Hi guys. I was applying to Upstate last year and I'm an MS1 now. Process is lengthy but fun. Anyhow, a few things I wanna say.
- When you get an interview invite, wait for the official email invite before scheduling your interview date. If you just check the My Upstate website and saw your interview invite, and schedule your interview date, it will not go into the system and will be wiped ==> you'll have to schedule it again. I made the same mistake last year. Luckily, I called their office and was able to get the date I want even though it was no longer available on the calendar.
- On your application status (or something like that) where it says "Preferred campus is not selected" or something like that... It means you have not selected Syracuse or Binghamton for your clinical years. Don't worry about it. You will be given a form on your interview date to specify which campus you want to apply for. You can fill it out and turn it in right after your interview (recommended), or bring that form home and mail it in. Choosing Syracuse or Binghamton is not mutually exclusive. You have options of "Only Syracuse" or "Only Binghamton" or "Prefer Syracuse" or "Prefer Binghamton". If you don't care which campus, but have preference of one over the other, then choose one of the "Prefer" options. If you are adamant about going to a specific campus, then choose "Only" option.
- This year is the first that we're rolling out MMI (multiple mini interviews) interview format. There will be 8 stations. Each station is a room with a monitor outside at the door. You will read the question on the monitor, perhaps have a minute to think about it. Then you walk into the room and meet your interviewer (either a student or a faculty member). You then will have 5 minutes to answer your question. After that, you go outside and wait for 2 minutes while the interviewer fill out the evaluation sheet about you. Then you move on to the next station. One of the 8 stations will be an essay station where you will answer a prompt (computer-based). It seems like this is kinda replace the prompts for the secondary essay. You will be asked to sign an affidavit not to share the content of your interview questions with anyone else. Please follow that. After all, it'll be to your disadvantage that others competing against you have more time to prepare for questions that you only have a minute to prepare for.
- It seems like this year interview day will finish earlier than last year. You should be done around 1:30pm. After that you're free to sit in any lecture or lab that's going on (i recommend the anatomy lab if it's it's available). Otherwise go to MLC lecture. By the way, this year interviews are gonna be done around January instead of March like last year because the new interview process allows it to be done faster.
- Utilize the student host if you can. It'll save you $.
- Upstate is under probation as of right now. LCME will come back to visit us in March 2013 and we think that they'll lift the probation by then because we have fixed all the issues that we were cited for.
- If you have any questions, I'll be more than happy to answer them.
Congrats to those who got interviews. Good luck!
Edit:
I forgot to mention that there are some special Wednesdays when there will be 2 interview sessions: morning and afternoon. You can choose to do the morning one (9:30-10:45am) or the afternoon one (1:30-2:45pm), hopefully when you schedule your interview date. For the morning session, the MMI will be done from 9:30-10:45pm, followed by Q&A session with the admission director, then campus tour and reception, and finishes at 1:30pm. For the afternoon session, MMI will be done from 1:30 - 2:45pm, followed by Q&A session, then campus tour and reception. I'm not sure when the afternoon session will conclude, but my guess is 5:30pm.
