Interview Day III: What Happens On The Big Day

     When you finally have an interview scheduled the first thing you should do is ask around people who have also been interviewed at that schools or try to find out from the students themselves. While all interviews have a similar outline, few things vary her and there, and knowing ahead of time can help you. Usually the interview will take a whole day; not because they are questioning you for eight hours but because they take advantage that you are there to give you a tour of their school, educate you on their curriculum and give you a chance to talk to med school students attending that school.You will be e-mailed all the necessary information from parking arrangements to places you can stay for the night before the big day.  BE ON TIME! If you are driving in, you should scan the place the day before to avoid getting lost , know where you need to park etc. In some schools med students host candidates overnight. They can guide you through the school, give you tips for the interview and their insight of their experience in that school. 
      Dress code: Suit up! 

Guys this means get a haircut, shave, remove piercings, hide tattoos, nice shoes, belt, tie, jacket. Aim to look like Bruce Wayne, or your favorite wealthy superhero. Girls: no cleavage, skirts (if you decide on a skirt suit) at or below the knee, hide tattoos and crazy piercings as well, no funky nail or hair colors. This is not the time to wear heels you can't walk in either. Your make-up should be enough to look fresh and radiant but not too much that you look like you are going to the club. I would not suggest wearing eye shadow or lipstick, but if you have to, stick to neutral colors. You clothes should be tight enough to know you are a woman but loose enough to know you are a lady. The body language you project throughout the day should match your appropriate dress code. No slouching, yawning, crossing arms or looking bored. Avoid sarcastic comments and stereotypical jokes, if you can.
      NO CELLPHONES. They will tell you this also in the scheduling e-mail. It is rude and disrespectful to have a cellphone ring on such an important day. If you can avoid taking it with you at all, do it, otherwise, turn it off. This is not the time to text or shoot pictures of your day to post on Facebook. From the moment you walk into the building you should treat the whole day like a test. It doesn't matter if it's the janitor leading you to were you are supposed to be; it doesn't matter if that school is your back-up plan; you should be nice to everyone and show impeccable behavior. Treat everyone like they are your interviewer, socialize with other interviewees as well. The interview may only be part of the day but you will be watched the entire time and every little thing can count toward or against you. You will be given a schedule of the entire day, as well as brief information of your interviewers as soon as you arrive. This allows you to prepare questions for them ahead of time.
      The most important thing you should remember in your interview day is to not let yourself be intimidated by anything. As you meet other interviewees you will find out most of them are older than you (or maybe younger, it depends), more experienced in the academics, or graduated from Ivy league schools or they work in hospitals already; they may already have a family, or a masters or a doctorate, or publications in research or a number of other things that you may not. Whatever the admissions committee saw in them, they saw it in you as well and you are in line for the cut, so root for yourself! You should not let the tour of the school or the curriculum outline or you even your interviewer intimidate you either. It's all a challenge you have to pass. The minute you lose hold of your confidence, the nerves kick in and threaten everything you have worked for. The way it works is, your interviewers (you may be interviewed by a max of 2 people individually depending on the school) will become your advocates once the admissions committee meets to decide which students to accept. Your job is to impress your interviewer enough so that that person will vouch for you in front of twenty others later on. 
       There are three types of med school interviews: question-oriented, conversation-oriented, and group interviews. With question based interviews the interviewer has already prepared a set of questions he/she wants to ask you. Usually they will make notes while you talk. Be confident and don't let yourself be intimidated by the notes. Part of the interview is measuring how you behave in a uncomfortable situations. In conversation based interviews the interviewer simply gets to know you in a social and approachable way. No pre-written questions but he/she will probably have your AMCAS printed out in hand. While question-oriented and conversation-oriented interviews are one-on-one between you and the interviewer, group interviews are made in a conference room with everyone else in it.Group interviews are question-oriented too, the downside to this is that there is always that one person that makes everyone else look like an idiot. So you have to make sure that you ARE that one person if you are in a group interview.
       The school will let you know the result in four to six weeks. At this point most schools will either call you for an acceptance or e-mail you that you have been wait-listed. Being wait-listed is not quite a ejection, but not exactly an acceptance either. You become their back-up plan.The deadline for students to decide on which  school to attend is May 15th. After that, the school will evaluate how many missing spots they have and start calling the people they wait-listed. Some wait-lists are ranked and some are random. Your best chance to get promoted from it is to call the school frequently to inquire about your status. It shows interest and increases your chances of acceptance. Some applicants that get wait-listed never hear from the schools again, unless they keep in touch with the school. However, if you have multiple acceptances go for a school that already wants you and start running that paper work. You don't want to risk an a school that wants you for one that has you as their plan B.
       Don't forget to prepare for you interview! Check out my previews blog posts for more tips. Hope it goes well :)

