Medical School Interview

1. Tell me about yourself

2. How will medicine be different 10 years from now?
3. What motivated you to study medicine?
4. Why would you make an outstanding osteopathic physician?
5. Why is this school your first choice medical school?
6. What are your strengths and weaknesses?
7. What accomplishments are you most proud of?
8. Why did you choose your major?
9. What do you think is the most difficult aspect of medicine?
10. How will the physician profession change in 30 years?
11. What do you know about Obamacare? How will it change our present healthcare
system?
12. Describe your experiences in healthcare.
13. Explain your lowest grade. Explain your low MCAT score.
14. Describe your extracurricular activities.
15. What do you believe in?
16. What do you care about?
17. How did you investigate a career in medicine?
18. What is your learning style? What teaching style do you prefer?
19. Who knows you best in this world?
20. Who are your heroes?
21. What teamwork experiences do you have?
22. Where do you see yourself in 10 years?
23. What skills have you developed outside the classroom?
24. What is the greatest obstacle you had to overcome?
25. What issues confront medicine today?
26. What person, past or present would you like to meet?
27. What have you read recently in the press about health care?
28. What makes you a better applicant than others?
29. How would you express your concern for a child needing an amputation?
30. How do you relax?
31. What is your biggest concern about entering medical school?
32. Describe your best teacher and what makes him or her unique.
33. Describe an experience you had helping others
34. What was the last book you read
35. Describe an experience where you were misjudged
36. What has been your favorite non-science course and why?
37. Who are your senators, congressional representatives, govenor?
38. What was your most difficult or demoralizing experience?
39. What is the difference between sympathy and empathy?
40. Is there anything you want to brag about or that you need to explain?
41. If you are accepted to multiple schools, how will you make your decision?
42. What is the toughest thing about being a paitent?
43. What type of criticism upsets you?

44. Have you ever been a patient and, if so, can you reveal how you felt?
45. How have your personal and volunteer experiences strengthened your goal to
become a physician?
46. What have been your strengths and weaknesses of your college preparation?
47. Would you say you are most like your father or mother? Why?
48. Why did you choose osteopathic medical school?
49. What will you do next year if you dont get into medical school?
50. Is there anything I havent asked you that you want to tell me?
51. What is the most pressing problem facing medicine today?
52. How will you pay for medical school?
53. If you could do anything different in your education, what would you do?
54. Where else are you applying?
55. What do you do in your spare time?
56. How did you get here?
57. What are your hobbies?
58. Are you a leader or a follower? Why?
59. Discuss your volunteer work.
60. What do you think you will like most about medicine? Least?
61. Where do you stand on abortion?
62. What is your opinion on euthanasia?
63. What is your opinion on cloning?
64. How are you a match for our medical school?
65. Would you perform abortions as a doctor? Under what conditions?
66. What are three things you want to change about yourself?
67. How would you describe the relationship between science and medicine?
68. Who has influenced your life so far and why?
69. How do you want me to remember you?
70. What are your career goals?
71. What are the pros and cons of the healthcare system?
72. If you had the power, what changes would you make to our healthcare system?
73. What is the Hippocratic Oath?
74. What is the difference between Medicare and Medicaid?
75. What is your opinion on HMOs and PPOs?
76. Is it ethical for doctors to strike?
77. Do doctors make too much money?
78. Should fetal tissue be used to treat disease? (Parkinsons)
79. If you were a doctor and an under age girl asked you for the pill or an abortion
and did not want to tell her parents what would you do?
80. How do you study/prepare for exams?
81. Do you engage in self-directed learning?
82. Give evidence that you relate well to others
83. Give an example of a leadership role you have assumed
84. What would you do as President of the United States with respect to the
persistent national debt
85. How do you handle stress?

