So You’ve Got An Interview
Sections
Click on the links below for further information:
Every medical school uses a unique and different process for its interviews. Some medical schools award points for the interview stage which are then combined with other factors such as BMAT/UCAT score and predicted A-level grades in order to select candidates for an offer, while other universities treat the interview stage as a clean sheet, offering places based purely on interview performance. Equally some medical schools keep the interview stage to basic interviews while others will incorporate their own knowledge tests or use activities that assess candidates skills in other ways. All of the above mean that preparing for your interview is an individual experience but below are some tips that can be applied to whichever university you interview for.
Preparing for your interview
1. Understand your University’s interview process
Every university devises its own way to test candidates who reach the interview phase. A large part of succeeding in medical school interviews is understanding the interview process of the university and therefore what they are looking for in the candidates they see.
Start by establishing the type of interview process the university uses. The two main types are Multiple Mini Interviews (MMIs) or Panel Interviews.
Multiple Mini Interviews (MMIs):
MMIs are a series of interview “stations” that candidates are asked to go round.
Usually at each “station” you will be asked one question or asked to perform one task. There will usually be a different interviewer at each “station”.
MMIs are designed to be much faster paced than your traditional concept of what an interview might look like. Usually you will spend no more than 3-5 minutes at each interview “station” and normally each station only involves one question or task.
Depending on the university, the interviewer from each “station” will usually give you some form of score, for which your scores from each “station” are then added up to give a combined total.
The benefit of using the MMI format of interviews is that you get a small break between each question and the process of moving on from one “station” to the next and meeting a new interviewer each time, allows you to refresh and reset. This means if you made a mistake or had a moment of memory blanking on the last “station” you have the opportunity to put that behind you and talk to someone new who has no idea what happened to you at the previous “station”.
Traditional Panel Interviews:
Panel interviews represent more of what you would view of as a stereotypical traditional interview format.
They generally involve you sat in front of a panel of interviewers, of whom will all contribute to asking you questions.
In this type of interview you stay in the same room talking to the same interviewers the entire time.
Typically this type of interview can last between 20 and 30 minutes.
Once you have established which interview type you will be undergoing, start to research a bit more about what this involves. University websites usually have plenty of information about the exact format of interview they use, including how long each MMI station lasts for, how many MMI stations you will be expected to complete, or how many questions might be asked as part of a panel interview. Your best advice is always to consult the individual universities, usually through their websites, for this type of information as they know best how they conduct their own interview process.
Acquaint yourself with any additional tasks you might be expected to carry out as part of your interview process. Some universities like you to become involved in a role play scene to test how you react while others ask you to sit a maths or science test on the day. Make sure you are clear about any of this type of activity that you might be asked to do so you can prepare yourself for it as necessary.
2. Organisation
Due to the volume of candidates involved, medical schools can be brutal towards lack of organisation or missing events associated with the interview process – if you miss something it usually spells automatic rejection from offer. This illustrates the importance of being organised about the interviewing process.
Medical schools will often send emails containing key dates relating to your interview and any pre-interview sessions, or possible links to video calls for the interview itself. Set up a folder and save all these emails to it so you can access the information easily – if you miss an interview you will not have the opportunity to interview again.
Save the email address of the medical school to your contacts to avoid any information going to your junk folder – this has happened to real students so avoid becoming someone who it happens to!
Often you will be required to bring material with you to the interview such as proof of ID:
Make a list of everything you will need to have with you.
Before the interview, if you need to have anything with you, check it meets the requirements. This includes making sure you have the correct form of ID if necessary, and that it is in date.
Put everything you need to have with you in a folder and have it easily accessible at the time of the interview.
3. Know your medical school
Prior to your interview try to learn as much as you can about the medical school’s interview process and what they are really looking for in a candidate.
One of the most common interview questions is focused around “So why did you decide to apply to …. Medical School” yet most people fixate their interview preparation towards scientific and ethical questions. Therefore being able to answer this question confidently puts you in a strong position as an interview candidate as you can gain points where others make a loss.
Research whether the medical school has a set of values or if there are specific principles, they apply to their teaching process. If so, learn these and incorporate them into your answers where relevant. This will demonstrate to the medical school that you embody their key values and that you fit into the teaching process they use. For example if a key teaching concept of the medical school is that they try to promote teamwork in all areas of their teaching, ensure that in at least one of your interview answers you discuss the concept of teamwork, why you are a team player, and examples of teamwork experiences you have had in the past – this is your way of showing the medical school that you will fit in with their students and teaching methods.
