most bizarre interview moment?

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[U. Miami] So, do you like beer?

[me] Yes. (tentatively)

[U. Miami] What kind?

[me] Ales mostly. (weirdness sets in here)

[U. Miami] What else do you drink? What's your favorite non-beer drink?

[me] Sapphire and tonic with a twist. (uh oh, that came out too fast...maybe he thinks I'm an alcoholic)

[U. Miami] The blue bottle?

[me] Yeah, the blue bottle. (phew, I'm not alone)

so, i went to my first interview this past week, and during the orientation everyone at my table was comparing where they'd been interviewed! one guy, who apparently was already holding 2 acceptances at top schools, especially pissed me off. we were sitting next to each other, and at first he talked to me for a few mins, but as soon as he found out that this was my first interview, he ended the conversation abruptly, turned the other way and started talking (in a LOUD voice) to this other girl who had just interviewed at the school where he was accepted. G*DDAMN! so after lunch (just before interviews were due to start) when i saw that he had a piece of tomato skin stuck in his teeth, i didn't tell him. served him right! i hope while he interviewed he chortled loudly (which i am sure he did) and inhaled that piece of tomato skin into his windpipe and choked on it for a duration of 20secs or longer. @@*#)$(^%!!

This is a pretty funny story.

I interviewed at USF medical school earlier this month. I got there on a friday for an interview sceduled on monday. I had a friend there undergrad so he takes me to this restaurant that is located near the teaching hospital. So i'm relaxed eating this mexian food (I have a dirty mouth). I get my friend to kinda give me a moch interview. Then suddenly this guy right next to our table is like "When are you interviewing at USF" So I tell him on monday. I find out that he is an oncologist at Moffitt Caner Institute. He gives me all this good advice about my interview. After he left, I kept on thinking how many times did i cuss.

i interviewed at SUNY Upstate yesterday. They have two interviews: one student, one faculty. my student interview was fine. when i went to find the faculty members office- i couldn't, so I asked someone where room YYY was... apparantly I was right next door b/c my interviewer came right out and said, who are you looking for? That's not the funny part though.

About 2 mins into the interview- I hear this weird bell type sound. My interview didn't move at all- so I figured it was nothing. The sound didn't stop- and eventually I realized it was a FIRE ALARM... but my interviewer still didn't budge. I started having flashes of the evening news... "Two die in SUNY Syracuse fire"
After about 10 minutes he gets up abruptly and says, I think the fire alarm is going off- we are under legal obligation to leave. We wandered around for a while looking for somewhere to finish the interview, where we ended up in the library and he says "You know you're not supposed to talk in the library..." It was hysterical.

Weird though- i had two "near-death" experiences that day- the fire alarm first- then all of the interviewees were piling into an elevator to go see the lecture halls and on the way up we hear this loud bang. We thought the cables were gonna break.


these stories are great guys! keep em comin!

smilez,
are you sure you wanna go to that school? sounds a bit dangerous heehee
what is with people anyways, fire alarms go off and everybody just sits around like it's normal....(sorry, not a jab at you, just speaking from personal experience).

Originally posted by smilez428
i interviewed at SUNY Upstate yesterday. They have two interviews: one student, one faculty. my student interview was fine. when i went to find the faculty members office- i couldn't, so I asked someone where room YYY was... apparantly I was right next door b/c my interviewer came right out and said, who are you looking for? That's not the funny part though.

About 2 mins into the interview- I hear this weird bell type sound. My interview didn't move at all- so I figured it was nothing. The sound didn't stop- and eventually I realized it was a FIRE ALARM... but my interviewer still didn't budge. I started having flashes of the evening news... "Two die in SUNY Syracuse fire"
After about 10 minutes he gets up abruptly and says, I think the fire alarm is going off- we are under legal obligation to leave. We wandered around for a while looking for somewhere to finish the interview, where we ended up in the library and he says "You know you're not supposed to talk in the library..." It was hysterical.

