Originally posted by MPS
I can understand how frustrating it must be to come up against an interview panel that expects you to be a "bleeding heart".
I'm at Cambridge University, and there is a very strong push here amongst the pre-clinical science faculty to produce researchers, and to an extent the admissions process reflects this. A standard interview question runs "if you could make any breakthrough in medicine, what would it be?". The answer that most applicants give is - "a cure for AIDS". However, one of my friends replied - "to design a computer that completely simulates the human brain". At most medical schools this would have condemned him. At Cambridge, however, they gave him a place.