What to do for MD interview during job?

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screen8888

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Has anyone had to interview for medical school when on a job unrelated to medicine? What did you tell your employer when you had to leave for a week or so?
I just finished my undergrad in biomedical sciences and will be enrolling in an MPP program. I may be transferring to an MPP track that places students in nearly full-time jobs ("apprenticeships") in DC related to their chosen field. Around 60% of students in the track receive jobs from their apprenticeships, and so if I successfully transfer into the track, this won't be an opportunity I'll be able to pass up.
However, if things go well and I intend to apply to medical school during my last year, I'll ultimately be interviewing in the middle of the academic year when I'm both studying for the MPP program and working in my apprenticeship. I doubt my apprenticeship will be directly related to medicine--I'm shooting for the intelligence sector and foreign affairs. My MD interviews would likely take a week out as they would be out of state (I'm a resident in a state in the south, applying go my state's MD programs, but my MPP program is in the northeast) and I want to reduce travel costs by putting most of them next to each other. If I don't get into an MD program, I want to keep my apprenticeship and any job prospects that may come directly from it.
 
You will probably not have much say in your interview dates. They invite; you say "Yes!" So 2 days for each interview versus a week for several.

You simply say "I've been offered an invitation to interview for medical school and will need these two days off." It's not like you're interviewing with a competitor firm, so no reason to be anything but forthright and honest.
 
You will probably not have much say in your interview dates. They invite; you say "Yes!" So 2 days for each interview versus a week for several.

You simply say "I've been offered an invitation to interview for medical school and will need these two days off." It's not like you're interviewing with a competitor firm, so no reason to be anything but forthright and honest.

This is not true for every school. Depending on where you receive an invitation from you will get a choice of dates or you will be able to request an alternative date. I did this several times and explained that I had a full-time job and administrators where happy to accommodate. Of course, some schools may have less options for you but if you get in touch with them as soon as you are extended an invitation then your options are usually better. Regardless, it sounds like this is fairly far-off for you OP so I wouldn't worry about it yet. I would however recommend that you not mention to your employer that you are interviewing for medical school if you don't think they would look kindly upon that. . I know of some people who preferred to do this because they knew their bosses would give them a hard time if they knew they might be leaving and they wanted to avoid any awkward confrontation and also make sure that they had a fallback plan (keeping their job) in case they didn't get into medical school and had to reapply the next year. Simply take whatever vacation days you have and arrange to do your interviews then. You don't need to stack them all in one week. I went to Friday/Weekend/Monday interviews almost exclusively and was able to take three day weekends for almost all of my interviews
 
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