Transcription
So I know that the medical school interview process can be very intense, and I have had successful interviews at Oxford, Queen Mary's, Imperial College London, and King's College London. I've also been an interviewer, so I'm going to use all of my experience and give you some top tips for interviews, including some real-life questions and some example answers.
Hi everyone, my name is Tria, and I'm a junior doctor working in London. I graduated from the University of Oxford 2 years ago, and today I'm going to be talking about Medical School interviews. Right, let's get into the video.
So my first tip is rehearse; don't memorize. It's okay to rehearse some of your answers, but don't memorize them word for word. I know it's tempting to have the perfect answers memorized for very typical questions that might come up, but they sound really robotic, and it's quite easy to tell as an interviewer who has done this or not. So what I'd recommend instead is try to practice just speaking out loud to yourself, maybe in front of a mirror or recording yourself on your phone and then hearing it back. That can be less intimidating than speaking with someone else or practicing with your friends, teachers, and so on. Once you feel more confident with hearing your own voice, then you can move on to practicing with friends and things like that.
So lots of websites publish lists of very common medical school interview questions. It's probably not likely that you'll get any of those questions, but it's really good to just practice hearing your voice articulating your thoughts, and you can do that by speaking out loud and practicing answering some common interview questions. So these are questions like, "Why do you want to study medicine?" and "Why do you want to study medicine at this particular institution?" So it's a good shout just to have a rough idea about what you're going to say for these, but then again, don't memorize a full script.
Sometimes interviewers will ask one question like that at the beginning of the interview just as a warm-up. Interviewers have heard so many variations of answers to that question, "Why medicine?" that they're probably not even really listening; it's supposed to give you a chance to warm up and settle into the interview. It's important just to try to be yourself and be authentic, and that's what will really resonate with the interviewers the most.
Often you'll come across different opportunities to practice mock interviews and things like that. This can be through school or some other organization. I know for me it was really daunting to sign up for these practices because I didn't want to embarrass myself in front of my teachers and things like that, but I think any practice you get is good practice. For me, for example, the mock interview that I had with my science teachers the day before my Oxford medical interview actually was more difficult and stressful than the actual Oxford interviews themselves. And so when I was driving to Oxford with my parents on the day of my interview, we practiced some interview questions in the car, things like, "Why do you want to study at Oxford?" and "What makes you think you'll be a good candidate for medicine?" And that was very, very painful for me, but actually really good to say them out loud. In some ways, the stakes are higher when you know the person—for example, you know your teacher, you know your parents—and you might feel more pressured to say certain things or to come across a certain way. But then when you get to the interview, the interview will be conducted with complete strangers; you don't owe them anything other than being yourself.
The way you can consider Medical School interviews is that you're never going to see this person again. Okay, if you get into Medical School, you may end up seeing them again, but at that very moment, it's just you and the complete stranger. So you can say your thoughts and be yourself without worrying about being judged.
In interviews, we often see candidates who ramble a lot, which can really dilute your point, and after a few seconds of talking, it can be human nature just to switch off and not really listen. So you want to keep your interviewers engaged and fully understanding your logic when it comes to answering questions. So you want your answers to be clear and to the point.
Let's say you're given an Ethics question, and now these are very common and can involve a lot of different topics that you probably heard of, such as euthanasia, abortion, the use of AI in healthcare, and some other current topics. Also, you may be asked to give your opinion about an Ethics question for a topic that you don't really know much about. If you have a structure to your answers and you have a way that you always follow, then this will help you to be able to tackle any kind of question or scenario that you're faced with. So, for example, if they ask you, "Should doctors ever lie to their patients?" you may not have ever thought about this before, but if you apply a structure that you've already practiced, then that will help you.
So here's a structure that I think is good: State one side of the argument—what are the pros—then think about the cons, and then come up with a balanced solution. So it's very simple; it's just pros, cons, and a balanced answer. So, for example, if the ethics question doesn't have a pro or con list as such, there usually are two sides to an argument, so make sure that in your answer you've considered both sides, and then you come up with your opinion. This way it shows that you're a thoughtful and reflective person and that you can consider both sides of an argument, and it keeps you from going off on a tangent.
