INTERVIEWS

By the time a school invites you to be interviewed, the most critical parts of the application process have been over, probably for months.

Your g.p.a., MCAT scores, and most importantly, your written applications have very likely already convinced them that you are academically capable of handling the medical school curriculum, and that you are accomplished, service oriented, motivated, mature, compassionate, a leader, and a strong communicator.

What remains is for them to see how you interact with people in one-on-one settings. Are you warm, interesting, and likeable, or do you appear to others to be arrogant, weird, or scary? If you are arrogant, weird or scary (or if people feel creepy about being in the same room with you), your interviewer will probably notice. And that fact might very well keep you out of medical school, no matter how strong your grades and your MCAT scores were. (And well it should!)

The good news is that if you're not weird or scary, you have almost nothing to worry about when it comes to the interview!

My guess is that one of the reasons you are going into medicine is because you already relate well to people and people relate well to you. You know how to make friends with people, and you know how to hold thoughtful, intelligent interactive conversations. If that's the case, you may go into the interview assured that your natural relational skills will be what your interviewer notices most about you. Relax, and be prepared for a good experience.

WHAT'S ONE THING THAT CAN HELP ME TO FEEL MOST RELAXED AND PREPARED FOR MY INTERVIEWS?

I suggest that you spend time (weeks before your interview) thinking carefully about what you would most like to cover in it. Think of stories and examples you would like the interviewer to know about you, and think about how you will answer the question: "Why do you want to be a doctor?" (If you're having trouble answering that question, click on GET HELP NOW.)

One excellent idea is to pretend, as you prepare, that the interview is a speech that you have to make. Pretend that your interviewer or interviewers are going to sit quietly and just listen to you talk for 45 minutes. Take responsibility, yourself, for shaping the content of the interview! If you did have to present a speech to the committee, what would you talk about? What about you do you think they would be interested in? What would you want to tell them? What would you want them to know about you? Make a list of everything that you would like to cover, and then memorize the list.

This way, no matter what the interviewer asks you, you have a wealth of brainstormed ideas from which to formulate your answers. Instead of groping for an answer to a question and swallowing the lump in your throat as you think: "Oh gosh…..what do they want to hear about this…???" you'll be able to refer to your mental list and think: "Great! This is a great time for me to work in THIS particular thing I was hoping to tell them about!" You will find that you have an overflowing reserve of things to talk about, and you won't walk out of the interview with that uneasy feeling that you gave bland, boring, generic, or badly thought through answers to their questions. You'll feel like you were at ease, and ready with lots of good answers.

If you would like to have some one-on-one coaching on interviewing successfully (this is especially useful for applicants who, for whatever reason, find themselves very nervous about the interviews), I can be available to you. My cassette tape set contains excellent additional interview helps, and, in addition, I can be available to you in person or on the phone to give you one-on-one coaching on how to handle the interviews. This one-on-one help can be available to you no matter where in the world you live. I can even provide you with a list of specific questions most often asked at the medical school where you are interviewing! Just click on GET HELP NOW.

Good luck with your medical school interviews!

Note: Because application advisors cannot control your grades, your MCAT scores, your amount and quality of volunteer experience, or how thoroughly you follow the advice offered on these pages, please understand that we cannot guarantee any individual's acceptance to medical school.