Revising Interview Process

[sirrileydog]

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Hi,
My program is considering some revisions to the MSTP interview process. The primary goal is to improve the student experience and improve recruiting.

I thought I would ask for input on what type of schedules work particularly well for applicants and what you think is most important to ensure a positive interview experience.

Phrased another way, which school puts on the best interview and why? Who gets failing marks?

Thanks in advance,
sirrileydog

 

[sleepy425]

Hi,
My program is considering some revisions to the MSTP interview process. The primary goal is to improve the student experience and improve recruiting.

I thought I would ask for input on what type of schedules work particularly well for applicants and what you think is most important to ensure a positive interview experience.

Phrased another way, which school puts on the best interview and why? Who gets failing marks?

Thanks in advance,
sirrileydog

I can't name any schools specifically, but I think that schools should work to ensure that interviewers and candidates have enough time to talk. The problem is that, since candidates are usually paired with interviewers who share some of the same research interests, the interviews can last a very long time. Half hour time slots are not enough. That doesn't mean that the interview has to last for over an hour, but time should be allotted for longer interviews. Oh, and it might take you 10 minutes to get across a large campus if you know exactly where you're going, but if you don't, it takes longer, so give at least 30 minutes between interviews.

To be honest with you, I think that talks about the structure of the program should be kept very short. It's good if the program emphasizes its selling points, but honestly, I don't want to hear about the exact sequence of MD courses I will be taking. If there's something unique about the sequence (for example, Baylor starts clinicals in January of 2nd year), that's something to point out, but I will not listen to someone who is telling me that I'm going to start out with anatomy and immunology and histology and biochemistry and then I'll do physiology and blah blah. It's boring, and it's also available in the packets they give us and online.

Interview programs should not begin before 9 AM. We're college students, and we like to sleep. I know that physicians love to talk about how they wake up at like 5:45 AM and are rounding at 6 before meeting with the rest of the team at 7 and rounding again, but I like to be awake during my interviews.

Other than that, I really love the standard format of MSTP interviews. They are always very comfortable and the program is usually very smooth. The schools that work very hard to pair you up with faculty of interest tend to be the most impressive.

 

[GliaGirl]

Things I have come to appreciate:
1) Feed us breakfast. It was very disappointing at one of my interviews when they asked us to be there at 8 in the morning and then did not provide us with any food! Also, give us water to carry around for the rest of the day.
2) I like the Thursday + Friday model of interviewing. Personally, I think that one day of interviews is too short, especially when there are 7 interviews crammed into it.
3) Give student run tours in small groups (2-3 people) so that questions can be asked for real.
4) Be VERY CLEAR about traveling. Even if a school is in NYC with awesome public transportation, as an "outsider" I have no idea how to use it and will have to resort to paying $60 to a taxi cab driver. Just make sure that it is VERY clear how to get to the institution.
5) Staying in hotels for free is nice, but I've gotten my most meaningful interview experiences by staying with a student host.
6) Send us the names of who we are going to be interviewing with ahead of time, so that we have time to read over their work and have a meaningful conversation instead of just "Do you have any questions?" "Uh... yeah... what do you do for your research?"
7) I agree with the hour long interview slot. If it ends early, then no biggie, but if it takes more than half an hour, no one has to be eying the clock impolitely.
8) Be sensitive about the fact that some people are flying from Cali or another time zone. If a NYC interview starts at 8am, that's 5 freaking am to some people, which is totally ridiculous!!!

 

[RapplixGmed]

Again, I won't name any programs but here is what I think:

The good:
1) I was really impressed when the program selected researchers who matched my interests who I didn't even know about before coming to campus. This was especially cool when the school had a really crappy website so finding mentors was difficult and these faculty members tended to be more up and coming as well.

2) I was also really impressed when transportation was provided and housing was taken care of. If you don't provide transportation or housing, AT LEAST provide taxi vouchers so that the interviewees don't have to pay a lot just to get from the airport or to/from the hotel.

3) Matching my interests with a student's and having them talk to me at lunch or finding a student who graduated from my undergrad and matching them up with me. Much easier to break the ice and get to know the school.

4) 1 hour interviews. If i'm really interested in a researcher, I can talk to them for an hour easily and its really fun. Half an hour is just too short unless I'm talking with a student interviewer or administrator.

5) Telling us how admissions works. Give us a short 10 min max talk about what happens to our application after we leave and when to expect a decision.

6) Give interviewees time to talk to each other. This was awesome at one of my schools because we actually developed quite a good comraderie.

7) Feed us soon and often! We love food!

8) Thursday/Friday interviews are awesome and fit well with my personal schedule. I don't know about other people.

