What are fair questions to ask of premed students for interviews?

[pseudoknot]

Whatever you do, don't ask "what is your greatest weakness," a question that cannot possibly yield any useful information other than that the interviewer is a tool.

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[vtucci]

1. Name the three words your friends would use to describe you.
2. If you could go back in time and change anything you have done or said, what would it be and why.
3. What are you most proud of?
4. What are you least proud of?
5. If you had to pick one aspect of your personality that you wanted to work on, what would it be and why?
6. Why should our medical school take you over the 1000s of other qualified applicants?
7. I like the ethical questions- treating an obese patient, drug addict, racist/sexist patient etc.
8. I would never ask how you would handle seeing a classmate cheat on an exam (as even if you did, it would be very hard to prove and turn extremely ugly) but I think it would be interesting to see how they would approach a classmate who was behaving inappropriately toward a patient or colleague.
9. What would you do if you suspect a classmate is abusing alcohol, drugs etc?
10. What exemplies the best physician in your mind?
11. What makes a bad doctor?
12. Who is your role model and why?
13. What is your favorite novel, movie, TV show?
14. If you knew you were going to die tomorrow, what would you do tonight?

 

[Occams Razor]

Ask them if they have masochistic urges or engage in masochistic behavior

 

[bambi]

Ask them exactly how to take cocaine, heroin etc. If they know and can give details, reject them.

 

[coldweatherblue]

Ask them exactly how to take cocaine, heroin etc. If they know and can give details, reject them.

lol

"so son, tell me how many grams are in an eighth?"

"3.5 sir"

"why did you assume the units were in ounces?"

"uhhhhh..."

 

[ChePibe]

Two of the most original questions I got during the interview trail were:
1. Seeing as you are used to being at the top of your classes, how would you react to being at the bottom of your med school class? What would you do? The question reflects the character and problem solving skills of the candidate.
2. This was from a pharmacology professor (I forget the details so bear with me). Randomly, in the middle of a conversation ask the candidate a very question requiring simple logic: A drug is supposed to be given as 20mg/kg. How much would you give a person that weighs 80kg?
It is simple but the reaction and skills of the candidate are what is important here.

 

[Twitch]

That's not a bad question. Also lets you see if they plan to be friendly or cut off everyone at the knees.

Most of the gunners would lie and say how friendly they are and smile with a knife behind them chopping off knee caps.

IMHO, medical school interviews are an almost complete waste beyond the usual sanity check, make the applicant comfortable, etc. Interview forms should have one checkbox, YES/NO -> doesn't appear to be a whack job - can carry out a conversation - can communicate, the sort of thing that may not be apparent in MCAT scores, grades, and yes even LORs.

Beyond that one checkbox, it's all a coin toss.

 

[DoctorPardi]

Personally I think asking questions meant to secretly test what isn't really being asked are kind of lame. Unless they are asked in a way that is somewhat non-threatening (like the manhole question, because it isn't medically related and kind of funny, although still I am not sure I would get much real useful info from this question).

I think of these questions like a WIFOM argument (Wine in front of me). Take the example of a person you think is trying to poison you. Will they poison the wine they hand you or the wine they keep for themselves? If they think you think they are on to them then they poison their own... and so the argument goes on.

"What kind of fruit is the best fruit?" Most people seem to think it is the calm answering of the question which makes these valuable, whereas stressing out and trying to figure out a really logical answer is bad. The thing is though, wouldn't most pre-meds know this genre of question is a possibility, so half the people who respond "correctly" aren't really responding correctly they just know this might be asked. So you have to decide in a WIFOM format whether the answer was legitimate or pre-planned and so on.

I would ask things about their activities and see how genuine they come off. "Tell me about your research, what you did and why you did it?", that will really tell a lot, if they can explain it, if they have good reasons for choosing it etc. Plus that is a real thing, someone who interviews well can explain their research and has good arguments for why they did it etc. There is no clear cut right/wrong to the other kinds of questions above.

 

[VincentAdultman]

Personally I think asking questions meant to secretly test what isn't really being asked are kind of lame. Unless they are asked in a way that is somewhat non-threatening (like the manhole question, because it isn't medically related and kind of funny, although still I am not sure I would get much real useful info from this question).