If you've got an interview coming up and you want to practice, why don't you try to use the structure of the pros, the cons, and giving your opinion for this scenario: You're a student on a work-experienced placement, and you are shadowing a consultant surgeon who's about to go into surgery to do an operation on a patient. As you're talking to them, you notice the smell of strong alcohol on their breath. What do you do?
It's important to also have a structure in questions that aren't necessarily going to be about ethics. They might ask you a question that involves you having to use some of your knowledge about medicine or healthcare or science. In those questions, it can be hard not to just go off on a tangent and ramble, but remember that when you're wrapping up your point and you're coming towards the end of your answer, it's useful just to give a one-line summary of your argument just to let the interviewers know that you finished talking. So it's okay for you to, once you've said your point, just to stop talking rather than keeping on continuing to fill the silence whilst the interviewer waits. Sometimes an interviewer will interrupt you if they think that you're going on for too long, but if you've just said your answer and given a summary, then the interviewers will be very happy and be able to easily move on to the next question.
So, for example, an interviewer might ask you, "What do you think is the biggest challenge in medicine today?" So there are lots of different topics that you could potentially talk about—for example, climate change, sustainability, health inequalities, mental health, humanitarian crises, pandemics; the list goes on and on. Let's say in order to answer that question you've picked two of those topics that you speak a little bit about, then to round up your answer you could say, "In my opinion, I think that the biggest challenges that medicine faces today are X and Y." That way the interviewers know that you've come to a conclusion; it makes you seem very refined and that you know what you're talking about.
To summarize, my second tip is that structure is very important, and make sure that you find, follow a structure that is logical to help you answer different questions. Once you talk about your answers, make sure you summarize what you're saying with a clear sentence at the end so that the interviewer knows that you're finished.
So my next tip is to use your personal experiences to round yourself out as an applicant and show how you would make a good doctor. When I say personal experiences, I don't necessarily mean that you have to bare everything to the interviewer and tell them about private and personal things that have happened in your life; rather, I mean that you can talk about things that you have experienced whilst you've been on this journey towards medical school. So try to reflect on your work experience, whether that's been through shadowing a doctor or other healthcare professional in a work-experience capacity or through volunteering in a caring environment or somewhere else, and try to relate those moments to qualities that make a good doctor. For example, you could talk about how during your work experience you saw the importance of empathy when a doctor confronted a nervous patient, or you could talk about how you saw the importance of teamwork when dealing with a very critical situation. These reflections help interviewers to see that you understand the challenges of being a doctor and that you have the personal qualities to meet these challenges.
So in terms of preparing for an interview, try to think about one or two key experiences that you've had, and definitely the reflections that you've had about the experiences are more important than what you've actually done. So don't boast and give the interviewers a list of everything you've done; tell us what you feel about it or what you thought, what you've learned. So when you're actually having these experiences, when you're doing work experience, when you are volunteering, try to write down your thoughts at the time rather than having to think about all of them a year later, the night before your interview. Write notes on your phone or write them down in a journal so that you can flick through them before your interview, and you don't have to then panic and think about work experience that you did when you were 16 and now you're 18 and you've come to the interview time and you've completely forgotten about what you learned.
So I also did this when I was in school; I used to keep a journal about all my work experience, and I think I still have it. So I'm going to go and see if I can find it. Yes, so here it is; this is my work experience journal. I wrote here what I did, and then in a separate section I wrote my reflections. So let me read you an extract of something that I wrote about a patient that I saw. A patient that I saw was a 19-year-old girl with beta thalassemia, and she'd been having blood transfusions practically her whole life. She's had problems with taking her regular medications; she's missed her doses of her iron chelation treatments so many times in the last few months that her iron levels have become dangerously high. Dr. K discussed with them the possibility of putting in a line in the next few weeks and then having a bone marrow transplant. The doctor had to be very gentle and empathetic so the girl didn't get too overwhelmed. She started crying at the end because I think there was just too much to take in, and also I think that she realized that the fact that she doesn't take her medications properly caused the breakdown of trust; maybe she regrets not taking more care. Seeing the patient cry and hear her story made me think that a bone marrow transplant is such a painful thing—to sit there in the clinic chair and know that I'm going to go through such an intense physical and emotional hardship over the next year for a potential treatment that my body may even reject. It was very depressing. Although the patient came across as an amazingly strong girl, it made me want to be a doctor even more—not just because I want to make a difference to people's lives, which I do, also because I believe that I will be able to cope with the lows of everyday life because I know in my heart the upside of medicine.