Weird though- i had two "near-death" experiences that day- the fire alarm first- then all of the interviewees were piling into an elevator to go see the lecture halls and on the way up we hear this loud bang. We thought the cables were gonna break.


these stories are great guys! keep em comin!

awww thanks! that was great!

They are doing contruction thats y the fire alarm went off. And the elevators are prone to doing strange things at times(the bang is completly normal

I've got a good one. This didn't happen to me, but to a guy in my class.

He was interviewed by one of the senior professors here, who wields a fair amount of power but is also somewhat of a screwball noted for his irrational and verbally abusive outbursts. Anyway, my classmate came in to the interview, sat down with the guy, and the first thing the interviewer did was insult him! He looked at him, totally seriously, and made the pronouncement, "That tie makes you look like a woman."

Needless to say, he got in. I didn't hear how he handled that, but I bet it was awkward as hell. Talk about pressure!

One of mine began crying because he was talking about how much he loved his children. I said, "that's okay...I don't mind listening to you." I felt like a therapist.

when I interviewed at NYU... the radiologist asked me what serious medical problems guys in their 20's faced... after I gave him a few answers including testicular ca he asked me if I did self-exams on a routine basis and if not, why not... LoL

- Surfer75

Originally posted by rbassdo
One of mine began crying because he was talking about how much he loved his children. I said, "that's okay...I don't mind listening to you." I felt like a therapist.

keep them coming,please!

one of my interviewers was supposed to interview someone else, and had walked into the wrong room.......

At Temple:

Everyone is sitting in the waiting room, getting ready for the financial aide presentation. This guy walks, really sweaty and nervous, and everyone asks him what is wrong. He says, "I really wanted to go here, but I completely messed up my interview, and now I have no chance." Everyone tells him it couldn't be that bad, and asks him what went wrong.

He explains, "Well, my interviewer asked 'My wife is Persian, but I'm not. What are your feelings on that?.' The problem was, that's not what I thought he said. I could have sworn he said, 'My wife is a virgin, but I'm not. What are your feelings on that?,' so that's the question I proceeded to answer...."

You just can't make this stuff up. (Thanks Corey)

Originally posted by CaNEM
At Temple:

Everyone is sitting in the waiting room, getting ready for the financial aide presentation. This guy walks, really sweaty and nervous, and everyone asks him what is wrong. He says, "I really wanted to go here, but I completely messed up my interview, and now I have no chance." Everyone tells him it couldn't be that bad, and asks him what went wrong.

He explains, "Well, my interviewer asked 'My wife is Persian, but I'm not. What are your feelings on that?.' The problem was, that's not what I thought he said. I could have sworn he said, 'My wife is a virgin, but I'm not. What are your feelings on that?,' so that's the question I proceeded to answer...."

You just can't make this stuff up. (Thanks Corey)

LOL!!!!!
That is the funniest thing I've heard all day!!! awwww, do you think he got in??

This happened to me the night I arrived in D.C. for my Howard interview the next day....
I was walking up to the lobby entrance at my hotel after being dropped off by the Super Shuttle from the airport. Just as I was grabbing the handle to go inside a woman in a car drove up behind me and we had this conversation:
Woman: Do you have the time?
Me: It's 6:20pm.
Woman: Are you checking in here?
Me: Yeah.
Woman: Where are you from?
Me: Boise, why?
Woman: (mumbled something unintelligible)
Me: I'm sorry, what?
Woman: (more clearly) Are you looking for a good time?
Me: (Oh my god, she's a prostitute!) No thanks.

Originally posted by entropy
bump

I know you may think this is a stupid question...what is the bump for ?

Originally posted by pwrpfgrl
LOL!!!!!
That is the funniest thing I've heard all day!!! awwww, do you think he got in??

As the 8 ball would say, "All signs point to NO." =)

bump just means that you are "bumping" the post to the top of the list by adding a placeholding comment. By bumping the post, you are hoping to bring more attention to it.

