Medical school interview Tips

I used to run, together with my friend Dr Kazmi, a medical school interview course known as Medschool Academy - you might have heard of us. The story of our disappearance - we had children and  our careers started booming - maybe it was the confidence starting the course gave us at interviews and life in general. It was truly a rewarding experience. The other problem was while all this was going on, I stopped paying for the website and it died a death. I thought I'd share some or all of our content gradually here over the next few weeks to months. This is an extract from our web page. Can you believe that I created everything in about 3 nights, learning how to program html tables - i know, very bad idea, but it was about 6 years ago.

FREE Medical School Interview Question Tips and Techniques

The following are the author's personal thoughts and opinions and in no way reflect the views of any institution or the medical profession.  

Medicine is becoming more competitive and for the first time, medical students are facing the very real prospect of unemployment on becoming a doctor. 

People applying to medical school seem to be getting better and of a higher standard. Almost all students that succeed at interview have had significant voluntary experience or life experiences related to caring or medicine. This is a hint to make sure that potential applicants should get involved in as much voluntary/medical work as possible - and reflect upon how this has affected your career decision. If you feel you do not have enough time to do this, you are not making time for it like you should, so this may count against you.

 As new doctors  are finding it so difficult now to find jobs, it is likely that as medical students, they will have to partake in as much voluntary medical work / electives as possible and perhaps consider an intercalated BSc degree or research degrees as well to get ahead in the shortlisting process for training places in their specialties of choice - perhaps just as much extra work as medical school applicants do now in preparation for the medical school of their choice.

 Interviews for Admissions into medical school have become more transparent and feedback can be obtained now for unsuccessful applicants. This could mean that to be more transparent, universities will start to adopt a more structured approach to interviews.

 Medical Examinations have gone this way with OSCEs (Objective Structured Clinical Examinations) becoming the standard way of examining practical skills such as history taking and physical examination.

 This will hopefully discourage extremely difficult lateral thinking questions which may well leave students feeling victimised - unless everyone is asked the same question from a pool of questions.

Medschool Academy Medical School Interview Tips 

• Speak to as many people as possible about interview questions that they have had - the more recent the better. 

• Practice these interview questions. Do this just as you would revise for any exams using past questions.  

• Ask a senior doctor to answer these questions. Personally, the more junior the doctors are, the less likely we feel they are to appreciate the important depth and breadth of answers that give us a true insight into the caring nature of the candidate and the capacity the candidate will have to handle medicine as a profession in the future. 

• Be prepared for other questions. 

• Use the internet if you can - it is an essential resource! Get questions, medical school information, see forums, read books, but be warned, like many things in medicine, a lot of them are outdated. 

• Please dress well - you are not cool with your shirt not tucked in and your tie loose, and if you are, it is likely that interviewers can't tell!  

• Learn communication skills with someone who knows these - use the internet for lists as there very good sites out there. We recommend Google as a search engine. 

• Go the next step - go to a course.

Educational and Interview courses do cost a lot more once you're a doctor.

Good Luck!