THEORY on INTERVIEWS!!!

[OneStrongBro]

Although it depends on the school. It seems to me that once you get an interview(especially a state school), one has about a 40-50% chance of acceptance i.e they interview 300 students and accept about 150 etc.

There seems to be two schools of thought on interviews. A popular saying is that if you get an interview then you have the necessary "numbers" and the interview is used to measure interpersonal skills, motivation, sincerity etc. Thus, everyone is at level playing field.

So, can one make the logical jump that if you get an interview and get rejected than you must have NOT had a good interview?

The other school of thought is that they look at your whole application including your interview. Then, they will holistically reject, waitlist, or accept you. However, if this was the case, then during the process at one time, somebody must have thought you had a chance for acceptance or you wouldn't have got an interview. Thus, it falls back to a poor interview if one gets denied.

Does anyone else have any other thoughts? I guess my hypothesis is that if you get DENIED(not including waitlisted) then one must have received a HORRIBLE interview score, since the pre-screener THOUGHT you had the numbers to be accepted before the interview.

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[Adcadet]

I vote for the later (you're given an interview because somebody thought your whole application would be good enough to accept - which does imply that your grades/MCAT are in the ballpark). I'm sure a bad interview can cause rejections, but I doubt a mediocre interview will automatically get you a rejection and I doubt a great interview will automatically get you an acceptance.

 

[mws99]

A great interview should lead to an acceptance, or else why would they bother inviting you in the first place? Unfortunately I know this is not always the case, which makes this whole process even more frustrating.

 

[Kovox]

I think that interviews serve to measure your sincerity, your professionalism, as well as your sincerity in wanting to practice medicine.

Applications can tell a school that you have the smarts for medical school, but do you have the traits that school is looking for?

For instance, at Harvard, if you speak or know any medical students there, you will notice something about them --> they are big on community service...BIG BIG on community service..it's a hobby to them! Everyone knows that harvard is numbers oriented, but they are also very big on EC's. They want people who will not just be doctors but will do something more than BE a doc.....

So does being rejected after an interview mean you're a bad person? Naw, it just means that you don't have the particular traits they are looking for that fits into their goals.

Okay I am rambling.

 

[JJNY]

I think that a big part of the process, unfortunately, has to do with plain luck. Specifically, your luck in getting a "good" interviewer.

On one of my faculty interviews, we just clicked and had a good conversation. He even gave me his business card at the end.

A week later, I had another where the guy showed up 15 minutes late, and then rushed the whole thing. It seemed like he was in the middle of something and the interview was interrupting his work. I tried my best to establish rapport, but he wasn't putting in his end of the deal.

So.... I haven't heard from either of these schools yet, so I can't tell you the outcomes...

 

[arktec]

I agree that getting an interview means you have passed academic screening...someone obviously thinks you are good enough to attend that school. At that point you just have to pray for a good interviewer!

But I think once we roll into March, interviews are going to be for the waitlist no matter what your stats. Wake Forest puts people in 1st or 2nd interview pools....I am in the latter. They told me to call them back in January to see if my status has changed. I'm not holdin' my breath!

 

[qdefiant]

it's so WRONG that a school rejects you because of a bad interview, an hour is not enough time to accurately evaluate anyone...school has to look at the whole application at the final review, at least that's what I am hoping ... because the two schools I interviewed at I think my scores were much less than stellar ...

 

[Alli Cat]

I can see a scenario in which one had a good enough interview, but because they learned something new about the applicant during the interview, that applicant became less of a priority for acceptance.

For example, maybe someone writes down that they did aerospace research at NASA in their extracurriculars. The school thinks, "Wow, we've never had anyone from NASA come to our school! Let's invite them for an interview." But when you come and your interviewer asks you about it, it comes out that the research was actually just a weeklong seminar you took over Spring Break your sophomore year of college. Still quite cool, but not as unique. And if the rest of your application was ho-hum, 3.5 GPA, 30 MCAT, volunteered in a hospital, etc. etc. then they might not accept you, even if the interview didn't go "bad" per se.

The funny thing is, I've heard from current med students that once students matricualte, they drop all the activities they used to do to pretend to be interesting, and spend all their time doing the thing they love most... looking at flash cards. Cest la vie...

 

[GuesswhozBizzak]

It basically does come down to how the dice roll in your favour. In some Scandanavian countries, med school admission works in the format of a lottery. If you have such and such a GPA, extracurriculars, MCAT etc, you get a certain amount of tickets that go into the pool. Tickets are then drawn randomly fromt he pool. The individuals with higher stats of better EC's have a higher probability of getting an interview, but it is still very much dependent on luck. They realize that there are so many excellent applicants and that everyone, more or less, will make a good physician. This process has also shown to find some of those hidden gems that the typical med school admission process tends to neglect. Just a comparison.

~JZ

 

[Joe Joe on da Radio]

Originally posted by qdefiant
it's so WRONG that a school rejects you because of a bad interview, an hour is not enough time to accurately evaluate anyone...school has to look at the whole application at the final review, at least that's what I am hoping ... because the two schools I interviewed at I think my scores were much less than stellar ...

i think they look if one can make a good first impression b/c that's what being a doc is arguably about in some cases with patients and colleagues.

 

[bruinkid]

even though some interviews go really well, i dont think it means much because the committee will look at your whole application again. so, if they don't like something about your numbers they may waitlist you.

 

[isidella]

Originally posted by qdefiant
it's so WRONG that a school rejects you because of a bad interview, an hour is not enough time to accurately evaluate anyone...

How funny that the average amount of time a doctor spends with a patient is 15 minutes, (about 5min in my recent experiences).

I think an hour can give anyone a good idea of who you are, but not all schools pick the best interviewers.

 

[OneStrongBro]

A physician on the IU adcom told me that if a committee had to pick between a person with 30+ MCAT, below 3.5 GPA, and excellent interview and a person with 30+ MCAT, above 3.6 GPA, and low interview scores. Than the committee would favor the person with a lower GPA and excellent interview. However, he did mention that the MCAT scores have to be 30+.

Thus, I think if you get to an INTERVIEW, your GPA is TRIAGED TO 3rd according to priority(behind MCAT and INTERVIEW). Thus, IF YOU GET TO AN INTERVIEW, Don't make excuses about your GPA because the ASSUMPTION is that you have the numbers to succeed in med school, and now YOU HAVE TO SHOW MOTIVATION FOR MEDICINE.

 

[Ronin]

When I interviewed at my "safety school" last year (or so i thought) , I knew that my stats were considerably higher than their average matriculant at the school. After the interview, which I thought was neither too good nor too bad, i got put on a waitlist and was eventually rejected.

Therefore, I would agree with the first school of thought. I think my stats were impressive enough to get me an interview at that school, but once there I was at the same level as other interviewees regardless of my stats. At the end, I think they solely judged my candidacy on those 45 minutes of interview.
This is a speculation based on elimination of possible explanations.

 

[saga112]

Ronin, I think your situation brings up a good point, which is that a big factor schools look at while interviewing you is your genuine interest in attending that school.

I'm sure med schools are interested in having higher numbers of the acceptances they hand out actually being taken rather than having a huge waitlist.

I remember once when I was interviewing for Yale for my college interview that the last question the guy asked me before the interview ended was "do you really want to come to Yale?" and he told me that the score (scaled 1-10) he would give me was going be largely based on that one answer.

Of course I didn't want to go to Yale.. so.