Originally posted by wolferman
This happened to me the night I arrived in D.C. for my Howard interview the next day....
I was walking up to the lobby entrance at my hotel after being dropped off by the Super Shuttle from the airport. Just as I was grabbing the handle to go inside a woman in a car drove up behind me and we had this conversation:
Woman: Do you have the time?
Me: It's 6:20pm.
Woman: Are you checking in here?
Me: Yeah.
Woman: Where are you from?
Me: Boise, why?
Woman: (mumbled something unintelligible)
Me: I'm sorry, what?
Woman: (more clearly) Are you looking for a good time?
Me: (Oh my god, she's a prostitute!) No thanks.

I'd imagine half of SDN is actually wondering which hotel for when they have interviews in DC.

Originally posted by Random Access
I'd imagine half of SDN is actually wondering which hotel for when they have interviews in DC.

Haha, give me a break, what do you think we are? We are the physicians of tomorrow! The doctors of the future! We have to hold ourselves to strict standards...

no, seriously, though, what hotel was it??

interviewer: so i see you played some intramurals, is ultimate frisbee fun?
me: oh yea, it's a lot of running, but that's good for me. it's just for fun though, i can't throw at all.
interviewer: so i guess your school has the money for those expensive courses?
me: what courses?
interviewer: for ultimate frisbee
me: oh, we just use fields and set up a goal line. is there a way to use a couse?
interviewer: did you really play? cause i've always seen it with courses?
me: um, yea, i've played a lot. i've never seen it with courses....
interviewer: oh. haha. i'm thinking of frisbee golf. just testing you. haha. oh look, my beeper is going off. well, we're done here and i'm the fool.

ok so i was interviewing at tulane having the best time after interviewing with what had to be the coolest chaplain ever and wondering into the anatomy lab...

well its about 15 min till my second interview I head to the conference room where it will be thinking ill have time to relax

no such luck since the guy that was to interview me was free and called my name into the room as soon as he saw me

so it starts out like this

him: wow that's some messed up and wild hair you got there!

me: (thinking: i just checked it and it looked fine) Well I could comb it forward if you like (its short so i can pretty style it in 2 sec)

him: no, no that's alright...i guess its what all the kids are doing these days...

[fifteen minutes later after asking some of the same questions three times]

him: so are your parents pretty supportive?

me: yes..they're pretty supportive of everything i do...obviously if i decided to become a welder or something like that they have reservations but in the end

him: [interjecting] or a wrestler with that hair of yours...of course your a little small to be a wrestler...how much you weigh?

me: [thinking:wtf? well i went through the whole story of how i lost 50 lbs after i started running in college] um...164

him: [writes my weight on his piece of paper]

wish i could read my file to see what it contained after that interview

he was a very nice guy and it was a stress free interview...just a little sureal.
crossed fingers that i get in since it seems like Tulane's my top choice

I think humor helps make an interview less stressful, at least it did for me.

Originally posted by UCLA2000
The day before my Cornell interview I decided to tag along with my student host to his small group section. While in there, the physician in charge of the group decided to ask me questions about "african sleeping sickness", effects of anemia on malaria, and a few other things.

To his surprise I nailed every question. I later heard from my student host that the entire group of students was talking me up after I left.

The next morning I walked in to have my interview, and to my amazement it was the same physician who was running the small group section. After he saw me, he grabbed my file, ran up and said "Dr UCLA2k" it's your turn.

Haha - that's very cool.

So, I had an interview at UCSF about 2 weeks ago and keep in mind that their interviews are blind, so their interviewers only know your name and current residence, but nothing else about you:

Interviewer: So, tell me about your academic background?

Me: Well, I went to high school in Maryland, then went to college at xxx and have been living and working in NYC recently.

Interviewer: Well, where did you go to med school?

Me: Huh? I'm applying to med school now. This is a med school interview!

Interviewer: Oh, you look older. I thought you were applying for residency. I have a number of residency interviews to conduct in the next few weeks, so I guess I just got you confused.

Needless to say, it was a funny icebreaker. Unfortunately, he then proceeded to grill me on the intricacies of my lab research which I conducted a few years back. Oh well, I'm still crossing my fingers.

Well I just got back from a crazy two weeks of interviewing.

So how it started was that I was driving to the airport to catch a flight from Orlando, Florida to JFK, New York.

