Interview Technique Question

[Hopetocure2012]

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Ladies and Gents

I was wondering if y'all thought it was okay to use my personal statement and secondaries as my main resources for answering my interview questions?

For example when the interviewer will ask "Why medicine, why school X?" I will give reasons and examples from my essays as I feel those are the best examples, and even the same questions were asked on the essays.

Thoughts? Also, any interviewing techniques in general? I have an interview coming up and I cannot wait 🙂

Cheers!

 

[cs24]

Ladies and Gents

I was wondering if y'all thought it was okay to use my personal statement and secondaries as my main resources for answering my interview questions?

For example when the interviewer will ask "Why medicine, why school X?" I will give reasons and examples from my essays as I feel those are the best examples, and even the same questions were asked on the essays.

Thoughts? Also, any interviewing techniques in general? I have an interview coming up and I cannot wait 🙂

Cheers!

Discussing your PS, essay topics, and most importantly activities from you application is ideal in my opinion. Hopefully your interviewer has read your application and this will allow you to go into even more detail as to why you did those activities and how they influenced you to grow as a person and made you unique. The activities/experiences that really influenced your choice to go into medicine should definitely be on your AMCAS and referred to in your essays, so I don't think you should be able to answer that question without referring to parts of your application.

As far as interview advice, that is all over the site if you do a search, but in my opinion, just relax, be yourself and be personable.

 

[Hopetocure2012]

Thanks for the wisdom cs24.

 

[survivordo]

This is exactly what you should do. The interviewer likely read your application materials before hand and will expect consistent answers. You don't want to be reinventing the wheel. Rather, you should be elaborating on your previous answers.

Survivor DO

 

[LizzyM]

On the other hand, don't quote from your application as if it is a script. This can make it seem that you are regurgitating someone else's words and aren't speaking from the heart.

 

[Narmerguy]

Just be honest. If the relevant/important information needed to answer a question is in your PS as well, don't try to avoid it just to "hit 'em with something new," and certainly don't try to keep forcing the same message through whether or not it's actually true (or practical).

I imagine there's much in the PS that you didn't have room to expand on that you will have much more opportunity to talk about once you are in the interview.

 

[NickNaylor]

Just be honest. If the relevant/important information needed to answer a question is in your PS as well, don't try to avoid it just to "hit 'em with something new," and certainly don't try to keep forcing the same message through whether or not it's actually true (or practical).

I imagine there's much in the PS that you didn't have room to expand on that you will have much more opportunity to talk about once you are in the interview.

I think this is the best and most pragmatic approach. Going out of your way to try and do one thing or another probably won't produce the results you're expecting. Given a choice, I would try and bring in outside info as that will give your interviewer additional information that he/she wouldn't have access to otherwise. However, this should be a secondary goal - goal #1 is answering questions with experiences, examples, etc. that best answer the question or best illustrate the point you're trying to make, whether those things are in your app or no.

Sent from my Nexus 7

 

[music2doc]

Ladies and Gents

I was wondering if y'all thought it was okay to use my personal statement and secondaries as my main resources for answering my interview questions?

For example when the interviewer will ask "Why medicine, why school X?" I will give reasons and examples from my essays as I feel those are the best examples, and even the same questions were asked on the essays.

Thoughts? Also, any interviewing techniques in general? I have an interview coming up and I cannot wait 🙂

Cheers!

Your essays shouldn't be your "source material" -- that should be your life. That said, if they don't align, I would be quite concerned. If I had read an applicant's PS & essays prior to the interview and asked questions and just got back the exact same stories, etc., I would wonder just how boring this person really is. On the other hand, if I got back responses that seemed TOTALLY different, I would be very concerned. My ideal candidate would be one whose responses in the interview closely align with his/her entire application AND are unique (i.e., new to me as this shows the applicant has MORE depth than what is on paper, not less). If all you are is what's on paper, you're not going to be much good in med school. Those are the people they are trying to screen out.

 

[pre med 2014]

It was really hard to bs my way through job interviews after college knowing I am going to med school.

"So where do you see yourself in 5 years?" Me: "advancing within the company into a role with more responsibility, blah blah blah "

Hopefully these will be easier!!

 

[pp77]

In my experience, most interviewers haven't done anything more than skim your application, so by all means emphasize whatever it is you're most proud of. On the other hand, if they have read your application and want to talk about some specific thing or another, you should probably try to flesh it out a little bit rather than just re-capitulate what you wrote.