Medical school interviews are arguably the hardest part of the application process. I personally found them the hardest, especially because they were somewhat misleading. This is because the environment will not be like anything else you’ve experienced before.
This will no longer be an exam where you can answer questions at your own pace. Instead, you’ll have someone staring back at you, countering your answers and asking you for more information.
In this guide, I will be talking you through what I believe to be the best way to start to prepare for your medical school interviews.
Written by Rozh Akram
First Steps For Interview Preparation
For context, at the time of writing, I’m a third-year medical student at University College London (UCL). I applied to medical school in 2020 and received interviews from Cambridge, Imperial and Plymouth, but unfortunately did not receive offers from either of them.
This came purely from the lack of preparation and relying on false hope. I ended up reapplying to medical school in 2021 and received interviews from UCL, Brighton & Sussex Medical School (BSMS), Queen Mary University of London (Barts) and Liverpool – all four of my choices! Fortunately, I received offers from three of these, with UCL being my final pick. This came from extensive preparations and practice, which I will detail in this guide.
Here are my recommendations for starting your medicine interview preparation, which I suggest starting at least 2 months before interview invitations begin to be sent out:
Preparation Materials
1️⃣ – The first thing I would recommend is to find either an online question bank or interview preparations book, and just read through that around October/November time. This should give you a good general overview of what the interviews will entail and the general sort of thing you could expect.
There are a variety of options available, both paid and free, including videos, online guides, live courses and packages that bundle a variety of support options together (sometimes including one-to-one tuition hours). What you choose will come down to how you best learn and how much support you feel you need.
Research
2️⃣ – Then I would recommend that you make yourself a digital folder either on Notion or OneNote, where you have the following divisions:
- Medical School Interview Styles
- Questions by Topic
- Experiences and Reflections
- Mock Interview Feedback
These are going to be important details to research and write down as they will help you organise your thoughts and knowledge.
INTERVIEW TUTORING BUNDLE
Prepare effectively so you walk into your Interview filled with confidence.
Boost your performance in your interviews by working with our expert tutors, comprehensive resources and live intensive courses; everything you need to be prepared.
Interview Crash Course
Interview Crash Course
Medical School Interview Styles
Firstly, you should look up all 4 of the medical schools you’ve applied to and have a look at how they interview applicants. This will be important in shaping your preparation as you’ll need to know if you should spend more times focusing on Panel Interviews or MMIs – plus whether you’ll be attending any interview in-person or just remotely.
You should also try to find what the themes of each interview will be. This means considering what topics are commonly spoken about at the interviews based on previous experiences, which can vary based on location, teaching style and university age. This will link to your questions folder as you can link different topics and question styles to specific medical schools.
Ideally, all of this would mean you’ll be going into each interview with an understanding of what to expect and a rough idea of what you’ll be talking about.
Common Medicine Interview Questions
Common med school interview questions should be split by topic and should consist of clear subdivisions about each domain that you believe is relevant for the medical schools you applied to, such as personal questions, interpersonal skills, interest in science and motivation to study medicine.
For each subdivision, have a set of questions you’ve found, write down bullet points of things you’d like to discuss, and then in, a highlighted passage or using a different colour, write down the model answer, which you’d ideally like to provide in the day.
The purpose of the model answers shouldn’t be for you to memorise and recite word-for-word answers, but rather provide you with a rough idea of the content and structure of the answer you would like to provide.
Experiences and Reflection
For Experiences and Reflections, you could make a table for each of the skills that are required in the role of a doctor and, in bullet points, write exactly where you believe you have demonstrated such skills and how you’ve developed them.
If you’ve been provided with an article beforehand to discuss at your interview, you should also analyse this as part of this decision, writing your thoughts and ideas in a different colour. If there are any other topics and ideas which you’d like to discuss during the interview, write these down as well and detail your own formulated opinions and ideas on the matter. This is particualry useful when discussing special interests and medical specialities.
Mock Interview Feedback
Lastly, as part of your folder, you should also have a feedback section for any practice sessions you’ve completed. You should be doing as much practice as you can both with friends/family and professional services that offer mock interviews with medicine tutors.
While practising with people you know helps ease the pressure and helps you relax, it’s also important to work with someone you don’t know as this will more accurately reflect the real interview environment. Another benefit is that they will be able to provide you with correct and unbiased feedback about your performance.
You should have these all saved in your notes and read through them every few days and be making an active effort to rectify any areas of weakness where you could improve, and this should also work as a guide to tell you in which areas the content of your answer isn’t as good as it should be.
Additional Medicine Interview Preparation Tips
Here are a few other things that were crucial for me to do well in my interviews and should be implemented into the steps I’ve already mentioned –
Signposting Answers
It’s incredibly important that you signpost your answer before giving your response. This is important because interviewers will be interviewing hundreds of students throughout the interview period and will struggle to maintain focus on what you’re saying.
By signposting, you will be saying that you’ll talk about A, B and C and then proceed, which will allow the examiner to follow exactly what you’re saying and allow your answer to flow.
Practice
I’ve already said this, but it is so, so, so important to practice as much as you can, ask all your friends and family to do practice interviews with you and ask them to be brutally honest with the feedback they give you.
Handle Your Nerves
It’s very important that on the day of your interview, you are calm, well presented and confident. I’d recommend that rather than doing last-minute practice and preparation, you do something to relax you the night before the interview, such as watching your favourite film or playing your favourite video game.
As well as that you could also have something to look forward to after your interview, such as treating yourself to something new, or going out for lunch with your friends. These small things will boost your motivation and relax your nerves to ensure you’re in the best shape for your interview.
Example medicine Interview Questions
To finish this guide, here are some questions you’re almost guaranteed to have in every interview:
- Why do you want to study medicine? What have you done to prepare yourself for a career in medicine? Why not nursing?
- Tell me about a time you demonstrated teamwork. Why is teamwork important in medicine?
- Tell me about a time you demonstrated leadership. Why is leadership important in medicine?
- What other hobbies and interests do you have outside of your studies? How do you plan on bringing these to university and how do you avoid burnout?
- Why do you want to come to this particular medical school? What do you like about it?
This guide has only scratched the surface of what you need to know to prepare for your interview, but I hope what I’ve explained here will give you a good starting point. I found that all of these things were helpful when I was preparing, which is why I recommend everyone else consider trying them as well.
If you’d like to learn how medicine tutors like myself can support you through the medicine interview – as well as the rest of the application process – discover 6med’s Interview Tutoring Bundles and Medicine Mastery Bundles. Each is jam-packed with resources and tuition hours for high-performing medicine students. Good luck with your application!
INTERVIEW TUTORING BUNDLE
Need some extra guidance in your Interview preparations?
Work with an expert medicine tutor like myself by joining 6med’s Interview Tutoring Bundle. We’ll help you face the toughest Interview questions and come out on top.
Interview Online Course
Interview Online Course
