2025-2026 Stanford

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ianmoone said:
my interview was lowkey kinda stressful and nerve wracking 🙁 welp guess i’ll be expecting that R come 2026
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As an MSTP applicant, Stanford was by far my least favorite med interview. The MSTP meetings were fine, but the MMI was a horrendous experience for me lol...interviewers outright said they disliked my answers ahahah
 
purrkinje said:
As an MSTP applicant, Stanford was by far my least favorite med interview. The MSTP meetings were fine, but the MMI was a horrendous experience for me lol...interviewers outright said they disliked my answers ahahah
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This is wild...
 
ianmoone said:
my interview was lowkey kinda stressful and nerve wracking 🙁 welp guess i’ll be expecting that R come 2026
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I was stumbling through responses and this was my worst interview so far, by quite a bit. ready for that R!
 
i know they don't allow you to take notes during the mmi 2-min preparation phase, but are you allowed to reference your other pre-made notes (bullets points about my activities to jog memory/bring up personal experiences during mmi)?
 
turtle17 said:
i know they don't allow you to take notes during the mmi 2-min preparation phase, but are you allowed to reference your other pre-made notes (bullets points about my activities to jog memory/bring up personal experiences during mmi)?
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No, they explicitly said no outside sources at all, no notes, and they also prefer that you reply without personal info/experiences unless the prompt asks for it. Your video also has to stay on the whole time unless you're on a rest station
 
purrkinje said:
As an MSTP applicant, Stanford was by far my least favorite med interview. The MSTP meetings were fine, but the MMI was a horrendous experience for me lol...interviewers outright said they disliked my answers ahahah
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I actually like that. I'd rather my interviewer tell me my answer sucks than not saying anything so I give a similar answer to another interview
 
I think a lot of people don't feel great about this interview and still have success later on, so don't despair!

I will say some of those questions were so strange, haha. They kind of reminded me of the UCSD MMI. I also thought it was interesting that we were told beforehand to not interject our personal experiences, but some of the interviewers lowk prompted me to do so...Not sure if we all had different interviewers per question yesterday, but none of them badgered/hammered me in the way I feared they would or made disparaging remarks, though I definitely did stumble a little as well. They all clearly had a predetermined list of follow up questions to ask, though. One of my interviewers was also veryyy late to the MMI too so that was kinda stressful (for the record, they did ask the interviewer and myself if we felt I needed to redo it bc of the time crunch and the interviewer said 'no don't worry' so I'm hoping that's a good thing??).

Definitely did not love the no notes aspect, but I understand why they did that I guess. I just ended up staring at the (often peculiar) question for the 2 minutes (like 😀) with my thoughts more disorganized than when the countdown began lol. I did like how they kept a traditional component, that was pretty refreshing! At least we can put this behind us for now and have a happy thanksgiving!!
 
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babysloth123 said:
I think a lot of people don't feel great about this interview and still have success later on, so don't despair!

I will say some of those questions were so strange, haha. They kind of reminded me of the UCSD MMI. I also thought it was interesting that we were told beforehand to not interject our personal experiences, but some of the interviewers lowk prompted me to do so...Not sure if we all had different interviewers per question yesterday, but none of them badgered/hammered me in the way I feared they would or made disparaging remarks, though I definitely did stumble a little as well. They all clearly had a predetermined list of follow up questions to ask, though. One of my interviewers was also veryyy late to the MMI too so that was kinda stressful (for the record, they did ask the interviewer and myself if we felt I needed to redo it bc of the time crunch and the interviewer said 'no don't worry' so I'm hoping that's a good thing??).

Definitely did not love the no notes aspect, but I understand why they did that I guess. I just ended up staring at the (often peculiar) question for the 2 minutes (like 😀) with my thoughts more disorganized than when the countdown began lol. I did like how they kept a traditional component, that was pretty refreshing! At least we can put this behind us for now and have a happy thanksgiving!!
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wait when did they say we can't mention personal experiences? i don't remember them telling me that when i interviewed, and mine seemed to be ok with me sharing personal experiences
 
morak said:
No, they explicitly said no outside sources at all, no notes, and they also prefer that you reply without personal info/experiences unless the prompt asks for it. Your video also has to stay on the whole time unless you're on a rest station
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med400 said:
wait when did they say we can't mention personal experiences? i don't remember them telling me that when i interviewed, and mine seemed to be ok with me sharing personal experiences
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@med400 I think when the associate dean was presenting how the MMI would work during the info session, she asked us to not include personal experiences in order for it to be as unbiased as possible, as @morak stated. I don't think it's a big deal if you did or didn't, the interviewers are clearly in the dark lol, some of mine literally asked me to recount "x time" even though the prompt didn't explicitly ask for that.
 
babysloth123 said:
@med400 I think when the associate dean was presenting how the MMI would work during the info session, she asked us to not include personal experiences in order for it to be as unbiased as possible, as @morak stated. I don't think it's a big deal if you did or didn't, the interviewers are clearly in the dark lol, some of mine literally asked me to recount "x time" even though the prompt didn't explicitly ask for that.
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good to know, thanks!!
 
did the post-interview update portal disappear for anybody else? i interviewed only a few weeks ago and mine's already gone, not sure what that means?
 
babysloth123 said:
I think a lot of people don't feel great about this interview and still have success later on, so don't despair!