So I get in a freaking accident which was actually my fault. So then I am so afraid that I will miss my flight. Needless to say I almost missed the flight back to Orlando because my interview at Boston University ran late.

It all worked out.

This is the best thread, keep it up.

Originally posted by CaNEM
Haha, give me a break, what do you think we are? We are the physicians of tomorrow! The doctors of the future! We have to hold ourselves to strict standards...

no, seriously, though, what hotel was it??

It was Days Inn Gateway in D.C. And if you mention my name when she propositions you, she'll throw in a free cockring!

I just had my Wake interview yesterday, and one of the interviewers said, "Hi, I'm Dr. Peter Pan, pleasure to meet you." Once i realized that was the name on the door, i couldnt stop laughing, and i was tempted to ask him where Capt. Hook was. Nevertheless, he grilled me in the interview.

Originally posted by gooloogooloo
a 70 years old radiologist with a ring... if i were you, i will suspect that he must have an unhappy story about his past relationship, perhaps a broken family, perhaps his wife left her for being malpracticing or negligence or over-devotion into materialism such as money... whatever it is, for such an old hopeless rude man, i will be bold to dig it out. i will ask him why are you wearing a ring? u ever married? how come she left u? what happened? how come u seem unhappy?
i will give him a stress interview. most importantly, perhaps he needs someone to revive him by confrontation.
hope this makes u feel better. i just think that there are way too many old physician out there who lost the joy of life and have really no passion whatsoever in their career and their pathetic ill-managed life from the ever-so-stressful and hard-to-understand community.
quoted from atul gawande, " doctor belong to an insular world- one of hemorrhages and lab tests and people sliced open. we are for the moment the healthy few who live among the sick. and it is easy to become alien to the experiences and sometimes the values of the rest of civilization. ours is a world even our families do not grasp. this is, in certain respects, the experience of athletes and soldiers and professional musicians. unlike them, however, we are not only removed, we are also alone. once residency is over and you've settled in Sleepy Eye or the northern peninsula of Michigan, or for that matter, Manhattan, the slew of patients and isolation of practice take you away from anyone who really knows what it is like to cut a stomach cancer from a patient or lose her to a pneumonia afterward or answer the family's accusing questions or fight with insurers to get paid."

Umm.....I'd love to say that this year I interviewed with a really cool older MD, but I didn't. I interviewed with a really cool younger PhD. And I got in! So we'll see if this 70 year old is arround to teach me radiology in a few years

dude these stories are so great! keep them comming!

Originally posted by siempre595
Ok, this is not a personal story, but it's hilarious. I got this from a meeting about doing interviews. One of the WashU admit people was telling us about how to dress and how not to for interviews. Out of nowhere she starts giggling and finally says," I"m sorry, I was just thinking of this kid that came in with the tags hanging off his suit!" The whole room was howling cause she could not stop laughing.
She admitted him without even reading his stats a second time.

Well stupid me. I should have read this before my last interview.

But I wrote this in another thread, thought I should add it here. So I picked out a suit a week before my interview and bought it the day before. Then the morning of my interview went shopping for shoes. Never found any and finally I was running late so I figured oh well and rushed home. I got the suit out and went to put it on and on the pants, at the very bottom, was the stupid plastic security device. Yes the one you cannot take off without that machine. So I had to run to the store and get that taken off, change there and run to the interview. I ended up calling the interviewer and telling him I was running late due to traffic, but I made it on time. Maybe I shouldn't have called. It was funny I guess

MORAL: Check everything the day before - otherwise Murphy's Law will do its thing.

X

Originally posted by siempre595
smilez,
are you sure you wanna go to that school? sounds a bit dangerous heehee
what is with people anyways, fire alarms go off and everybody just sits around like it's normal....(sorry, not a jab at you, just speaking from personal experience).

Sempre595,

If the fire alarm goes off in my interview, I am just gonna get up and run. The hell with the interviewer.