Find out if the medical school you are interviewing for has anything unique to them. Do they use a specific type of embalming in their anatomy specimens? Do they offer any unique learning opportunities? Mentioning any of the above in your interview, and discussing why it interests you, is important as it demonstrates that you have researched the university and you are showing the interviewer why you deserve access to these unique learning opportunities.
Find out about the teaching style of the university – do they use traditional lecturing or PBL? Think about why the teaching style they use reflects the way you like to learn. This could be useful as a point of discussion in the interview as it shows how you will fit into the university in question and demonstrates why you deserve that offer above someone else.
Find out about life at the university in general, such as societies it may have, facilities on offer, and potentially even things you like about the area the university is in. Talking about any of these details with interviewers allows you to show them that you have both thought through your decision to apply to this university and demonstrates to them not just that you are keen to study medicine but that you want to study it at their school- remember that they want you just as much as you want them, so show them how you will fit into their community and learning environment.
4. Talk to medical students and medical schools
Do not be afraid to approach medical schools and ask them for what they want to see in a candidate. Although they are unlikely to divulge exactly what question structure they anticipate to use, emailing them usually provides a response that will direct you to a list of skills they like to see – for which you can then reflect on in your interview. This will help keep your interview answers as personalised to the medical school as possible making you a competitive candidate in their eyes.
Reach out to medical students. This could be students from the university who volunteer to speak to speak to prospective students, or family friends/student in years above you who are now studying at medical school. Ask them about their experiences as a medical student. What do they like about their medical school? What is their favourite thing about being a medical student? Can they offer you any interview experience or tips? Most medical students are more than happy to speak to students about their degree, so feel confident enough to approach them.
Attend any pre-interview sessions run by the Medical school. They will often offer important advice, key information about the day and most importantly a chance to ask any questions – this is your opportunity to interview them and really find out what they want to see from you.
5. Practice answering interview questions
It is not necessary to attend any paid for interview preparation or coaching sessions. You can find a wealth of free interview questions online (some medical schools even have past interview questions on their website so always check here) plus there are some good books available that contain a abroad spectrum of interview questions plus advice on how to answer them.
Always make sure you are answering the correct type of question in relation to the type of interview you are going to be having. If the medical school you have an interview for only uses MMIs then only practice with MMI style questions.
Try to expose yourself to as many questions as possible. In the real interview you are unlikely to know any of the questions ahead of time. The only way to become good at answering questions on the spot with well organised thoughts and convincing examples is to practice over and over again until you get better at doing it.
Avoid practicing using the same questions or trying to learn answers to questions. This can put you off in the real interview as if you say something in the wrong order you can lose where you are completely and become stressed out by it. Making sure you develop an answer on the spot also helps it to come across naturally and demonstrates your own true opinion on a subject, which is something interviewers look for in candidates.
You can practice answering questions by writing or typing them out, talking through them to yourself, or getting family or friends to work through them with you. Sometimes you can use active methods to practice such as setting timers or staging it like a real interview. Other times passive practice is really helpful too – get a family member to ask you a question over dinner or in the car and try to involve everyone in answering and sharing their opinion.
Try and practice using the time limits you will have in the real interview. Surprisingly 3 – 5 minutes can be a lot longer than you imagine to give a response to a question. Work yourself up to a point where for every question you are able to fill the time limit without the quality of your answer dipping.
Whether your interview is online or in person most medical schools have a strict no tolerance policy to having any notes or prompts with you, and if at home will ask to see the space around you before you begin. With this in mind practice answering questions without any of these aids so it is not a shock to you when you do not have them in the interview.
If your interview is online set up a video call and get a friend or family member to conduct a mock interview. Making eye contact and stopping yourself from being distracted is much more difficult across a screen but is something interviewers will mark you for – so having practice and developing skills in talking through a video call can help overcome this.
6. Decide where you stand in regard to common interview questions
It is inevitable that some of the questions you will be asked in your interview are on topics you could never have anticipated, expected or have planned for.
However, there are a group of standard interview questions that you will be asked at east some of in virtually every interview, such as: Why Medicine? Why medicine and not pharmacology or nursing? Describe your greatest strength? Reflect of your weaknesses? Explain a situation where you worked in a team?
While it is not advisable to learn a response to each of these questions it is certainly important to think about them before your interview. How would you respond to each one?
