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Interview with a med student you know?
- Thread starter psswrd
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It's on the med student's honor to exclude themselves from evaluating or interviewing you. I'm sure has happened, but that's extremely unprofessional and it would be bad news if the administration ever found out that the med student personally knew someone they interviewed/reviewed/recommended etc.
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Yep. It doesn't take much to say that you know the person and switch with someone else. This could be with reviewing applications (although they could just ignore the names on the app), interviews or whatever.
At my school, people are also supposed to exclude themselves from voting on applicants they know.
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Each school is different but in my experience, the interviewers are never "younger" than M3 and my school uses M4s as interviewers.
Assume that people who may know you or may know your relatives will interview you or read your applications, not because they didn't recuse themselves when they should have but that they didn't realize that they "knew" you or knew a relative of yours until it was too late. (I saw an application from someone who is the maternal grandchild of an acquaintance of mine -- different last name so I didn't make the connection until I noticed the college -- an unusual one-- and the hometown and remembered that "Gran" had told me that her grandchild was applying.)
Our admissions committee members and interviewers make a promise to keep information in the application confidential and not discuss it or share it outside of the committee but if you are going to write about something embarrassing, other people will read it.
Assume that people who may know you or may know your relatives will interview you or read your applications, not because they didn't recuse themselves when they should have but that they didn't realize that they "knew" you or knew a relative of yours until it was too late. (I saw an application from someone who is the maternal grandchild of an acquaintance of mine -- different last name so I didn't make the connection until I noticed the college -- an unusual one-- and the hometown and remembered that "Gran" had told me that her grandchild was applying.)
Our admissions committee members and interviewers make a promise to keep information in the application confidential and not discuss it or share it outside of the committee but if you are going to write about something embarrassing, other people will read it.
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Idk about the med students you've interacted with, but there's a certain level of maturity and professionalism that pretty much everyone in med school has, regardless of whether they're 22 or 32. No one is going to take your application and post it on the Internet for the world to see. There's nothing to be terrified about.
I am as traditional as they come, entering med school at 22, and I interviewed 4 or 5 applicants who are older than me. I wasn't uncomfortable with it and they didn't seem to be either. You underestimate the maturity level, which is a little degrading (also very few med students are as young as 20). They're also not the only ones deciding if you are right for med school. That's what the whole admissions committee thing is for. And honestly, once you start med school, you realize that everyone is on the same page and age really doesn't matter. I have classmates who are 35 and have advanced degrees and career experience, and yes, they absolutely have more maturity and more experience than I do, but at the end of the day, we are all 2nd year med students and it kind of levels the playing field. So in that sense, does it really matter how old your interviewer is?
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I did mean degrading, but that's besides the point. The point is that for the most part, student interviewers do not determine whether you will succeed in medical school. We really have no basis on which to judge that, especially because, at least at my school, student interviews are completely closed file. ONE of the criteria that we give feedback on is if the applicant would be a good fit at the school, which I think a student can easily assess regardless of age. It doesn't take some incredible level of maturity to do that. And honestly, the vast majority of people being interviewed would mesh well with the other students at the school, this is just a way to separate out the very rare antisocial creepy people or people that say/do unprofessional things in their interview. The rest of the interview is just a casual conversation about EC's, research, clinical exp, etc, which unless you have done something new since submitting your primary, there's nothing new to report to the adcom. It's also a chance for you to ask the interviewer questions about life at that school. Nowhere are we asked "can this applicant handle the rigors of med school?" and I don't think that is an appropriate question for a student interviewer to answer, regardless of if they're 20 or 26.
Btw, I'm sure you know this, as you said you were a mature 20 y/o, but age does not correlate to maturity. I know some incredibly immature people in their late 20's. And I was interviewed by a 27-year-old 4th year who asked a bunch of meaningless questions like "batman or superman?" and "if you could be any celebrity who would you be?" While it was a fun interview and we had a good conversation (and I got accepted) is that something you would call "mature"?
Just enjoy your student interviews and don't worry about their age. I think my school is one of the few that has first years interview, although they don't start until November and the second years do the interviews until then. So this may end up not even being a problem for you.