X

Oh yeah almost forgot, so at the same interview (the one above), he comes and gets me from the lobby, we sit down, more like he sits down and my as* hits the seat:

Interviewer: So where else have you gotten interviews?
Me: (thinking should I answer) - so I name out the other places.
***Then he writes them down***

Nervewrecking I tell ya, nervewrecking.


X

I'd like to relate the worst interview question I've ever heard. It wasn't for medical school, but was posed by a merchant banker who was conducting interviews for one of the big investment banks. It's probably apocryphal (I heard it from someone who supposedly knew the interviewer). Anyway, this merchant banker always made a point of sitting behind a big and impressive desk in the interviewing room. The question he posed to candidates was-

"What's the difference between you and an arsehole?"

The successful candidate offered the laconic reply-

"this desk".

For those who didn't read my Interview Horror Story, you may want to check out an earlier thread I created:

http://www.studentdoctor.net/forums/...threadid=49868

So I walk into a conference room to meet my interviewer, and we shake hands, he says his name. We sit, what follows is word for word, there was NO CONTEXT whatsoever for this:

interviewer: So, I'm Jewish.
me (thinking I didn't hear correctly): What was that, sorry?
interviewer: I'm Jewish.
me (after short pause): oh, i'm not.

luckily he saw the humor in this and laughed. but who starts off an interview with that?? Must have been one of those, "let's see how she thinks on her feet" questions, right?

bump

Some of these stories are outrageous! Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it), I haven't had anything quite as incredible happen. But, this was pretty funny:

I had asked my student interviewer why he had chosen the school at which I was interviewing.

Him: "One of the important factors was that the students here are very bright yet freindly and not competitive at all. When I had interviewed at Hopkins, on the other hand, I saw the exact opposite. They seemed so overworked and stressed. I asked one of the students when she had been to DC last and she couldn't remember. It seemed like such a competivie environment. Here, however [pause] Oh, I forgot, you go to Hopkins. Oops."

I thought it was really funny that he just happened to pick on my undergrad institution. I just said that I could kinda see where he was coming from. He was pretty embarassed for the rest of the interview.

BTW, what everyone says about Hopkins undergrad and med is not true.

Hey all of yall that have an interview coming in COlumbia, if they tell you your interviewer is a Psychiatrist named Dr.Mc Dowell. Have a martini before going there. Dude, is weird, he focused more on how did that make you feel, and how do you feel about it now kinda questions. We were talking about some of my comm serv. with substance abuse and he decides to explain drug addiction to me through a joke, he said:
"Its just like a lil kid, whose Mom said: If you masterbate, you will become blind. He then says to himself, OK I will Jack off until i need to wear glasses"
I didnt know how t quite react to that, ofcourse i faked a laugh and he was like, i didnt know if you would get it.

bump

when my interviewer at Medical College of Ohio listed reasons why University of Cincinatti is a better school and any med student would get a better education there. He went on for quite a long time. Then asked me where I'd go. wtf

I was just thinking about this today. During an interview at one of my top choices, the interviewer took his pinky, put it in his nose up to around half of his first digit. After that he puts his pinky in his mouth and sucks it like he just dipped it into chocolate syrup. It makes me feel kind of ill to this day.

I swear this is true!! Yuck.

Originally posted by JBJ
I was just thinking about this today. During an interview at one of my top choices, the interviewer took his pinky, put it in his nose up to around half of his first digit. After that he puts his pinky in his mouth and sucks it like he just dipped it into chocolate syrup. It makes me feel kind of ill to this day.

I swear this is true!! Yuck.

I refuse to believe any rational human being would normally behave like this ( ) so, I say he did it just for a reaction. (what did you do, anyway?) Otherwise, I'd worry about his sanity....

C.

mine isn't nearly as funny as some of those posted in this thread, but i'll put it up here anyway...

at one of my interviews back in october, i asked my interviewer if there were any opportunities for research aside from md/phd (something the school ever made clear). the guy then looks me in the eye, and, dead serious, says "well, of course there ARE opportunities... but we generally frown upon our students having any outside interests. in fact we like to make sure that they have time for nothing else besides schoolwork. for example, the gym we have downstairs in the lounge... it's a big joke among the faculty here because we know that our students certainly don't have time to work out! so of course you COULD work in a lab, but most students here participate in very little besides classwork. i hope that answers your question."

yeah it answered my question alright...