I think of these questions like a WIFOM argument (Wine in front of me). Take the example of a person you think is trying to poison you. Will they poison the wine they hand you or the wine they keep for themselves? If they think you think they are on to them then they poison their own... and so the argument goes on.

"What kind of fruit is the best fruit?" Most people seem to think it is the calm answering of the question which makes these valuable, whereas stressing out and trying to figure out a really logical answer is bad. The thing is though, wouldn't most pre-meds know this genre of question is a possibility, so half the people who respond "correctly" aren't really responding correctly they just know this might be asked. So you have to decide in a WIFOM format whether the answer was legitimate or pre-planned and so on.

I would ask things about their activities and see how genuine they come off. "Tell me about your research, what you did and why you did it?", that will really tell a lot, if they can explain it, if they have good reasons for choosing it etc. Plus that is a real thing, someone who interviews well can explain their research and has good arguments for why they did it etc. There is no clear cut right/wrong to the other kinds of questions above.

...or you can try just carrying on a conversation whith the applicants.

Just to make sure that they aren't, you know, douchebags.

 

[DoctorPardi]

...or you can try just carrying on a conversation whith the applicants.

Just to make sure that they aren't, you know, douchebags.

Right, I agree but if you have to "ask questions" ,as the thread proposes, then I would ask questions specific to the application.

 

[gujuDoc]

1. Name the three words your friends would use to describe you.
2. If you could go back in time and change anything you have done or said, what would it be and why.
3. What are you most proud of?
4. What are you least proud of?
5. If you had to pick one aspect of your personality that you wanted to work on, what would it be and why?
6. Why should our medical school take you over the 1000s of other qualified applicants?
7. I like the ethical questions- treating an obese patient, drug addict, racist/sexist patient etc.
8. I would never ask how you would handle seeing a classmate cheat on an exam (as even if you did, it would be very hard to prove and turn extremely ugly) but I think it would be interesting to see how they would approach a classmate who was behaving inappropriately toward a patient or colleague.
9. What would you do if you suspect a classmate is abusing alcohol, drugs etc?
10. What exemplies the best physician in your mind?
11. What makes a bad doctor?
12. Who is your role model and why?
13. What is your favorite novel, movie, TV show?
14. If you knew you were going to die tomorrow, what would you do tonight?

I think these are questions that are fair compared to some of the other ones I've seen you guys suggest. i also think the ethical dilemma questions--some of which are shown above--are good types of questions.

 

[gujuDoc]

One of the questions that I saw on the interview feedback from USF was the following.....

What do you consider the greatest invention of the last 100 years and why? I thought that was a good question.

Another good question that was asked to one of my friends when they interviewed at USF was as follows...

how do you go about solving a problem?

 

[gujuDoc]

Ask the applicant what type of classmates they envision hanging out with @ X med school.

Get an insight into the types of groups said individual likes to socialize with.

I like this one too.

 

[ravens11]

Ask them to tell you a joke.

 

[plainfacts]

Explain why creationism is not science.

 

[gujuDoc]

Explain why creationism is not science.

That's mean and probably not appropriate cuz it could bring in a lot of religious debates and you don't want to delve into a person's religious views. But I guess it does make a person really think before they speak and test their critical reasoning that they use to achieve their answer.

 

[mjl1717]

1. Name the three words your friends would use to describe you.
2. If you could go back in time and change anything you have done or said, what would it be and why.
3. What are you most proud of?
4. What are you least proud of?
5. If you had to pick one aspect of your personality that you wanted to work on, what would it be and why?
6. Why should our medical school take you over the 1000s of other qualified applicants?
7. I like the ethical questions- treating an obese patient, drug addict, racist/sexist patient etc.
8. I would never ask how you would handle seeing a classmate cheat on an exam (as even if you did, it would be very hard to prove and turn extremely ugly) but I think it would be interesting to see how they would approach a classmate who was behaving inappropriately toward a patient or colleague.
9. What would you do if you suspect a classmate is abusing alcohol, drugs etc?
10. What exemplies the best physician in your mind?
11. What makes a bad doctor?
12. Who is your role model and why?
13. What is your favorite novel, movie, TV show?
14. If you knew you were going to die tomorrow, what would you do tonight?

Agree , these are level headed and good questions!