I will say some of those questions were so strange, haha. They kind of reminded me of the UCSD MMI. I also thought it was interesting that we were told beforehand to not interject our personal experiences, but some of the interviewers lowk prompted me to do so...Not sure if we all had different interviewers per question yesterday, but none of them badgered/hammered me in the way I feared they would or made disparaging remarks, though I definitely did stumble a little as well. They all clearly had a predetermined list of follow up questions to ask, though. One of my interviewers was also veryyy late to the MMI too so that was kinda stressful (for the record, they did ask the interviewer and myself if we felt I needed to redo it bc of the time crunch and the interviewer said 'no don't worry' so I'm hoping that's a good thing??).

Definitely did not love the no notes aspect, but I understand why they did that I guess. I just ended up staring at the (often peculiar) question for the 2 minutes (like 😀) with my thoughts more disorganized than when the countdown began lol. I did like how they kept a traditional component, that was pretty refreshing! At least we can put this behind us for now and have a happy thanksgiving!!
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I could not have summed up my experience more perfectly, just add in a lot more scatterbrained thoughts and you got me!
 
med400 said:
did the post-interview update portal disappear for anybody else? i interviewed only a few weeks ago and mine's already gone, not sure what that means?
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You had to submit your updates within a week of your interview 😔
 
babysloth123 said:
@med400 I think when the associate dean was presenting how the MMI would work during the info session, she asked us to not include personal experiences in order for it to be as unbiased as possible, as @morak stated. I don't think it's a big deal if you did or didn't, the interviewers are clearly in the dark lol, some of mine literally asked me to recount "x time" even though the prompt didn't explicitly ask for that.
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I don’t remember this being mentioned at all on my day… or maybe it was but now my memories are all blurry. Plus some prompts and some interviewers actually did ask me to reflect on my personal experiences.
 
hihihohohaha84 said:
I don’t remember this being mentioned at all on my day… or maybe it was but now my memories are all blurry. Plus some prompts and some interviewers actually did ask me to reflect on my personal experiences.
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Wasn't mentioned during mine, either! I was just told not to say names of places or schools, identifying info like that. Agree with all of the comments here about it being a wildly challenging interview.
 
I feel less bad about myself now that everyone feels the same that interview was challenging. For a bit, I pretty much kicked myself in the butt figuratively for rambling and fumbling finding words for my answers for some questions (which did not help given I'm not a native speaker).
 
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med400 said:
wait when did they say we can't mention personal experiences? i don't remember them telling me that when i interviewed, and mine seemed to be ok with me sharing personal experiences
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I shared personal experiences and was advised to lol from my ECs. I didn’t share my school name or anything like that or organization name to prevent bias
 
vex10 said:
I shared personal experiences and was advised to lol from my ECs. I didn’t share my school name or anything like that or organization name to prevent bias
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yeah i pretty much did the same
 
Equivalent-Pudding15 said:
I hadn't checked this since my interview in August and I thought I was the only one who thought that was an insanely stressful and awful experience. Glad to see this is a universal experience!
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why’d you find it to be awful? i interviewed recently and thought it was relatively chill
 
Equivalent-Pudding15 said:
I had an interviewer tell my publications were worthless since I'm not first author which just felt odd.
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I'm crying 🤣 I'm sorry you went through this but it just shows how truly random this process is. One adcom AT stanford might have given you an interview because of your pubs, one might have some ridiculous conception about first authorship bc of some biased personal experience, and another might think only basic science research counts or whatever it is. Even when they try to do MMI to level the playing field it is still so biased.
 
throwingthisinthemix said:
I'm crying 🤣 I'm sorry you went through this but it just shows how truly random this process is. One adcom AT stanford might have given you an interview because of your pubs, one might have some ridiculous conception about first authorship bc of some biased personal experience, and another might think only basic science research counts or whatever it is. Even when they try to do MMI to level the playing field it is still so biased.
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Oh sorry I should have clarified this was for my PSTP interview!! The MMI was a different beast lol
 
vex10 said:
How do you know this?
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If you look at past threads, it almost always the Wednesday closest to the 15th. Also on MSAR it has the "Acceptance date - earliest notice" as January 16th and last year it had it listed as January 17th but the decision came out the 15th. Based off that, just seems likely it'll be coming out on the 14th this year.
 
Equivalent-Pudding15 said:
If you look at past threads, it almost always the Wednesday closest to the 15th. Also on MSAR it has the "Acceptance date - earliest notice" as January 16th and last year it had it listed as January 17th but the decision came out the 15th. Based off that, just seems likely it'll be coming out on the 14th this year.
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The January decisions would most likely be for Sept-Oct interviewees, right?
 
OOS II! submitted 10/8

I’m pretty nervous about this interview, given others’ experiences on this thread. Any advice for how to prepare?
 
cute.as.duck said:
OOS II! submitted 10/8

I’m pretty nervous about this interview, given others’ experiences on this thread. Any advice for how to prepare?
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one of the mmi stations asks u to do an interpretive dance of ur "why medicine" answer so practice beforehand!
 
cute.as.duck said:
OOS II! submitted 10/8

I’m pretty nervous about this interview, given others’ experiences on this thread. Any advice for how to prepare?
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I would say practice as many questions as possible beforehand using available online resources!! I found that my questions were very similar to the ones I practiced, including a few being the exact same. Best of luck!!
 
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