As you can see, I was a very bright-eyed, keen student who clearly wanted medicine very much, and that's just an example of the types of reflections that you can have. It's really nice to be able to look back at what I thought before I came to medicine, and it's a really useful resource to have just before you're going into an interview, if only just to remind you that you've worked really hard to be where you are right now, and you are deserving of a chance at medical school.
So my next tip is to show off your academic curiosity. Medical School interviewers want to see that you're doing this not just because you think being a doctor is a prestigious career, but because you're genuinely interested in the science. So you could bring up recent developments in medical research or healthcare news that you've read about and that excite you. For example, you could talk about something you've read about the advances in gene therapy or cancer therapy. This shows that you're engaged with the subject beyond your school curriculum. Demonstrating your academic rigor and your curiosity is really important, especially in places like Oxford and Cambridge, who will really value the skill within you.
So in an interview, you can also think about what makes you special or what makes you stand out as a candidate. For me, I feel like something that made me stand out in an academic point of view as a candidate for medical school was the fact that I did Physics A-level. Doing Physics A-level is not unheard of, but it is relatively uncommon when it comes to medical school applicants because it's not compulsory for medical students to learn. When I was being interviewed at Oxford, and I had four interviews, many of the interviewers saw that I studied Physics at A-level, and they asked me questions about this. So there's a lot of physics in medicine actually, and for me, I think it helped to demonstrate that I had the academic potential to take on a lot of work. Physics was my fourth A-level after Biology, Chemistry, and Math, so, so that in itself, I think helped me stand out as a candidate when it comes to intellectual curiosity and academic rigor.
The medical school interviewers don't expect you to know everything about what's going on in research at the moment because the list is exhaustive. In general, a medical curriculum is limitless; there's no end to what you can learn. So no one expects you to know everything; they just expect you to have a genuine interest and curiosity about medicine and about life science, and they want to see if you can use what you've learned and the principles that you've studied—for example, in Chemistry or Biology—and apply that to things that you don't know anything about. I talk about my experiences with this in my Oxford interview in another video, so you can check that one out.
The interviewers want to know if you are the type of person that they would enjoy teaching or if you'd be the type of person they'd enjoy being by their side in a ward or in a clinic. They want candidates who are engaged and intellectually curious and being able to ask the right questions and be involved and have insightful thoughts. They don't want someone who is not willing to push themselves or not interested or engaged in the subject material. They want to know if they can teach you things and you'll be receptive and able to learn and push yourself, and especially when it comes to Oxford interviews, if you feel like you're being pushed, that's a good thing. You know, the interviewers want to see how much they can get out of you and what potential that you have. So yeah, being pushed is a good sign.
So ultimately, interviewers are looking for people who would make motivated and conscientious students who will end up being good doctors. So a good doctor means different things to different people, but at the baseline, it's people who are academically driven, hardworking, empathetic, and humble, and people who understand that being a doctor is no picnic; it's a privilege and it comes with great responsibilities.
Last, but definitely not least, is don't be arrogant. So confidence is a good thing, but there is a fine line between confidence and arrogance. Being a doctor is about working in a team, learning from others, and being humble enough to know when you don't have all the answers. It's good to be confident, but show the interviewers that you are someone who's willing to learn and willing to admit that they don't know everything, to learn from their mistakes and to learn from other people. It's clear when candidates think that they're better than you or that they're better than other people or that they're better than the question that's asked, and they don't take things seriously or they feel like they're deserving to get in with minimal effort. So for medical school, it's not just enough to have good grades; you have to really want it. You have to demonstrate the fact that you've thought about it, you've spoken to people, you've done your research; you can't just assume that you're going to get in.
So last year I was an examiner for a medical school in London, conducting the interviews for potential applicants, and actually one of the reasons that the panel and I decided to reject a student was because they were overly arrogant about their achievements, and it was also clear to us that they lacked any kind of humility or empathy, and that attitude is quite grating, and it doesn't make for someone that you'd want to spend time with and work in a team with. For that reason, we actually rejected that candidate.
So there you have it; those are my top tips for smashing your medical school interview. I hope you found this video useful, whether you're applying this year or in the future. If you have any questions, then let me know; otherwise, I'll see you in the next video. Thank you so much for watching, and good luck with your interviews.