       

Interview Day Part II: Interviewers' FAQs

         As I mentioned on "Interview Day Part I" preparation is key for a successful medical school interview. That includes answering interview questions as practice. I would not suggest writing out an answer and memorizing it for each one. You want your responses to sound naturally eloquent and honest, not rehearsed and false. Plus your nerves in the interview might cause you to forget what you memorized and you might make a fool of yourself trying to remember. I would suggest knowing only key points to your answers; this way you give the main answer while nonchalantly elaborating it in a calm and natural way. NATURAL is key. The interviewers want to see who you are behind your paper application; they don't want a performance.  

     While some interviews are conversation-based, others are in the more traditional interview question-answer format.Chances are you interview will be harder if your interviewer took the time to compile questions for you and is ready to take notes of what you say. Below I gathered some of the most common interview questions that you should be prepared for. Even though some of them are pretty basic you should still practice answering them to make sure you have your thoughts in order.

• Be ready to respond on weaknesses in your application. They WILL be addressed. Your interviewers wants to know if there is a reason they should be overlooked to accept you in their school. For example: lower than required MCAT scores, why didn't you take it again?; if you took the MCAT multiple times, why?; explain why you don't have enough physician shadowing and/or volunteering; any classes that you got Cs in, classes that you withdrew from or had to re-take. Get your story straight. If there was a family situation, make that clear. If there were flaws in your character at the time that are no longer present, make that clear as well. 

• Any question that addresses negative qualities in your personality/character. In this question the answer that you give is not as important as what the interviewer can learn from it. They will not frown upon whatever the flaw is that you have, they want to see if you are humble enough to admit that you are not perfect. Holding on to a perfectionist view of yourself in this scenario only shows shallowness and self-esteem issues. Talking about your flaws makes you more likable, mature, and shows that you have a realistic view of yourself. When saying anything bad about yourself always remember to end on a positive note. Talk about how you are trying to change your bad habits or how you are working to become a better person. Perfection will not come to you once you are a doctor, but a change in progress striving to it will.

• Why should you be chosen to attend that school? What would you bring to enrich the school? These both require similar answers. Mention the positive traits that you have that would benefit the school, or benefit you as a medical student. Any qualities that you posses that you think doctors in general should have should also be mentioned. If you can back up these qualities with how you have used them in past experiences to your success, even better. For example, "My perseverance has helped me strive in such  and such situations and I believe it will also help me strive in the difficult cases I may have when I  become a physician".

• What would you do if you did not get accepted to medical school in this application year? Have a plan ready. Believing you will be accepted without a single doubt demonstrates shortsightedness and an unrealistic view of yourself. As long as you say that you will quit medicine, anything from getting a masters, traveling, working, and re-applying is okay.

• Do you have a specialty in mind, which one and why?While it is completely  normal that you don't this early in the career, showing interest in one or several fields shows that your pursuit of medicine is genuine and that it is not a decision you have taken without further research of it. Never undermine other specialties, just state a lack of interest in the ones that do not attract you, if you are asked in depth on this question.

• Have an opinion about different issues in health care, especially ethical or political ones like abortion, euthanasia, health insurance policies, Obamacare, etc. Try take a stance without being too extremist in your response. You are unaware of your interviewer's opinion and you don't want to offend anyone. However, having your own opinion shows that you are educated in the present issues, it shows decisiveness in difficult situations and your ability to evaluate pros and cons. You will need all of these to become a physician.

