shemmassian, medical school admissions expert at Shemmassian Academic Consulting. In this video, we're gonna
talk about what I find to be one of the most intimidating medical school interview questions, "What is your greatest strength?" and its evil partner, "What is your greatest weakness?" Let's be honest, not only
are these questions tricky, they're also some of the nosiest questions in the interview process, kind of like starting a
conversation by saying, "Well, what's wrong with you?" or, "What's so great about you, anyway?" It's easy to get stuck when you're faced with these questions. To be honest, while trying to come up with my own strengths and
weaknesses for this video, I struggled. I felt uncomfortable. And it's not because
I don't have examples. It's because it's tricky to figure out how to talk about them. What kind of weakness is
going to share too much? Be too vulnerable? And what kind of strength is
going to sound too arrogant? These are the questions
that go through our minds when we're trying to answer. So how do you get the actual
questions at hand right? Before we dig into the
details, I have one ask, please hit that like button so this advice can reach more people. And subscribe to the channel so you don't miss out on new videos. All right, first, let's talk about what we've all been wondering. Why do adcoms need to know? In other words, why ask these
questions in the first place? In normal conversation,
it's kind of rude, right? Prying. And in interviews, it
almost feels like a trick. After all, you might think, "Aren't my strengths already
demonstrated in my application? Did I forget something? And why on earth should I be expected to talk about what's wrong with me if I'm supposed to be making
the best case for myself?" On top of that, it can be really tricky to strike a good balance
of not seeming arrogant when we go to list our strengths while remembering it's equally important to not sell ourselves short. And to that same extent, how can we talk about a weakness without appearing like a
weak candidate overall? Or, even worse, how can we talk about a weakness without making it seem like we're avoiding the question altogether and just using the opportunity
to talk more sneakily about how great we are? It's important to remember
that these questions are meant to get to the
bottom of your personality, to get a sense of your resilience, how you handle adversity, how you judge success versus improvement. These questions also measure your capacity for self-reflection and growth. Your interviewer wants to
get a sense of who you are and what sets you apart from others. So, rather than thinking of the question as an opportunity to brag or as a danger zone where
you might convince programs to not admit you, think of this as an opportunity to contextualize who you are. You also want to highlight your ability to both improve yourself
and to have an impact on the communities you're a part of, including the community
you'll be a part of in medical school. Your answers do not have to
relate to medical experiences, although they can. What's crucial, however, is that you try to give
an answer that furthers our understanding of who
you are, and better yet, why you are the way you are. Now, how do we do that? Be honest and genuine. This sounds obvious. But it's important to remember the value of not just honesty but authenticity. What this means is you want
to sound like yourself. Don't give an answer you think
sounds like the right answer. Give an answer that's true. Keep your response organic and
personal, not performative. In other words, don't rattle
off a list of 20 strengths and a kind of sort of half-weakness. And definitely don't list
strengths and weaknesses you think your interviewer
is looking to hear. You want your response
to have personality. It's easy to fall into the
trap of giving an answer that feels abstract and
distant, even if it's honest. How can we avoid this? Never underestimate the power of context, otherwise known as narrative, a story. Contextualizing your answer
can help it appear more unique, more personal, more memorable, and it can help make more
abstract skills and ideas more concrete. If you want to tell an
interviewer about the way your sense of determination
is your greatest strength, contextualize this with a
brief anecdote or example of when you've put your
determination to use. Why not also tell them why
you think determination is a crucial skill for a doctor to have? There can be a huge difference
in telling an interviewer that your biggest strength
is your leadership ability versus telling them that
you take great pride in your ability to have
led a group of students in founding an international
volunteer fundraising committee at your university, discovering your ability to lead as you learned to delegate
tasks, recruit members, network with college
administrators, et cetera. You're reinforcing your
strength with an example of how you've been able to put it to use, therefore further supporting
why it's a strength while allowing your interviewer
to gain some insight into what you're capable of accomplishing. The same thing goes for