The main reason is it important to think about your response to these question types is because they are used by medical schools to trick you and pick out the average student from the excellent one. The standard response to questions about choosing medicine is to say something along the lines of wanting to have been a doctor ever since you were born or ever since you first walked into a Lab for Year 7 science. However this type of response tells the interviewer nothing about you as an individual or why you personally have the skills to become a good doctor.
Hence in thinking about these questions prior to you interview you can start developing ideas to respond to them that will set you apart as a candidate and demonstrate to the interviewer why you are the right student to study medicine, not just any science based degree.
In this area of your thinking you can also start to consider examples you might want to bring into some of your answers. It can be helpful to make a list of events you experienced while on work experience, and how this made you feel, or examples of where you might have worked in a team or had to use communication skills. Securing these examples in the back of your mind makes it much easier to bring them up quickly when you get to a question that requires you to use them.
7. Know your case studies
Medical schools expect you to know about key medical cases and landmark events in medical history; you do not have to be an expert on any of these subjects but you do need to have an awareness of what they were and what they entailed, and have brief idea of what your opinion is on what happened.
The types of things you will be expected to know about that commonly crop up in interview questions involve subjects like abortion and the rules around it; key medical law cases such as that of the Charlie Guard case; Euthanasia and the current debate around it; and racism and the impact it has on healthcare globally.
Make sure you know enough information that you would feel somewhat confident to answer a question on each subject and that you feel you could give a valid opinion on if questioned. If you are worried about how much detail you need to know for each topic, essentially you are aiming to avoid a situation where you are asked a question on something you have never heard of before and thus are unable to even make a starting point for an answer.
The medic portal has produced an incredibly useful document that details all the cases and laws you need to be aware about. Use this to help you prepare for this type of question.
8. Read “A short introduction to medical ethics”
Most people are unaware that as a medical student you will have complete modules on medical law and medical ethics. Ethics in particular can strike up some important and interesting debates that often open themselves as the perfect opportunity for an interview question.
Having an acute awareness of what medical ethics is and some of the thought processes behind it can make answering these questions much easier an put you in a better place as an interview candidate.
Medical schools are not expecting you to be an expert in ethics at your interview, as the purpose of you attending medical school is for them to teach it to you. However, demonstrating that you have insight into ethical debates, you understand some of the reasoning behind ethical arguments, and that you can appreciate why ethics leads people to have differing points of views and why ethics can make all of these points of view equally valid, will all aid in you putting yourself across as the strongest candidate possible.
Reading the book “A Short Guide to Medical Ethics” will give you a brief summary of what you need to know allowing you to feel more confident in engaging in ethical debate.
Have an awareness of the concept of the four pillars of medical ethics when approaching an ethics question. The four pillars is one of the types of ethical reasoning taught and used in medical school. To summarise in very short detail when making a decision over what care is best for a patient, each of these four aspects should be considered, and the overall judgment should be that which is the best balance of the four of them
The four pillars consist of:
Autonomy (Patients have a right to their own input in decisions over their care).
Beneficence (The decision over care that is in the best interests of the patient).
Non-maleficence (The option of care that provides the least harm to the patient).
Justice (The option of care that is best supported by the law).
In the interview
1. Reflect, Reflect, Reflect
The act of reflection is integral to practice as both a medical student and doctor.
In simple terms reflection is discussing the events of something that happened, bringing in reasoning for why it might have happened and most importantly saying what you learnt from it and what you would change in the future.
Reflection can be about something that happened you personally, or it can be an event that you have witnessed in the wider world (ranging from something that happened to someone you know, up to something you heard about in the news).
When reflecting, the more specific you are the higher the quality of the reflection. Try to provide a clear story line, be assertive with your reasoning for why it happened and most importantly clarify exactly what you learnt from the process and the steps you would take to change events in the future.
Do not be afraid to discuss your weaknesses. In an interview situation most people tend to lean towards talking about their strengths as they want to sell themselves as the ideal medical student. However discussing your weaknesses in the correct way adds value to your interview; approach it by talking about weaknesses you know you have, how you have identified them and what you intend to do in the future to overcome them. This demonstrates to the interviewer that you have critical insight into your own work, that you are always striving to better yourself, and that you have the mindset to accept criticism in a way that makes it constructive and helps you improve on yourself.