• How are YOU willing to change medicine?/ What are some disparities in medicine that need to change? These ones imply several things: that certain aspects of medicine need to change, that you know which aspects these are, and that you have a plan for it. These are among the most difficult questions because they are not directly about yourself. They require knowledge of the affairs of health in the country and possibly in other countries. Educate yourself as much as you can. By the way, disparity in this scenario means a lack of equal treatment in medicine. What would you do to equalize the treatment that patients receive nationwide? Have at least four aspects of change and disparities ready.

• Why do you want to be a doctor and not a nurse? Careful with this one. Don't put nurses down or criticize their roles. They are vital to medicine. The key to conquering this question is to say you want "a more leading role in the treatment of patients" or something among those lines. Variations of this question can also be presented such as, why not osteopathic medicine, or dentistry or any other field in health care.

• Difference between HMOs and PPOs. These are the two types of health insurances. In the Health Maintenance Organizations, you will pick your doctor from the providers within the HMO network. In the Preferred Provider organization, you can choose doctor/provider you want whether they are from the PPO network or not. If you choose an out-of-network provider, chances are it will be more expensive.

• Nontraditional students. A traditional student is the one that enters a college of medicine right after finishing a bachelor's degree, without any gaps of a year or more. Nontraditional students are everyone else, including applicants that are married and/or have kids. If you are among these then be prepared to answer personal questions about your life. Why the time gap between college and medical school? What have you done between college and now? Have you considered the consequences that this decision will have on your family? Does your partner support you in this choice? The questions may be uncomfortable but they need to be sure that you are not rushing into this, that you are prepared for what will come and that you are doing it for the right reasons.

Stay alert for "Interview Day Part III: What Happens On The Big Day" to be posted within a week's time.

Interview Day Part I: How to Prepare For Your Med School Interview

      All your work in the four years of a pre-med career will start to pay off the moment you receive your call for a medical school interview. If you have just received one of these, congratulations!

         Acceptance is just one step away. Most schools don't interview students they don't want to accept in the first place. But there is so much potential that they use this day to narrow it down. It's game time.

     However, if you think you can walk into your interviewer's office with just your charm, zero prep and blow their minds away, you are sorely mistaken. This is nothing against your ego or yourself. The interview is one more test you need to pass; and like all tests, some studying has to be done to pass it.This foundation will give you confidence when hard questions are thrown your way, and will allow you to react appropriately to uncomfortable situations. Below are some suggestions as to what you should do to rock the  MD admissions' world:

1) Go over your primary AAMC application: activities that you included, personal statement, etc. Also go over the secondary application you filled for that school.  This is their main source of questions because it is where they get their knowledge of you. Everything you say has to be in accordance to what they already know about you. Discrepancies between your word and the application are signs of weaknesses or possible lies  in your interviewers' eyes. Make sure you know your story.


2) Know your research, if you have any. Go over any abstracts or publications that you might have written, as well as the conferences that you presented at. Even though you should already know this, it doesn't hurt to refresh your memory. Review especially, technical terms related to your work and any news about other research done in the same field. Interviewers are selected purposefully for each interviewee. If you have done a lot of research in one field, chances are you will get paired with someone that is familiar with that field.


3) Research the school! Look for its strengths, weaknesses, special programs, specialties in certain fields, and anything else pertaining to its reputation. You should know as much about them, as they know about you. Having extra knowledge about the school demonstrates genuine interest as an applicant that other interviewees might not have. Researching is especially important if you receive more than one interviews. Do NOT confuse schools! 

4) Keep up with current affairs. Read or watch the news everyday, you don't want to look ignorant to your interviewer. News are also another source of questions, especially the ones related to health care such as the new universal health care law (formal name "The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act", in case they want to trick you). Educate yourself in issues in the medical world, ethical and otherwise. They love asking questions about "health care disparities"--what they are, what do you think their solution is, what are you willing to do about them etc, etc.

5) Have questions for THEM. At the end of the interview they will ask you if you have any questions. You should. Just like researching the school, having questions for your interviewer shows genuine interest. Knowing about the school is a way to draw questions, such as advantages and disadvantages the school provides. You can also ask the interviewer about their career, their specialty, their journey though all of it. Don't be shy, this is what they want you to do.