your greatest weakness. If you're feeling worried
about going there, about actually talking about a weakness, frame it in the context of a story about how you want to
grow past this weakness, how you're working to address it, why you think it's
important to address it. Tell your interviewer about the first time you discovered this as
a weakness, for example. Or, better yet, phrase
it as the first time you discovered this trait as
something you wanted to work on and improve. There's a reason most superhero movies have long montages of the
protagonist transforming from a normal person to a hero. We like to see how people grow. We don't think of the
normal person as weak. We just remember that
they are transforming. Yes, you want to be accountable
for your own imperfections, but you also don't want to
be too hard on yourself. So offering some context can
help show your interviewer that you may have a weakness. After all, everyone does. But you've acknowledged it,
and you're working on it. One thing to remember here is that we're telling short stories. Keep your anecdotes
brief and summary-based. You are using them strictly
to offer more personality, more specificity. If you go into too much detail, however, you can look like you're
avoiding the question, or you can actually end up forgetting the question altogether. One to two sentence
stories have a great way of doing the trick. Your interviewer can always
ask a follow-up question if they want to know more. For interviews, you don't want to stick to any kind of prewritten script or you can come across as
over-prepared and stiff. However, this is one question
that really does help to brainstorm honestly
and openly ahead of time. This way, you have a chance to be clear, concise, brutally honest, and then you can take some
time to revise that honesty and make sure you're not too brutal. All right, let's play a
brainstorming game together to get you started. First, grab a piece of
paper, a writing utensil, and a timer of some sort. Then, divide your paper into four columns. Strengths 1, Strengths 2,
Weaknesses 1 and Weaknesses 2. Working in the Strengths 1 column, set your timer for 30 seconds and list every strength you
have that you can think of, no matter how big or small. The only rule is that you
must keep your pen moving the entire 30 seconds. When the 30 seconds is up, repeat the process in
your Weaknesses 1 column. Again, be brutally honest. At this point in the process, don't think about your audience
or the fact that you're prepping for an interview at all. In other words, you would
not answer "I'm a slob" as your greatest weakness
in your interview. But in this part of the
brainstorming process, if this is the first
thing that comes to mind, write it down. Again, the key here is
to write everything down you can think of, keeping your pen moving the whole time. Next, set your timer for 45 seconds. In your Strengths 2 column, describe an experience
or narrative anecdote where you put that strength to use. If you can't think of an example
for a respective strength, move on. When time is up, move to
your Weaknesses 2 column. We're gonna do something
a little different here. Here, I want you to list
any connection you can make between the respective
weakness you've listed and a positive trait you have that will help you improve that weakness. So, for example, if one of
your weaknesses is self-doubt, you might write, "Will use my commitment
to lifelong learning to gain confidence by
extending my knowledge base while also recognizing
the importance of humility in medicine." In other words, you're
both looking for examples of how you can take steps
to improve your weakness and where there is some
good hiding in the bad. Again, if you can't think
of anything, move on. As long as you come up
with at least one thing, you're doing fine. When the timer is up, disqualify any entries on your list you were not able to extrapolate on in their respective 2nd columns. If you have a few options
left in each category, great. If you want to narrow this down, knowing that it's always good
to have multiple options, try and pair up a strength and a weakness that relate to each other or that work together to tell a story. You can still keep your
strength and weakness separate on interview day. But if you do a little
bit of brainstorming work ahead of time to see what fits together, it can help give a sense
that you're telling a cohesive story. When you're finalizing your answer, there are a couple of common mistakes you wanna be careful to avoid. First, you don't want to appear as though you are trying to
sell a strength as a weakness. For example, your perfectionism
is not an adequate weakness. Remember, it's important to stay genuine and this will clearly
come across as a strategy to avoid answering the question at hand. No one likes someone who thinks there is absolutely
nothing wrong with them. Remember that. Second, you want to avoid
general language, as always. Don't leave abstract
wording floating out there. Be sure to extrapolate on your answers. Talk about the ways your
