Interviews (or interviewers) that turned you off on a school.

[Flaxmoore]

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School names/dates redacted, of course. 😉

I had an interview once at a school that seemed almost perfect. Great USMLE scores, lots of placements in my possible specialties, a couple great hospitals to do clerkships through, this place had it all. It was my #2 choice school, though they never knew that. 😉

Then the day started. I had made it into town the night before, and was pumped for the interviews. Got to the office, checked in, and the welcome speech was supposed to be at 9. Wrong. We sat and waited until 10:30. No explanation was ever given.

During the classic "Why you should be here" speech, the speaker never said anything positive about the school itself, but a lot of "This is what other schools do, but we're better." He also got some facts wrong about the school and the curriculum (easy to spot when he contradicts his Powerpoint).

Throughout the tour, I never saw a student who appeared happy to be there. They were just coming off a weekend, there wasn't an exam that day, but the place just seemed dour.

The interviewer asked a couple questions, and I answered with some well-thought statements, but there was no followup. If you ask about who I am and I answer for 5 minutes, there should be places for questions. All in all, it felt as if I was somehow wasting his time.

I walked into that day wanting to go there. I walked out hoping I didn't. Thankfully, my #1 choice came through! 😀

How about anyone else? Ever have a school totally turn you off?

 

[Jolie South]

I had a horrible interview experience that turned me off as well.

The students that were talking about the school couldn't stop themselves from telling private jokes and laughing idiotically throughout their speech. Also, my student interviewer had nothing good to say at all about the school and neither did my senior faculty interviewer.

All of this is strange because I see a lot of people with this school as their top choice post interview.
I'm like, "were we at the same place?"

 

[Textuality]

I had one interviewer repeatedly say how he didn't want to "trick me" into attending that school...

And at another school, there was a really awkward student lunch, in that we were never allowed to actually talk to the students we were eating with. Instead, a professor-type insisted on talking at us for over an hour about his own random projects. Yeah...that was a pretty big turn off.

 

[aaj117]

I had one interview that turned me off entirely as well. The only good thing about the whole day was that i finally got to meet an SDNer that i was very curious about. But the day was ridiculous...the "presentation" about the school was less than five minutes, including the financial part. The tour was just over ten minutes, and the lunch with the students was cut short for me because my itnerview was scheduled during it; my interview lasted an hour, and i wasn't even at the school for two whole hours. My interviewer was just rude to me; he wasn't like trying to make it a stress interview, he just really didn't think that i should go into medicine and he made that clear. The whole day just sucked. I went to the bathroom halfway through and texted my best friend who was meeting me there after so we could go out shopping and for food, and told her to hurry because i had told her to get there at 3, assuming it'd be a few hours, and instead needed to tell her more like 1/1:30. Leaving was the best part. Coincidentally, the week that i was supposed to recieve my decision in the mail, i was away and my neighbor threw out all of my mail. I called the school to inform them and find out if they could re-send it or just let me know, and they were rude on the phone and wouldn't even take down my name to look up whether or not a decision had been made. I still have no idea whether or not i got in. The other SDNer that i met there withdrew shortly after his or her experience there as well.

 

[Geekchick921]

While I haven't started actually applying to med schools yet, I went to a college fair when I was a junior in high school, and there was a representative from Julliard there. Julliard, as you probably know, is an extremely prestigious fine/performing arts university in NYC. I wanted to go into the performing arts at the time, and it was suggested to me to do music education instead of just music because they you could teach if you don't make it.

Well, I walked up to the Julliard booth, and asked if they had music education there (as a major). Then the (male) Julliard rep looked down his nose at me and said with a cattiness I still don't think I've ever seen a woman come close to, "No, you have to know how to play your instrument before you apply." I just stared at him in disbelief for a few seconds, turned back to my mom (who'd heard the conversation) and said, "Well... f*ck this school." and kept walking. I didn't so much as pick up an application for one of the best performing arts schools in the country. Impressions are a big thing.

