Difference in 2+ Interviews

[rainbowsunshine]

For schools with 2+ traditional interviews... if one interview goes exceedingly well and the other does not and the report for each interview indicates this, how is that reconciled by the admissions committee? How does it differ depending on who the positive/negative rating may come from (ie clinician, student, adcom, etc.)?

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[Goro]

Let' me give you the skinny on how we do it at my school.

Your scores would be averaged.

Then we'd dissect the reviewer's comments to see what was the difference. The scenario you asked about is very common; sometimes we wonder "did interview the same person?"

If an interviewer is known as a hardass and always gives poor or weak scores, then they're typically discounted. On the other had, if said interviewer gives a high score, that says something very positive.

The same holds true for interviewers who are softies, a bad score from them gets our attention right away.

Whether a student or a faculty member gives the review is weighed less; we tend to trust our student interviewers.

Keep in mind that at MD schools, they have to whittle down the applicant pool somehow, even at the interview level.

 

[rainbowsunshine]

So it’s common practice to assess an interviewer’s report relative to their other reports? Is there an element of standardization to account for the differences of each interviewer?

 

[Mr.Smile12]

"Common practice"? You're getting into file deliberation which is highly variable among admissions committees. I'm not sure what you mean by "standardizing" differences between each interviewer in traditional interviews. (You could with MMI's a bit better because the number of data points is much higher.)

I would say Goro's description is generally typical. We often will ask the interviewers directly to justify their comments. If a reviewer isn't specific with the justification, the admissions committee will have to make its decision as they please based on the whole file. Which they would do anyway.

 

[rainbowsunshine]

Well it sounds like if you know someone is harsh, you account for that, which to me sounds like standardizing their results to be fair to other interviewees and to minimize bias

 

[Goro]

Well it sounds like if you know someone is harsh, you account for that, which to me sounds like standardizing their results to be fair to other interviewees and to minimize bias

We don't do this "to be fair to other interviewees", this isn't NBOME or NBME normalizing exam scores. It's just for that particular interviewee, at that moment in time.

And it still depends upon what the interviewer wrote, the app, the other interviewers' scores and comments, and even the time of year. When our class is getting full, we can afford to be more picky. At the start of the cycle, we tend to favor the interviewees.

 

[Mr.Smile12]

Well it sounds like if you know someone is harsh, you account for that, which to me sounds like standardizing their results to be fair to other interviewees and to minimize bias

I would say there should be context that we would want in the comments. It's justifying the score based on the rubric upon which they were trained. It doesn't matter to me if the evaluator is harsh as long as they consistently adhere to the rubric. It's not standardizing to a z-score (the way Casper scores are normalized).

 

[Mr.Smile12]

I also wanted to add from my perspective... sometimes an evaluator is harsh because they really are passionate about making sure the candidate is teachable. They look for specific signs that show a certain level of grit and focus along with humility. When there is no rubric, the (faculty) evaluator wants to see if you are the type of person they can help with intense mentoring, especially if the candidate shows borderline metrics. Sometimes the "stress interview" reveals a lot about how the student adjusts to meeting professional expectations. We do deal a lot with gatekeeper mentality when that responsibility should fall on the committee.

 

[LizzyM]

There are the interviewers who "like everyone" and who classify 85% of the interviewed applicants in the top quarter of the pool. There are those who are tough by comparison and who might be less likely to mark someone as "super star" and, perhaps, more likely to express reservations about a candidate. There is a lot of idiosyncrasy in between with interviewers that have their particular pet peeves and characteristics that are important to them. In reading reviewers' comments, we do as my mother would advise, "Consider the source."