86. The night before your final exam, your father has a heart attack and is admitted to
the hospital, what would you do?
87. How would you inform someone they had 6 months to live?
88. A patient with AIDS informs you he does not want to tell his wife what do you
do?
89. What would you do if you witness another student cheating?
90. If you could change one thing about yourself what would it be?
91. How would your friends describe you?
92. What would you do on a perfect day?
93. What is your greatest fault?
94. What is your best attribute?
95. How would you attract physicians to rural areas?
96. If an unconscious patient needs a blood transfusion to stay alive but has a signed
form as a Jehovahs witness that they are against blood transfusions what would
you do?
97. Why didnt you go into social work if you like working with people?
98. Do you think there should be a mandatory HIV testing for couples wanting to get
married?
99. Would you prefer less effective medicine to more people or more effective
medicine to fewer people?
100.
How can you tell if someone is truly compassionate?
101.
Why study medicine when you have so many talents?
102.
If someone 15 years from now were to write a book about you, what
would you want to have included in that book?
103.
How can we minimize health care costs when people are willing to pay
more to be healthier?
104.
What are you passionate about?
105.
Who do you think is responsible for the rationing of healthcare?
106.
Why should I tell the admissions committee to let you in?
107.
What is your biggest failure?
108.
What are some of the things that you will have to give up as a doctor?
109.
Would you share your religious beliefs with your patients?
110.
How do you help people who dont want to be helped?
111.
In what field do you think the next major advancement in medicine will
come?
112.
What do you think of the priority system for organ recipients?
113.
What do you think of the priority system for allocating funds for
medicine?
114.
What negative experiences from your different jobs made it clear to you
that you wanted to pursue medicine?
115.
What would you do if you caught your roommate cheating on his medical
school application?
116.
Why are some doctors unhappy practicing medicine?
117.
What is your cause?
118.
Tell me about your family
119.
Is your family supportive of you going to school?

120.
Describe yourself in three words
121.
As a woman, how would you mesh career with family?
122.
What makes you laugh and why?
123.
Tell me about a significant event in your life and how it has shaped you?
124.
What qualities would you want to pass down to your children?
125.
What three material objects are most important to you?
126.
What kind of things do you feel most confident doing?
127.
What are the most important characteristics and abilities to be a successful
doctor? How do you rate yourself in those areas?
128.
What things give you the greatest satisfaction in school and in your life?
129.
What was your least favorite course in undergrad?
130.
What was your toughest subject in college?
131.
What causes the most stress in your life?
132.
What frustrates you the most? How do you cope with them?
133.
What would you do if a physician or professor humiliated you in front of
others?
134.
How do you deal with conflicts? Give an example?
135.
Do you like to work alone or with other people?
136.
What have you done that was truly creative?
137.
What was the most difficult decision you have made recently?
138.
What was the last major problem you confronted?
139.
What approach to you take to get people to accept your ideas or goals?
140.
How will you pay for medical school?
141.
If you could do anything different in your education what would you do?
142.
What do you do in your spare time?
143.
What would you do if you suspect a collegue is abusing drugs?
144.
Why become a physician? Why not a PA or a nurse?
145.
Why did you volunteer at the places you did?
146.
What are you career plans and what led you to your decisions?
147.
What do you feel is the purpose of medical school?
148.
Describe your style of communicating and interacting with others.
149.
Describe a time when you were dependable.
150.
Describe a time when you showed initiative
151.
What experiences have you had working with diverse populations?
152.
If you were a cookie what cookie would you be and why?
153.
Describe how you can effectively deal with someone in a crisis
154.
What do you hope to gain from going to medical school and becoming a
doctor?
155.
Tell me about a time when you experienced a conflict or anger with
another individual
156.
Tell me about a time when you have been disappointed in a teammate.
How did you approach the situation?
157.
How do you handle change?
158.
How do you go about making important decisions?
159.
What does the word success mean to you?