 

[VoiceofReason]

One of my interview days definitely didn't turn out as I expected. Like someone else said: I was pretty excited about the school going in, but after I left, I was hoping that I wouldn't be forced to go there.

To start, the facilities were really unimpressive -- pretty rundown. The presentations given by the professors were really shoddy, unpracticed, and at times unprofessional. One of the presenters even said, "we have this extra long addiction module here because, well basically we know you're all gonna be addicts so we decided you should at least know about it." We were also made to answer a suprise essay question almost immediately after we arrived, which I thought was dumb. The students that showed up for the lunch were either horribly overbearing, or just plain odd. One MS-1 seemed to be genuinely unsure what the hell she was doing in a professional school, she did nothing but complain about all the horrible studying she had to do (really, like a teenager) and admitted that she was "one of those people that probably shouldn't have made it in." My interviews themselves were kind of strange also. One was with the dean of admissions, who seemed tired of his job. He asked me the standard questions, then sort of stopped and asked in a resigned way, "Do you.. *sigh* .. know what goes on here?" It really showed in his mannerisms that the poor quality of their students sucks the life out of him. lol.

 

[jmw38]

i had an interview that really turned me off from a school. the school was near my hometown, and my interviewer actually turned out to be the husband of one of my high school teachers (who i loved, and i think the feeling was mutual, haha) so i thought we had a nice rapport going on. he even got his phd at the same university i went to undergrad! but then he started asking me questions that had to do with life after death, and injecting his personal beliefs into the conversation, more than injecting, he definitely pressed them upon me. now i was not at odds with his beliefs but it was uncomfortable all the same. i actually started CRYING when i walked out of the interview (thank god the interview day was over)

i got accepted though... ????

 

[Lshapley]

Oh, Geekchick, that sounds terrible. That rep was catty, but you also got some bad advice going in. Julliard is a conservatory and is 100% devoted to training performers, not educators. Your question, to him, was probably like someone asking a Harvard medical school admissions officer if they could go to med school, but focus more on nursing than medicine. No doubt the rep was a b1tch (which is not surprising in the performing arts circle, too) and should have taken the time to be nicer. Take it from me, though, you are in a better place now.

Besides, everyone knows all the best performers drop out or turn down Julliard anyway!

While I haven't started actually applying to med schools yet, I went to a college fair when I was a junior in high school, and there was a representative from Julliard there. Julliard, as you probably know, is an extremely prestigious fine/performing arts university in NYC. I wanted to go into the performing arts at the time, and it was suggested to me to do music education instead of just music because they you could teach if you don't make it.

Well, I walked up to the Julliard booth, and asked if they had music education there (as a major). Then the (male) Julliard rep looked down his nose at me and said with a cattiness I still don't think I've ever seen a woman come close to, "No, you have to know how to play your instrument before you apply." I just stared at him in disbelief for a few seconds, turned back to my mom (who'd heard the conversation) and said, "Well... f*ck this school." and kept walking. I didn't so much as pick up an application for one of the best performing arts schools in the country. Impressions are a big thing.

 

[Geekchick921]

Oh, Geekchick, that sounds terrible. That rep was catty, but you also got some bad advice going in. Julliard is a conservatory and is 100% devoted to training performers, not educators. Your question, to him, was probably like someone asking a Harvard medical school admissions officer if they could go to med school, but focus more on nursing than medicine. No doubt the rep was a b1tch (which is not surprising in the performing arts circle, too) and should have taken the time to be nicer. Take it from me, though, you are in a better place now.

Besides, everyone knows all the best performers drop out or turn down Julliard anyway!

Too true... hell, all the best performers don't actually MAJOR in their art anyway.

Yeah, it was bad. Actually... most of the kiosks at that fair seemed more interested in my senior friend who went with me, just because she was a senior. I should point out, however, that my friend had no intention of going to college and still hasn't. It was a stupid question, in retrospect, but I was asking everyone that (I THINK it was a fair that focused almost entirely on art schools) and his cattiness was exceedingly uncalled for.

