Congrats medilicious on your acceptance! You must have really impressed them.
I really have no idea what they'll make of my interview. They managed to find the one topic that CAN rattle me, and boy did it! I think I did OK with the ethical questions though, as well as the standard interview questions. Nonetheless it was basically your worst nightmare of an interview.
So I'm trying to think what I could tell you that would help the rest of you...
Some things we already know--not every in-state applicant gets a secondary, and not every person who gets a secondary gets an interview. One out of three interviewees eventually gets in (this is hearsay--I was not actually in the room when Dr. Hunt said this).
The executive admissions committee meets weekly or bi-weekly starting in January. The meeting after your interview, they decide whether to admit you, reject you, or put you in the "competitive" category. Very few people are either admitted or rejected outright at that point. At any point over the next few months, they can pull someone out of the "competitive" pool and admit them, but they really want to keep spaces available until they've seen all the people they plan to interview. Then at the end, they admit enough to fill the class, and create a ranked alternate list of about 25 people. Those 25 can expect to get in also, as not everyone accepted will choose UW, and some people defer. They also have an unranked alternate list, and Dr. Samson chooses who gets in from that list, if there are more than 25 spots to fill. Everyone else gets a rejection letter.
Let's see, what else?
I was asked several ethical questions; one was the standard end-of life issue, another was about allocation of finite funding to preventive care vs. treatment, and then there was a discussion of universal health care and whether the US should have it, and why we don't, what should be done about drug costs for the elderly, and any number of other questions with no easy answer. They also asked me who the Secretary of Health and Human Services was. I didn't know, but it's Tommy Thompson for those of you keeping score at home.
And then there were the standard questions; why should we admit you? how would your best friend describe you? what do you do for fun? tell me about the last book you read, how do you deal with disappointment?, etc. I didn't have anything planned to say, but the answers came pretty easily despite that.
Then they asked me who I thought should be Time's Person of the Year.
So that part of it was interesting and fun. It doesn't bug me at all to have someone throw me a challenging scenario and ask me what I'd do, and then to keep adding details that make it harder and harder to find the right answer. In fact, I kind of enjoy it. I just wish that part of the interview had come first. maybe if it had started off well, I could have held my composure through the difficult parts. But oh well. It's done, and I did the best I could. I'll find out soon enough what they thought.
Anyway, I don't mean to scare anyone--the questions I had difficulty on were about things completely unique to my application. So I don't think anyone else should be alarmed or apprehensive because of my experience. Really, I mean that. The office staff were very nice, and everyone I met did their best to put me at ease. So unless you have a closet full of academic skeletons, like I do, it should be a pleasant experience.