strengths and weaknesses have had an impact on you and your work. Why do they strike you as your greatest strength and weakness? Note the superlative there. It demands some consideration. For example, let's say you're talking about your greatest weakness. An abstract response would be saying, "I have some trouble delegating." It's a good start because you're
actually naming a weakness. But, imagine if we transformed
it to something like, "I struggle to delegate or share workloads and often want to take on
a lot of the work myself since I know I can rely on myself. I've been noticing this, especially at school when
working on group projects that require students from a
lot of different backgrounds and work ethics to come together. However, I know this
can often get in the way of my forming meaningful,
collaborative relationships with classmates. And that's something that
really matters to me. So, I've been working on it." Here, the speaker is
specifying an abstract weakness by offering the context
of a specific example when this weakness gets in the way, and by further adding some
stake by talking about how the weakness affects
their long-term goals, making it something they want to address. This can be a huge part of
answering the weakness question, offering some insight
into why it's something you want to address. You would get bonus points
if you discuss specific ways you've already starting working on it. That will help you strengthen
your weakness response every time. See what I did there? For a strength, say you want to bring up, "I'm a good listener." Again, it's a valid strength, but it feels abstract
because it lacks specificity. A much stronger response would be, "I value how hard I've worked to become a considerate listener. As an aspiring doctor, I know how important empathy and doctor/patient collaboration is. And I think much of this
relies on a doctor's ability to listen to patients actively. So it's a skill I've spent a
lot of time trying to build. And I think I know how to listen in a way that makes people feel not just heard but valued and respected." See how the speaker is able
to improve their response by telling us why this strength applies to their specific goals
of becoming a doctor? They're also able to further specify what makes them a good listener. The thing to remember here is that telling us about a strength is not necessarily enough. Tell us why this strength is
something that matters to you. The third thing to keep in mind is considering your audience. Yes, you want to be honest. But if you're in a
medical school interview, also remember that this is not the time to pigeonhole yourself
by announcing a weakness that clearly conflicts with
the values of the program you're interviewing for. If you know this program values collaborative
learning, for example, don't talk about your
inability to work on a team. And fourth, really consider scale. Don't spend 5 minutes
talking about strengths and 20 seconds talking about weaknesses, and certainly don't spend 5
minutes talking about weaknesses and 20 seconds about strengths. Keep it even. Show your interviewer you equally value both sides of the question
and are thinking carefully about every side of who
you are as an applicant. The best answers will come
across as succinct but specific, honest but confident, accountable and open-ended. We looked at a strong
response for a weakness and a strong response for a strength, but what about a strong
response that uses a strength to then talk about a weakness? Those responses can be a
great way to tell a story, so let's see an example. "While volunteering at
an elementary school in the West Bank, I realized that one of
my biggest strengths is my ability to adapt to diverse and unique work environments, sometimes with very few resources. That said, I also learned
that I can sometimes get tunnel vision, my self-motivation keeping
me from fully communicating with the other members on my team. I know how important it is
to be an active listener and collaborator and this
is really important to me, so it's something I want to work on." Here, the student is
supporting their strength and their weakness with a
brief narrative anecdote so it feels less abstract. They're not being mean to themselves, but they're also not selling themselves as the next Marvel superhero. They're surrounding their weakness with some other positive strengths like their self-motivation, but they're also staying honest
and citing a real weakness. And they're softening
it all by demonstrating they know why this is a weakness and reaffirming it's something
they want to get better at. At the end of the day, when
faced with this question, feel free to take the
world's fastest second to internally rant about why it's the world's worst question. But then acknowledge
it's an opportunity too. Keep it honest and tell a story. That's the takeaway to always anchor to. All right, we'll wrap up with that. Please make sure to like
the video and subscribe for more content about
the admissions process. I'd also love to hear from you. Share your biggest strength or weakness in the comments section below. Let's get some practice and
talk through them together. See you next time. (upbeat music)
