Keep it up! An interviewer's perspective on med school interviews

Hi guys,

I've been wanting to write this for a while and finally decided to do it in case it would be helpful to some people. I'm a student interviewer for med school MMIs (using a throwaway because I may be too easy to identify from my main) and I remember wondering a couple years ago about how to stand out at a med school interview so hopefully this post can give others some perspective. Overall, I was surprised by how amazing most applicants were - sure, there may have been one or two applicants who are outstandingly amazing, or maybe there was one applicant in the batch for the day who was slightly worse than the others, but all in all it became really difficult to distinguish an applicant based on a 10 minute conversation with them at one station. This also speaks to how random the med school process can be, so for those who didn't get in for whatever reason - it's important to reflect but it may not necessarily be all on you! I always think super hard and carefully about how I rate the applicants because I know this will majorly impact someone's life, but it's crazy how someone's future can be decided by a form that someone completes in just a few minutes. So despite the crapshoot that this process can be, here are some tips from what I've observed after doing a bunch of MMIs in the past year:

1. How you tell it is way more important than what you tell: this may be kind of obvious to some, but I was still surprised by what an impact a good storyteller can make. There were times when an applicant might have started off with a super generic story ("A challenge I overcame was that I didn't do well in this class"), but I became pleasantly surprised by how strong their answer turned out to be. I remember one applicant used good humor, honesty, and humility. If the truth was that they didn't study enough and didn't take the the class seriously for whatever reason, but immediately realized their fault and explained how they were able to reflect on the situation, redeem themselves, and make sure this doesn't happen again in the future, then it can be a surprisingly strong answer. Of course, if you have a story about a major life challenge, then it may prove to be better material to talk about and reflect on, but (fortunately lol) not everyone has that kind of experience and that's ok. I recognize that some people's biggest difficulty really may have been getting bad grades or whatever, but the maturity reflected in your story is wayyyy more important.
2. USE VERY SPECIFIC EXAMPLES: A good amount of people fail to do this. TELL A SPECIFIC STORY. Don't just say "I studied harder, learned my mistake, and did better." If you are caught off guard by a question, it may be difficult to think of specific details in the moment, but try to really focus on that in your answer. It's like when your english teacher yells at you to "show it not just say it" or whatever. Tell the interviewer about how you went to office hours, eventually the professor started saying "you again" jokingly or something, idk, give me specifics to understand the depth of your development.
3. I don't recommend rambling for the entire time: I'm not sure how people are "taught" or "trained" to do the MMI nowadays, and it's also difficult because every school differs. But I wouldn't default to rambling for the entire time allotted UNLESS you're told to do that. I've been a bit turned off by applicants who ramble for all 6-8 minutes about a story with no pauses. Being an interviewer can get a little boring by the nth person lol and it's easy to zone out (I definitely don't!! But for some people I have to work a bit harder to follow... >_<) if it feels more like I'm being talked at instead of a discussion. I personally recommend talking for maybe 1/2 to 2/3 of the time, pausing for some sort of response by the interviewer (even if just to ask some additional follow up questions at the end of the 1-2 mins), and feel it out from there. There are some interview formats where they're supposed to give you ZERO (no facial expressions and only responses allowed are asking the question), or maybe an interviewer is particularly stone-cold, so you have to ramble by yourself for the whole time. But there are also some formats where people can speak more naturally which allows for slightly more discussion. If that's the case, definitely make sure you have plenty of time to get a good story in, but please allow just a few minutes (even 1-2 is fine) at the end for the interviewer to say SOMETHING. Unless you have a super riveting story that is expected to be a bit long, I don't really want to hear an 8 minute story. Pausing and having some sort of room for the other person to speak tends to leave a better impression on the interviewer in my opinion and it allows the interviewee to comes off as more people-friendly and sensitive. This may be just me though. Also maybe it's because I know some some people in life that are horrible listeners and this is a terrible trait to have as a doctor, so if I see that red flag then that's a big no-no from me.
4. Sprinkle in some interest/PERSONAL CONNECTION for the question: MMIs pose some really interesting questions and I always appreciate it when the interviewee shows some sort of excitement for it, or appreciation for the complexity of the question. You don't have to fake it, but also don't hide it. Rather than flat out only answering the question, show some personality! MAKE A PERSONAL CONNECTION EVERY OPPORTUNITY THAT YOU CAN. If the question is about electronic data and you have, idk, experience in data security or something, MENTION IT. Say something like "Ooh I find this question to be super interesting because I worked in ___." It doesn't even have to be a connection as direct as work experience - it can be anything!! "I got super interested in this topic lately and just listened to a podcast about it", "I was actually JUST talking about this the other day with a friend", literally anything. I mean, again, don't force it or fake it and let it lead you into deep trouble where you are caught with a bluff, but make an effort to think of some ways that make you seem particularly engaged and interested.
5. Every station is different at an MMI: As you've heard plenty of times before, there are plenty of stations!! There are people who may not really have known what to say at my station and gave a really lukewarm answer, but really blew away another interviewer. So don't worry about it if one station wasn't great, you get plenty of opportunities at an MMI!
6. Keep trying!! The med school process is so difficult, and I remember not long ago the anxiety-filled year that I took out of my life to apply and wonder if I'll ever get in. If anything, I learned from my experience as an interviewer what a close call this process really is. It's so random. Most of the time I see incredibly strong applicants and I wonder how the heck the decision will be made down the line on who to accept and I feel so terrible thinking about those who may have been so close but didn't get in for some random reason. So if you don't get in on first try but know this is your passion, keep trying! Obviously there are a few caveats to that advice and it's a very personal decision, but take it from me that it doesn't necessarily mean that you weren't great - it's just that everyone is so great. (I know, ugh that phrase is the worst, but true...)

This is all just my personal opinion and another interviewer may totally disagree, so feel free to comment with disagreements or other things I may have forgotten to mention! If you guys have any further questions I'll try to be helpful without giving illegal details.

Edit: I just realized I pretty much just seconded this older post LOLZZZ I guess I didn't do my homework before posting this. Oh well. Hope it's somewhat useful anyway.

Edit 2: I also wanted to add an approach that helped me tremendously. Think of a handful of stories, like 5-10, that are super flexible and can be applied to many scenarios. E.g. 1-2 stories about an initial difficulty working on a team. This story alone can answer question about teamwork, leadership, overcoming a challenge, a time where you stood up and spoke against something, etc. This way when you are faced with the MMI questions, you pull from your resource of 5-10 prepared stories and can easily use the 2 minutes of prep time to adapt the story to the question at hand. I had about 5-10 stories on hand and 95% of the time was able to talk about those stories, which I told countless of times over and over again in my head to make it as concise and powerful as possible.