6) Practice, Practice, Practice. Round up a set of possible interview questions and have different people (separately) conduct a practice interview for you. This you receive multiple opinions about flaws in your answers, nervous ticks you might show, projected body language and tips for better answers. This also reduces your anxiety when it's time for the actual interview because you have done it before and you are prepared. I would not suggest memorizing answers for certain questions because you might sound overly rehearsed and fake. You want to project the most natural state of perfection.

    Stay tuned for "Interview Day Part II: FAQs" where I will present a set of the most common questions in med school interviews and how to answer them appropriately.

What NOT To Do In A Personal Statement for Medical School

        Besides the MCAT, the personal statement has to be the second thing students struggle the most with in their primary application process. Many  people just know that they want to be doctors without a significant experience or reason for it. However, this is not enough to write a convincing 5300 characters essay and get away with it. When it was time for me to write my personal statement I read a book by Princeton Review that had a compilation of MD essays. More so, it included the student's scores, the schools they had applied, and the schools they had gotten accepted in. While reading this book and also while proofreading essays for some of my friends, I noticed certain trends in the writing that made the essays all similar to one another. You don't want an average statement in your application. For you to have a strong application, every single component of it needs to be good. Here is a checklist of things to avoid when writing your personal statement:

1) Re-count all the activities in you application--> The average essay narrates everything the applicant has done to prepare for a career in medicine. This is the path most people take when they don't know what else to write. However, these activities are already present in another section of the application. Make your essay focus on the most significant experiences; tell a story related to them, something powerful that gives insight on medicine as your calling. If there is a life experience that  changed you, related to medicine or not, it belongs in the essay because it will talk about your character and your response to adversity.

2) The good ol' "I want to help people/ Save lives"--> This is the mother of cliches in MD applications. While it may be true, there are hundreds of less expensive, less time-consuming, and easier ways to help people than to go to medical school. You can help people right now without taking an average of $200,000 in loans. The trick to getting away with this is SHOWING in your essay that you want to help people, not stating it directly. Talk about an experience that has made you want to be an active change in society, something specific that takes a unique angle. Your story lies in specificity; that is what makes you different from the thousand other applicants. One of the greatest essays I read just narrated one experience about a student who was doing missionary work in Central America. He didn't even talk about the  whole trip, he just focused on one story in which he admired one of the doctors from his group and how the doctor gave hope, where he couldn't give anything else. It brought me to tears. If your essay can  move your reader, you're good.

3) Too many details-->  Keep your experiences focused on their main point. Too many details drifts the essay from what your trying to say and it makes it harder for you to transition between paragraphs and keep the whole essay unified. This can be fixed by editing your essay multiple times to cut off non-essentials.

4) Bad grammar & run-on sentences--> By the time you apply you should be either completing a bachelors or have a bachelors already. Your writing should reflect this. Sloppy sentences are inexcusable. Have different people proofreading your essays to prevent this from happening.

5) Naming people-->  If you are mentioning any doctors you have worked with, just say Dr. X or Dr. Y. Name dropping can be tacky. Also remember no one is universally liked, you don't know who is reading your essay and the off chance that that person knows the doctor you are referring to. Don't name patients either, their privacy is protected by law and you can get in trouble by mentioning a case too specifically. Keep it political.

6) 5300 characters--> You don't have to reach the limit. If your essay conveys the message in less characters, then don't add anymore. You don't want to risk weakening your essay when it's not necessary.

7) "Because my parents are doctors"--> Careful with this one. While it may be true, it can sound like you are being pushed/brainwashed into a decision. You have to write it in a way in which it seems like you came to the idea on your own. You should also state other experiences that have influenced you  medicine; don't make your parents your primary reason, just an initial inspiration.

   So basically your personal statement should focus on significant experiences that have influenced your life and hardships that you have overcome. Any detail that makes you different from average people should be included. Show why you want to be a doctor rather than say it. To perfect the piece, give it to different people to proofread it for you as many times as it takes.

Good luck!