You should aim to provide a reflection in every point you make in every interview question you answer:
The reason why medical schools expect you to have work experience and to have conducted volunteering is because they want you to learn from the process and be able to say why this has given you a different perspective in hindsight. This means simply saying “I carried out work experience in a hospital” means nothing to the interviewer if you stop there. For any experience you discuss, always reflect on it. For the example above a reflection could look like “I carried out work experience in an A&E department where I saw a diverse range of patients all with different needs and conditions. This broadened my outlook on the role of A&E staff as I came to the realisation that their job involves a lot more than fixing broken arms, and I was enlightened to the fact that their role involves not just to attending the medical needs of patients, but also respecting their cultural differences and appreciating how the social situation of the patient, impacts their ability to manage their condition. On reflection, this has taught me about how, as a medical student and future practicing doctor, I will need to be aware of the social and cultural aspects surrounding my patients and how this might affect the approaches I have to the care I provide, and the support I make available to them”. Reframing your experiences in this way shows the interviewer that you have real insight into the role of a doctor, and hence that you deserve this place more than the candidates beside you.
If asked to provide a scenario, such as one where you have demonstrated the skill of teamwork, never just explain what happened, always elaborate on how you have been able to reflect on the experience. What did you learn about working in a team? Did working in a team expose any of your personal strengths and weaknesses and what have you done to work on what this revealed about you?
If asked to explain what you would do in a certain situation always reflect on why you would do that. Give reasons for why this would be your chosen action and what you would learn from doing it.
2. Time Management
The high-pressure environment of medical interviews means most people speak much faster than their natural pace without even realising it because they are desperate to splurge out all the ideas crammed in their brain.
In order to award you the highest possible points the interviewer needs to be able to hear every word you say clearly – so pay attention to the pace you are speaking at.
Interviewers can only mark you for the content you give them. This makes it important to fill all the time you have available for each interview question. If you finish discussing everything you wanted to say and still have significant time left over return to one of your previous points and discuss it more deeply or introduce some further points to your argument.
Pausing in between points or taking a moment to gather your thoughts is perfectly fine! Interviewers will think more highly of you if you take a small break to think about what you are saying, rather than reeling out chaotic, mismatched sentences and panicking because you left something out. In medical practice we use a technique where we pause in between questioning patients to allow them to add any details they might want to bring up, so if anything pausing briefly in your interview where appropriate demonstrates you have the calm and patient attitude expected of a doctor carrying out patient consultations.
3. Show an awareness of understanding the NHS
One of the greatest attributes medical school interviewers are looking for is that you have an understanding of the NHS and how it works.
Prior to the interview do some background reading on the NHS. There is no expectation for you to learn specifics or any statistics but you should aim to have a rough understanding of: how the NHS is funded; how commissioning and management is carried out; how standards are maintained between services; and how specialty training and the different grades of doctors work.
In your interview show you have an appreciation that there are a range of different roles and jobs in the NHS and the contribution of all these staff are important.
In some of your answers refer to both the NHS Constitution (Founding Principles) and the NHS Core Values (“The 6 Cs”).
Constitution: The NHS - The Medic Portal
Core Values: Core Values | NHS Professionals
4. Be yourself
Different medical schools have their own unique personality and look for a specific calibre of person. This means you can give all the right answers to the questions and still not be offered a place if the interviewers feel you are not the right person for the medical school.
This makes it extremely important to be yourself and let that sell you as a potential future medical student. Patients want to see a doctor they can relate to, not one that recites words from a textbook.
Some interviewers will push you for answers and others will be more brutal than you could have anticipated; this is their way of testing if you have the patience and resilience to survive a degree and career in medicine. Do not let this phase you – show that you can respond to being tested by remaining calm, taking a second to reset yourself, then getting on with your answer.
Answer honestly. Never provide an answer because you think it is what the interviewer wants to hear. Honest answers are always the most convincing as they are true to your thoughts and express your passion to study medicine.
Smile, be friendly and make eye contact with the interviewer.
5. Speak passionately
Act as though every interview is for your dream medical school – even if the interview you are attending is for your fourth-choice option. Firstly this is because you never know where you will be offered a place; this could be the only offer you receive so do not throw away the opportunity.
Medical schools have an extremely high ratio of applicants to people they award a final offer to. Show the interviewer why you deserve to be in the selected few.
Medical school is tough and being a doctor is even harder. Medical schools want to know that you are aware of this, but that your passion to study a subject you love is going to exceed the challenges you face.