160.
IF we contacted your references now, what do you think they would say
about you?
161.
If you could change one aspect of your personality what would you
change and why?
162.
Who would you say has been the most influential person in the last 100
years?
163.
What do you think about HMOs and the changes taking place in
medicine?
164.
What schools have you applied to?
165.
What do you think about euthanasia?
166.
Why do you think so many people want to be doctors?
167.
Do you think a physician should tell a patient how many months they have
left to live?
168.
What steps have you taken to acquaint yourself with what a physician
does?
169.
How do you think your role as a physician fits into your role as a member
of the community?
170.
Describe your personality
171.
What do you have to offer our school?
172.
What are the best and worst things that have ever happened to you?
173.
Why is medicine a rewarding experience?
174.
Would you practice in an inner city? How do you think that would change
you?
175.
How would you choose between giving a transplant to a sweet elderly lady
or a 20 year old drug addict?
176.
Discuss national health insurance and how it will affect the physician and
the patient
177.
Do you think students who receive federal loans should spend more time
practicing in a rural area to give society something in return?
178.
How does our healthcare system differ from Britains healthcare system?
179.
What is the biggest problem in the world today?
180.
What is your solution to terrorism?
181.
What do you think about American primary health care delivery (status
quo, total private systems, national health insurance)?
182.
Tell me about your family. How do they feel about your decision to pursue
a career in medicine?
183.
How would you deal with a terminally ill patient?
184.
Describe your childhood and present living conditions
185.
How will you keep in touch with community needs?
186.
How do you handle blood and gore?
187.
What is your opinion of our schools curriculum?
188.
What impact do you want to have in the medical field?
189.
Why did you choose to go to Rutgers University?
190.
If you were a super hero, what super power would you have and why?
191.
Have you ever experienced a situation where your integrity was
compromised?

192.
What is your favorite color and why?
193.
What is your favorite type of food and why?
194.
Why didnt you stay with a student host?
195.
Do you lift weights?
196.
Why do you think we need to sleep?
197.
What do you do to keep yourself healthy?
198.
Where does your sense of morality come from?
199.
Do you think you will do well in this curriculum here?
200.
What is the one important lesson you have learned from all your clinical
experiences?
201.
What should I tell the admissions committee about you?
202.
If somebody on the admissions committee said to me well shes good but
Ive seen better what would you like me to answer to that?
203.
What do you want to talk about?
204.
Is there anything else we should cover about you?
205.
Name three qualities important to being a physician that you already
possess, and another three that you dont just yet but you believe you will strive to
gain in medical school.
206.
When you look in the mirror what do you like about yourself and what do
you not like about yourself?
207.
What do you think will be your biggest challenge in becoming a doctor?
208.
If there were one reason for us to not accept you, what would it be?
209.
Why is this school the right fit for you?
210.
What other schools did you apply to and why?
211.
What are your thoughts on socialized medicine?
212.
What is the greatest impact you plan on having in the medical field? How
would you go about doing this?
213.
Tell me how you would fix the healthcare system.
214.
Name three current controversies in the field of medicine that you are
interested in and explain your stance and future considerations regarding the
debate.
215.
Why shouldnt healthcare be paid for by the government?
216.
What were the happiest and saddest moments of your life?
217.
Compare life in a foreign country to experience in the US
218.
What is the greatest challenge you have faced?
219.
Tell me about this class you took.
220.
Explain what you learned from your Komen Internship experience.
221.
Explain what you learned from your volunteering experiences
222.
Explain what you learned from your teaching experiences
223.
Tell me about your university. Ive never heard of it.
224.
Tell me about your MCAT preparation and your feelings about the result.
225.
Looking at the healthcare system today, are there any problems you may
have to deal with when you start practicing?
226.
Describe the leadership positions you have held
227.
What challenges have you faced in [internship, clinical experiences,
volunteering, teaching]?

228.
How do you go about setting up an experiment for research?
229.
What research are you interested in and why?
230.
What do you want to do in 5 years?
231.
Take me through a perfect day in your life ten years from now
232.
If you could change one thing about our society, what would it be?
233.
How do you know you want to do medicine, apart from those few clinical
and volunteering experiences?
234.
Tell me about your family.
235.
What are your short term and long term goals following the completion of
medical school.
236.
Flash forward to twenty years from nowtell me what your day will be
like?
237.
How has all your activities prepared you for a career in medicine?
238.
What is the hardest thing that has ever happened to you?
239.

Questions to ask Interviewer

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6.

How are students evaluated academically?

How are clinical evaluations performed?
How does the school assist students who do not pass?
Are most students involved in community service?
Is there a grievance procedure?