Session 231 Today, I'm going to cover five ways to prepare for your medical school interview. As of this recording in April 2017, the applications are opening soon and that means interviews are just right around the corner. Therefore, there is no better time than right now to listen to this episode so we can help you prepare for your interview. Regardless of where you are in your premed world, there is no better time to prepare for the medical school interview than right now. First off, we would like to thank our sponsor, Cram Fighter, a unique tool that helps you create custom MCAT study schedule specific to your needs, your materials, and your schedule. [02:08] Know the Basics - Start Early I've done a lot of episodes on medical school interview and one of my favorites is Session 19 where I interviewed Dr. Norma Wagoner, an instructor at University of Colorado School of Medicine, who was a former Dean of Admissions at three different medical schools. Again, there is no better time to start preparing for the medical school interview than right now. The general application timeline starts with the submission of primary applications in June. (For AACOMAS, you can submit in May as well as the Texas application.) Secondary applications are filled out and that pushes you back to around the first couple of weeks in July, assuming you are applying early. Now, you are at point where you prepare for your medical school interviews but looking at this timeline, waiting for this time to prepare is already a little bit late. Rather, start working on your interview prep in June and early July. Once July rolls around, medical school are going to start looking at applications. They will start reviewing them and will start inviting people for interviews. The last thing you want to happen is to push off your interview preparation and then the school invites you for an interview next week. Then you'd find yourself scrambling at the last minute to find somebody to do a mock interview with you. And if you do find that somebody, how much time are you going to have to receive that feedback and then apply that feedback into another practice interview. Therefore, it's important to start doing mock interviews as soon as you can. [05:44] Interviewing is a Skill I started interviewing people when I was a fitness program manager at a gym. I was hiring and firing people. Interviewing is a skill that can be learned. I learned how to become a better interviewer and people were learning how to become better interviewees. Now that I'm working with students doing mock interviews, I've seen students start out being nervous, frustrated, and poorly articulated, and by the time I was done with them, they were a lot more calm, more relaxed, and they discussed what they wanted to discuss without freezing and getting nervous. Interviewing is indeed a skill that you need to learn which you can learn. Even if you're not good at it, you're just not good at it yet. So you need to practice to get there. [07:22] Know Your Application You need to know what's in your application inside and out. Be prepared to talk about everything you've written there during the interview. If you're writing about something that's going to make you start crying in the interview, don't write about it. You don't want your emotions to explode on interview day. You have to control your emotions and speak well and crying is not something you want to do on your interview day. So as you're working on your applications, don't put in specific triggers that would make you lose it. [08:15] Know Your School You have to know what schools you're applying to and more specifically, why you're applying to those. There are 179 medical schools in the country. Why are you interviewing specifically at this school you're at today? So you need to know that and be able to articulate that. [09:40] 5 Ways to Prepare for Your Medical School Interview Step One: Go to your school. If you're at an undergraduate or gradua