Interview questions?!

[sirmio]

---

Members don't see this ad.

I have an interview with Johns Hopkins coming up (yay) and I'm hoping you fine folks can give me an idea of the sort of questions post-bac interviews generally involve, pretty, pretty please!

My biggest concern is demonstrating a solid interest in medicine. I just graduated college last year and worked as a counselor to troubled kids but haven't had any real clinical or (medical) research experience. This is my Achilles' heel. I did do independent humanities research in college and managed to demonstrate something of a commitment to my field (literature) while I was enrolled. But medicine has come up sort of out of the blue, just in the course of career research and self-reflection. But should I maybe talk to a couple of doctors before the interview? Or ??

I usually go into stuff like this blind but I'd like to be a little more prepared this time. I got more than a little intimidated looking at the profiles of the past few years' classes on JHU's website. Help!

 

[notdeadyet]

One possible resource to look at would be the SDN interview feedback site. The postbac questions would probably be different than those for the med school, but any practice you can give yourself trying to answer out-of-the-blue questions about yourself, your values and your intentions would probably serve you well.

http://www.studentdoctor.net/interview/

 

[notdeadyet]

Congrats on getting to the interview stage, by the way. Nicely done...

 

[Kateroni18]

I have an interview with Johns Hopkins coming up (yay) and I'm hoping you fine folks can give me an idea of the sort of questions post-bac interviews generally involve, pretty, pretty please!

My biggest concern is demonstrating a solid interest in medicine. I just graduated college last year and worked as a counselor to troubled kids but haven't had any real clinical or (medical) research experience. This is my Achilles' heel. I did do independent humanities research in college and managed to demonstrate something of a commitment to my field (literature) while I was enrolled. But medicine has come up sort of out of the blue, just in the course of career research and self-reflection. But should I maybe talk to a couple of doctors before the interview? Or ??

I usually go into stuff like this blind but I'd like to be a little more prepared this time. I got more than a little intimidated looking at the profiles of the past few years' classes on JHU's website. Help!

Being a graduate of the Hopkins Post-Bacc program I can try to be of some help. I was pretty nervous during my interview so I don't remember the exact questions all that well, but I do remember being asked, "Why do you want to be a doctor?" and mostly questions that were specific to my application. So, you might be asked something along the lines of how working with troubled kids will be helpful to you as a physician, how your humanities experience will set you apart from other doctors, and how you might incorporate your interest in humanities throughout your post-bacc years . For example, I was asked about my computer science degree and talked about how CS helped me develop problem solving skills that would be an asset as a physician and discussed wanting to continue computer-integrated surgery research at Hopkins. They also asked why I thought I would be a good fit at their program compared to others that I applied to.

Overall, the JHU interview not high stress...or at least it's not supposed to be. Dave Trabilsy(he's on the website) will be one of the people interviewing you and he's really easy going and easy to talk to...not to mention an AMAZING premed advisor. He sees through BS and kissing up pretty easily though, so just be yourself and honest and you'll be fine.

Good luck!