*HORRIBLE* Northwestern Interview Experience

[kreno]

That Panel thing is TOTALLY luck of the draw 'cuz it really depends on who you end up being stuck with. My two student peers were idiots from harvard and stanford, and two of the faculty members hated eachother - it was obvious... the student interviewer was 20 minutes late. Freaking horrible.... jeez... oh well another rejection...

the school is pretty cool though. and lots of cute girls!

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[gower]

You may or may not be correct about the idiot student interviewers and the faculty who obviously hated each other.

But those "idiots" were, after, all students at NW, which you are appraently not going to be, and the faculty members dislike of each other may not have been at all what you thought you saw.

Group interviews have a "kicker" that individual, one-on-one interviews usually lack: interaction among among, in this case, seven people, 4 interviewers and 3 interviewees. How you behave with respect to your two competitors can be important. You may have witnessed a scripted performance designed to elicit how you behave with respect to others. Trying to put down your competitors is never a good sign!

Of course, I don't know what was going on, but as an aspiring physician you should be open to different interpretations of what you think you see or hear. Otherwise, differential diagnosis will always be a problem for you.

 

[Polar girl]

Um, he didn't say the students at NW were idiots--just the two people interviewing with him. And it kind of seems in bad taste to me to imply that they're all better than him because they're at Northwestern and he's not going to be. For all you know, he may be accepted at better places.

And just because someone posts about a frustrating experience does not mean he won't be a good doctor, or that his interpretations were not right.

 

[Wrigleyville]

The panel interviews don't seem bad at all. I've had them at Emory and Northwestern now, and they seem lower stress than one-on-one interviews, because you aren't the focus the whole time. You have a chance to relax while the other people are answering questions.

And as far as it being totally "luck of the draw", I'd say that is the case with any interview. If you get a jerk interviewer in a one-on-one, there's not much you can do about that either. And if the other people you interview with give terrible answers, it can only make you look good in comparison.

 

[kreno]

Yeah I was talking about my two student interviewee peers... not med students.

And there was no interaction; rather, each faculty member would ask one of us a question (we never had repeat questions... that is, I never had to answer a question someone else already answered except for the first "why medicine" generic question).

Thus, there was no group interaction, with the exception of a 5 minute "team problem" we had to do which was lame in and of itself.

Overall, we were only together for 1 hour and 15 minutes, and in no way did I feel they got to know me like some of my interviewers did at other schools.

Moreoever, it was a blind interview... they didn't know anything about us... so for the first literally 40 minutes they just asked us questions that could have been taken right of the primary AMCAS application.

As far as being scripted..... it wasn't. I thought about that too... but, it wasn't. The two faculty that didn't like eachother obviously just were two different people and were annoying the other with the questions one was asking. One was a loud spoken, conservative white dude... the other a liberal, soft-spoken black dude... and you could tell that they just didn't click. Put another way... the friction that was appartent didn't manifest itself towards us directly (which is a good thing i guess).

And, to top it off, like a side, one of the student interviewers (a NW student now) was 20 minutes late...


it just blew.

thanks polar girl.. i realy am just venting.

 

[Gleevec]

Originally posted by gower
You may or may not be correct about the idiot student interviewers and the faculty who obviously hated each other.

But those "idiots" were, after, all students at NW, which you are appraently not going to be, and the faculty members dislike of each other may not have been at all what you thought you saw.

Group interviews have a "kicker" that individual, one-on-one interviews usually lack: interaction among among, in this case, seven people, 4 interviewers and 3 interviewees. How you behave with respect to your two competitors can be important. You may have witnessed a scripted performance designed to elicit how you behave with respect to others. Trying to put down your competitors is never a good sign!

Of course, I don't know what was going on, but as an aspiring physician you should be open to different interpretations of what you think you see or hear. Otherwise, differential diagnosis will always be a problem for you.

Just shut up gower

 

[Neuronix]

I went through the panel interview sillyness (and yes, I do think it is totally silly) two weeks ago, and our group came up with some ways to impress the interview panel.

Here goes:

5. Dress up and act like The Three Stooges (*knyuck knyuck*)
4. WE ARE THREE AMIGOS!
3. Have each applicant give gifts to whoever the highest ranking adcom is in the panel. The three gifts must be gold, frankensense, and mir.
2. Wear a sock puppet on one hand. Make sure the interviewers ask questions to the fourth applicant, Mr. Stinky.
1. Have someone call you on your cell phone in the middle of the panel interview. Tell the whole panel "Yo hold up dawgs, I got a call on my celly".

There were some more hilarious ideas, but I forgot them. I just stuck with the old strategy of telling the panel "god these people I'm interviewing with are idiots" and telling the panel how cool my suit was. I think I should be accepted very soon.

 

[Woots32]

At my panel interview, when they gave us the hypothetical/ethical dillemina scenario, one of my fellow interviewees asked, "What? Do you want us to act it out?" So we ended up doing a little skit about how to tell a surgeon he shouldn't operate after he'd been drinking. The interviewers actually got into it, and seemed pretty amused. Afterwards, we were all pretty embarassed though.

 

[gotgirth]

I really didn't see the point to the group interview at Northwestern. Potentially they could see how interviewees react with other people, but the format of the interview didn't even permit such an observation. All they did was ask questions to individuals one person at a time...so it was more like 4 individual interviews than a group interview. Sure we did all interact at the end in their "group task", but most of the interviewers seemed to look at that as more of a formality than a test of the interviewees. Overall a big thumbs down to the group interview process (although my interviewers and 2/3 other interviewees were all cool people).

On a side note, after leaving Northwestern, I can't say I was convinced that the level of education received there is worth the extra $$ over other schools. I think if I went there I'd be paying more for the location & atmosphere than for the education itself.

 

[Wrigleyville]

Interviews are one of the least-effective means of assessing a person's qualifications and their likelihood to succeed or be effective at a job. Having multiple interviews or interviewers improves the system somewhat, because it makes it less vulnerable to personality clashes and things like that.

I guess having more than one prospective student interview before a panel at the same time strikes a balance between effectiveness and time considerations (after all, the panels are staffed by doctors, who are generally busy).

 

[GoodMonkey]

ha that panel interview was interesting for sure. i had one complete tool in mine (TOTALLY prerehearsed answers, sounded like a weenie, always cut people off, didn't listen to what others said) and one nice guy who was soft spoken. i thought the whole things went horribly and that i came off badly, but i got in, oddly enough. they tried (unsuccessfully) to make us interact, but it just wasn't happening. even for the 'solve a problem as a team' part. hm. guess it's pretty much a crap shoot for everyone in that panel situation.

woots- your acting things out story is tooo funny to picture.