You definitely don't need to tell me I'm in a better place! I'm just glad I finally snapped out of my acting phase (which sadly lasted thru about the second half of high school and years 1 & 3 of college) and gone back to what I've known I loved and excelled at since I was in kindergarten. 😀

 

[AggieSean]

I had a horrible interview experience that turned me off as well.

The students that were talking about the school couldn't stop themselves from telling private jokes and laughing idiotically throughout their speech. Also, my student interviewer had nothing good to say at all about the school and neither did my senior faculty interviewer.

All of this is strange because I see a lot of people with this school as their top choice post interview.
I'm like, "were we at the same place?"

I think I know what school of which you speak. I PM'd you.

 

[whoolietta]

i basically had to defend why i wanted to attend the med school in question for an hour. it got pretty old after a while because the whole time the guy was like "do you REALLY want to go here? why would you want to go here anyway?" i had no idea whether he was trying to psych me out or see how i'd react, but he was basically bashing the school the whole time while i was defending it. how bizarre. the lunch sucked too which is always my measure of the school 🙂

 

[asm436]

When interviewing at a school I really liked, the interviewer was so bad, I hate the school now. It was my first acceptance and I wasn't even glad about it. Since I pledged a sorority, he talked about his greek experience for about 20 minutes. He was about 100 years old!! I tried to focus the conversation by asking about the places students live (big city) and he said 'not to worry, you can live with me'...how inappropriate. 🙁

 

[Abilene85]

I interviewed at a big name school with a class size similar to the school I now attend. That school had a huge interview group. They said they schedule that way on purpose because we need to "get used to having a lot of classmates. This is a big school and so we want to show you that with a big interview group." The entire day made me feel like a faceless number - like they didn't actually care about my interests outside of medicine, except for the fact that it might add diversity to attract students with higher numbers in the future. That school quickly dropped from my #1 position.

My school, on the other hand, had quite a small interview group. The setting was much more intimate - at lunch there was a med student per every 2-3 interviewees. And since I started class, my school has continued to prove that they care about us.

 

[LovelyMD]

At one interview, the interviewer's line of questioning made me wonder whether the school has trouble with students not being able to handle the stress of med school. That was a little disturbing. Also, the tour guides did not seem excited about the school and were really stretching to find things to point out, so one student pointed out the new upholstery on the seating in the lecture hall. Out of all the possible things to talk about- the new upholstery?

At another school, I asked some students how they chose that school in particular since they had multiple offers. One proceeded to say "This is why you should choose this school over all the other top med schools" (Note that only the "top" med schools were worthy of discussing)... then proceeded to bash at least 3 other schools, even going as far as saying that one of them shouldn't even be considered a top med school. Because the school has so many positive attributes, I'm really trying hard to dismiss this as an isolated incident, and hope that this student is a special case.

During my absolute worst experience, I had to fill out a form that had all the questions normally asked during an interview. My interviewer proceeded to pick at my answers until he could call me a liar. Since the form also had a question about where else I interviewed, I had to justify why I applied to each and every one of these schools (yet I was never asked why I wanted to go to that school). I definitely cried during the last 10 minutes of that interview, and I wanted to withdraw as soon as I left- but lo and behold, my interview was so late in the day that the admissions staff was gone by the time my interview was over.

 

[MsJLewis]

During my absolute worst experience, I had to fill out a form that had all the questions normally asked during an interview. My interviewer proceeded to pick at my answers until he could call me a liar. Since the form also had a question about where else I interviewed, I had to justify why I applied to each and every one of these schools (yet I was never asked why I wanted to go to that school). I definitely cried during the last 10 minutes of that interview, and I wanted to withdraw as soon as I left- but lo and behold, my interview was so late in the day that the admissions staff was gone by the time my interview was over.

Thats crazy! I hope you informed the admissions committee of this so that future applicants won't have to suffer through this treatment!