The bad:

1) Massive groups. I know it makes it easier on the faculty but when I'm there with 30 people, its like a zoo and can get confusing.

2) Early start times. We're in a new place, we probably got there really late. Let us sleep.

3) Not talking to any faculty. Uhm... i came to the school to see the research but I don't get to talk to any researchers on the interview day? wtf?

4) No instructions for transportation. What is the easiest way to get to the hotel from the airport? How much will it cost? What is the best way to get to the school by public transportation? Where is the MSTP office? Interviewees are busy traveling and finding these things takes a lot of time but the schools should know this already so why not just tell us?

The ugly:
1) Please please please make sure that my interviewers actually know that I'm coming. I went to a school where the person that I was most interested in working with actually forgot that I was coming and wasn't on campus.... we had to do the interview by phone a week later. This was really lame and has moved this school to the bottom of my list.

2) If you're going to have a stress interview at your school, don't have it be the very first interview that I have. At a school that I was really interested in, I was all ready to tell them about my interest in the school but I got a rough stress interview as the first one. Its kind of a bad first impression of the "personality" of the faculty even if I know that its just a show and soured my mood about the school for the rest of the interview session.

3) If a interviewer that I request is actually noy interested in working with me, don't add him/her to my list for the visit and choose somebody that is more appropriate. I was told flat out by a faculty member that he wasn't interested and that I should "stick to my strengths." This was a waste of both my time and the faculty member's.

4) Make sure that the people who talk to us don't say crazy things like "the classrooms are in the basement and students don't see the light of day until M2" and "we won't eat in the lounge today because everyone has norovirus" Thx

 

[Calf]

Totally agree with everything the previous 2 posters said, except I actually think 45 min is a good balanced interview time. 1 hour interviews sometimes get to be a little long, but 30 min is DEFINITELY too short.

 

[bd4727]

1) Please please please make sure that my interviewers actually know that I'm coming. I went to a school where the person that I was most interested in working with actually forgot that I was coming and wasn't on campus.... we had to do the interview by phone a week later. This was really lame and has moved this school to the bottom of my list. Thx

I think you are probably a little off base by moving a school to the bottom of your list because 1 faculty member forgot you were coming. First off, it happens to everyone at least once in the interview process. Secondly, people are human and they forget things sometimes. You will be a busy PI one day and will forget, too. It is certainly not personal, because you mean nothing to that person anyway. Most importantly, even if that 1 PI is the biggest duech in the world, I think it is totally ridiculous to rule out a school because of 1 person.

First off, there is probably 99% chance that if you went there you wouldn't end up working in the person's lab anyway. Secondly, if you are going to judge an institution made up of probably 5-10k people based on 1 person, I would say your understanding of istatistical representation is very poor.

I don't mean this as a personal attack, it is just this kind of thinking that annoys me about applicants more than anything else. I hear the same main arguments against schools all the time:

1. some PI they interviewed with wasn't nice
2. their host never studied/studied too much, drank/didn't drink, liked the yankees/like the mets, etc
3. the person who gave them a tour was cool/not cool

This is ridiculous. If you base a decision toabout spending 8 years of your life studying medicine on 1 person you met on an interview, IMHO your judgment is incredibly flawed. Go where you will be in position to learn best and become the best doctor/researcher. You will find people you like and people you hate wherever you go in the world. Whomever of those 2 you may come across on 1 interview day is completely random.

 

[RapplixGmed]

bd4727, thanks for your comments and I think you make some very good points. However, that last section was really more of a tongue in cheek thing and a way for me to vent some frustrations rather than real advice. (I guess my only clue was the good the bad and the ugly titles) I'm quite quirky and sarcastic in real life and I guess it doesn't transfer as well on the web. I should add a little disclaimer under my posts saying that most of what I say should not be taken at face value. Sorry if I sounded really arrogant as I know that many applicants are still waiting for interviews and probably want to rip my head off for being critical of some of my interviews. I'm also prone to hyperbole and this was an instance of that. For all of this I apologize.

However, I think my logic still stands if you ignore my personal failings in describing them.

If you are a school interviewing applicants, I hope that you appreciate that first impressions mean a lot:

For instance you could easily do any of these cases

Case 1:
You interview applicants with only your nicest faculty members

Case 2:
You interview applicants with a douche first (even if its a fake douche stress interview) and then your nicest faculty members.

Case 3:
You interview applicants with a nice person first, then the stress, then a nice person.

Case 4:
You have a stress first, then your interviewer forgets for whatever reason, then another stress

Unless you are a top notch school who will attract students even if you break their legs and steal their souls, I'm pretty sure that case 1 will give the highest yield followed by case 3 and case 2 last. Case 4 is special in that it has the possibility of successfuly breaking any student's interest in the school and should be avoided.