Originally posted by Chieka
I refuse to believe any rational human being would normally behave like this ( ) so, I say he did it just for a reaction. (what did you do, anyway?) Otherwise, I'd worry about his sanity....

C.

I swear this really happened. When it happened, I just ignored it and pretended like it didn't happen. What could I say? I don't think that he actually got anything out of his nose, but I was kind of trying not to look.

I don't think that he did it just for the reaction, but who knows. It is an awfully gross thing for him to do to himself, just to get a small rise out of me.

The kicker is that I had to endure this, and they have not accepted me yet.

so I had an interview at morehouse on friday; it was all pretty standard stuff...I had one interviewer, and it seemed to go pretty well, no surprises etc.

BUT THEN, today (sunday) I get a call on my cell phone from some number I don't recognize....

ME: hello?
VOICE: hello, this is DR. ---- from Morehouse School of Medicine. I interviewed you on friday. I have some more questions for you about your work experiences after you graduated.

WTF?!!?

We talked for 15 minutes about my job and about classes I took after graduating. The whole time I'm thinking "this can't be happening." I had to pull my resume out to answer some of his questions... oh well, I figure it can't be a bad sign that he called. May be he just forgot to ask me that stuff on friday.

Originally posted by arktec
so I had an interview at morehouse on friday; it was all pretty standard stuff...I had one interviewer, and it seemed to go pretty well, no surprises etc.

BUT THEN, today (sunday) I get a call on my cell phone from some number I don't recognize....

ME: hello?
VOICE: hello, this is DR. ---- from Morehouse School of Medicine. I interviewed you on friday. I have some more questions for you about your work experiences after you graduated.

WTF?!!?

We talked for 15 minutes about my job and about classes I took after graduating. The whole time I'm thinking "this can't be happening." I had to pull my resume out to answer some of his questions... oh well, I figure it can't be a bad sign that he called. May be he just forgot to ask me that stuff on friday.

WTF is right! I guess I wouldn't assume it's a good or bad thing. He's probably writting up his report and just wants to mention a few things. Did you two discuss many interesting things and just ran out of time? Maybe he got distracted by your charm and witt?

Well, as long as we're speculating, I'd say the adcom was meeting and discussing you, and somebody wanted to know more. If my experience on academic library search committees is any guide, it's a good sign. Nobody asks for more information on people they're leaning towards rejecting.

This thread is great...

On the way to my closed file interview at Rush, I got trapped in the elevator between the second and third floors!! Thank God, I wasn't alone since Kerry Nolan, the interview coordinator, walks you to your interviews (She is awesome btw... but also claustrophobic!). She pressed the call button and said impatiently "Hello, we're trapped in the far elevator!" At first they couldn't hear her, so she repeated (almost screaming) "WE ARE TRAPPED IN THE ELEVATOR!!" In a few minutes, security came and knocked on the elevator door, asking if we were in there. We could hear them working, so we started to relax a little. Thankfully, Kerry calmed down and began telling me stories about her kids, etc. Well then we had been chatting for about five minutes when we hear the security guys knock on the door again and ask, "Are you still in here?"

We just both cracked up. "NOO, we evaporated!!" Please!

Anyway, it was a great stress reliever before the interview, except after that experience I was a little on the giddy side...

When I finally got to the interview, the doctor asked me if I wanted coffee, and I launched into a long tirade of how I would be bouncing off the walls, and I used to work at a coffee shop, and I drink too much coffee already, and I really should quit...
Then he looked at me very seriously and said

"Um, it's decaf" (freakshow!)

Gulp...

the admissions committee is supposed to meet tomorrow so I guess he just wanted to have answers to anything the committee might ask....man, I hope he calls me and tells me if I got in...

charm and wit? that would be nice, but I don't think I'm that good...I spent most of that interview wishing I had gone to the bathroom beforehand. (I drank a whole bottle of water at lunch!!)