I agree that an interview visit is a very small snapshot of the life and faculty at the school but its just like everything else in the application process. Its just like my application and interview is just a snapshot of myself and my life. If a school has the grounds to reject me because of a bad first impression or flaws in an application, I see nothing wrong with rejecting a school based on problems I found during my visit because pretty much all I get to see are the faculty and students I meet with. This is my snapshot and will stick with me a long time. Of course, this luxury of choice is dependent on acceptance to multiple schools.

Its all a matchmaking process. Fundamentally, if I am excited about a school going in, and no longer excited going out, then something wrong happened in between. We humans are not logical machines and emotion plays a big role no matter how much it is criticized. Most people, including myself, will not go to a school that they are not excited about if it is marginally better than a school that they are excited about. I believe that among good research schools, they are all only marginally better than each other anyways so the excitement factor plays a major role. So much of success depends on the student anyways.

Back to myself:
I chose my undergraduate because the people here are nicest even though its not very highly ranked. I have been very successful because I am happy here and I've done even better than classmates who decided to go to highly ranked schools that they were not excited about. I will make a similar decision for med school and residency and beyond.

How do you get an applicant excited about your school? Match them with people who are nice and excited about them! How do you break that excitement? Match them with people who are disinterested and excessively critical. This is really my only advice here and I hope you use that to your advantage when planning how you will interview applicants.

 

[Jorje286]

RapplixGmed, I agree. It's perfecly fine to judge schools based on their organization in the admission process, including the interview. One thing I noticed anyway is that the top programs tend to have more of an organized process than lower tier programs (faster processing, well organized secondaries with sensible questions..etc). At the end of it all, organization speaks a lot of the people managing the program. It puzzles me for example why a university would ask you to write about your research experience AGAIN in the secondary when you had to write a full 10 000 word essay on it in the AMCAS. It doesn't leave a good impression.

 

[bd4727]

Both your post and the previous poster's comments do not address the original argument that you made, the one I was referring to in my post.

If one interviewer misses an appointment with you it is incredibly foolish to assume the entire school is poorly organized, unfriendly, etc. Like I said, it happens to everyone and even the nicest PIs forget appointments. It is misguided to take this as a personal slight or representative of a program's quality.

Further, although you two disagree, I would argue that first impressions on interviews are not all that important. I suppose this is a matter of opinion/personality, but I think you undermine your own point when you say "unless you are a top notch school..." Obviously there are some things (ie prestige) that trump first impressions even for you, and this was what I was getting at-- that it is not always about who gives out the most cookies.

 

[tiamat360]

Don't many (most?) schools have a revisit date? If you like a school's programs, but aren't sure of its personality/"niceness"/what have you, it seems like a revisit is a good way to get a sense of the school when you're not being put on the spot in an interview.

 

[RapplixGmed]

It is misguided to take this as a personal slight or representative of a program's quality.

I've already stated that what I said in my first post is hyperbolic and I apologized for it. I agree that its not personal. I also agree that its not very representative of a program's quality. However, as applicants, we don't have much other information to work on. Most of the data given to us during presentations can be categorized as propoganda anyways since its mostly about recruiting. I would also much rather judge based on these observations I make myself than US News and World report or heresay.

I think that from your perspective, this tatic is wrong because it seems like I am basing decisions on something that is insignificant and transient. But from my perspective, we know very little about what is actually going on at the programs other than how the faculty and students interact with us. This process fundamentally limits the unbiased information that we have available and in these instances, I trust my gut feelings about a program. If more unbiased information can be released like the NIH's evaluations of each MSTP program, I would use that but until then, I have to work with what I have.

I'm going to use a dating analogy here. You've gone out on a first date with a person you don't really know and you had a terrible time. What do you do? I and most other people would reject. Its possible that they're amazing on other days but how would you know?

Obviously there are some things (ie prestige) that trump first impressions even for you, and this was what I was getting at-- that it is not always about who gives out the most cookies.

I agree that there are lots of factors at play here as well. For instance, if it is very well known that a program outputs top quality researchers based on publication quality of the students and other factors, then this trumps the gut feeling factor because this information is more valuable. This fits perfectly well with my argument.

Lets say you go out with a person you've known for a long time. You had a terrible time but you know that the person is just having a bad day because you're familiar with him/her. You're much more willing to give him/her another chance.

Ok the dating analogy is pretty lame but I hope it makes my logic a little clearer.

 

[bd4727]

Ok the dating analogy is pretty lame but I hope it makes my logic a little clearer.

Well, either way I am going to try and hook up with them.