What was your strangest interview question?

[rpames]

In one of the dozen or so books I've read on med schools, it had a section on the interview questions, I think it was the Princeton Review. It said not to be surprised if you were asked a shocking question like, "When was the last time you masterbated?" That was the example, I'm not perverted. The book said they might ask that type of question to see how you respond to a person question because as a doctor you will have to ask simmilar questions of you patients. I was just wondering if any of you were asked any weird question.

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"If you have the courage to begin, you have the courage to succeed."
-David Viscott

[This message has been edited by rpames (edited 12-18-2000).]

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[puffy1]

Maybe it wasn't the strangest question, but perhaps a most offensive. A dean of admissions asked me, "Your physical sciences score is low. Asians normally do well on this subject on the MCAT. Why did you do so badly?"

I won't be going to that particular school.

 

[WingZero]

I wouldn't base my decision whether or not to go to a medical school based on one interviewer's question - perhaps he asked the question intentionally to ruffle your feathers a bit, see how you perform under a given circumstance.

While my interview questions were nothing to out of the ordinary, a friend of mine got asked if he and a male friend were hiking in the woods and a rattlesnake bit his friend on the penis, would he would basically perform fellatio to suck the venom out to save his friend... obviously this question was in the "Is the applicant homophobic?" category.

[This message has been edited by WingZero (edited 12-18-2000).]

 

[FourthTime]

By one interviewer, I was asked two strange and unrelated questions one after the other. The first was: "We have no record of man between the time that the neanderthal disappeared and the time that homo erectus appeared--can you explain why?" The second was: "Name 7 countries in which the Himilayan mountain range lie." This guy was obviously an avid reader of National Geographic!

 

[Philoguru]

you guys are really wigging me out. are you kidding me?! you're kidding... right?

 

[guy104]

i have a feeling these folks are pulling your chain. i don't know what i would do if asked some of those questions, but the one about the snake would probably have gotten a visit to the dean from me. my experiences in my "two" interviews were nothing but relaxing. okay, i was nervous in a few, but the questions weren't crazy. the most i got prodded was by an interviewer trying to play the devil's advocate who kept trying to get me to explain what decisions i would make in certain situations. "you say you want to have a good family, but what happens when someone comes into your office late needing attention, but you have your son's baseball game in 15 minutes..." just realize that it's okay to say, "i don't know what i would do exactly. i realize there are going to be negative situations where something is going to have give...." or on a more general note, to any questions you aren't sure about, just say, "great question" and try to answer it however you can. you aren't going to be kept out of med school because you don't know where some mountain is. you might, however, be kept out if you lose your s%$# and blow the rest of the interview. good luck. oh yeah, at the end of one of my interviews, they put you down with some crayons and said draw the perfect doctor. on a more negative note, another one of my interviewers from another school went off on sort of a racist tangent. we were from near the same town, and we started talking about my town, then my high school, and how it's started to go downhill over the past few years. then he started basically saying that it was because there were so many blacks, and schools in his town didn't have so many blacks. i thought he was possibly seeing if i would agree, but i also thought he was testing to see if i would blow my top, so i respectfully said that i didn't think it was necessarily an issue of black or white, but i'm sure socioeconomics played a factor. i tried to stay middle of the road, but i wondered if this guy was really that racist and even if he was, how he deemed it appropriate to display his racism in a med school interview. well, sorry that was so long. that was the only negative experience, and he was nice other than being racist. ("he was a nice racist" - i guess that doesn't sound too good, but you get the picture).

 

[Billie]

Hi,
I got questions like that, ie..what would I do in a given situation. But the strangest (though not difficult) was out of the blue being asked "Who shot JFK?" After I answered Lee Harvey, the next question..."Do you think he did it?"

 

[wyldstyle2000]

Strangest interview question?

After beating around the bush, the interviewer asked me my ethnicity. (I'm not caucasian and have a spanish last name.) It made me feel uncomfortable, in particular because I did not indicate any ethnicity on my primary application because I wanted to avoid that as a deciding factor in gaining acceptance. I'm so used to job interviews where they can't ask you that by law.....oh well.

wyldstyle2000

 

[praying4MD]

My sister got asked, "Why are man holes round?" This was not for med school, but an interview with Anderson Consulting and Arther Anderson. She gave some answer, and he replied, "Nope, You're wrong. Keep going." This went on 3 times when finally he said, "Well done. You didn't answer it correctly, but you didn't give up and were creative with your answers." Apparently, they ask to find out if the person is determined, can handle a shock, and is creative to think out things on their own. He said others after the 1st try simply stopped answering or gave dumb answers with no explanation. BTW, the answer is so that when they are off the manhole, and jagged with the hole, you can turn it anyway, and it won't slip down into the whole. Apparently the "Bix 6" (of accounting firms use tactics like this for a weed out.) Who knew? Anyway, she got the job.

 

[jephyboy]

I did have a friend of my tell me that his roommate was asked, "so, how many times a week do you masturbate?" (both the interviewer and interviewee were male). He replied, "well, not as much as I deserve." I thought that was a very witty response.

 

[FinallyThere]

Hey Everyone!

I was asked two "strange" questions. Although, they did have to do with my secondary application.

1) Explain the special theory of relativity to a dummy.

2) Tell me about snot.

 

[GreatPumpkin]

I was given a hypothetical situation on the abortion issue. And, asked what i would do. I don't remember the exact question that was years ago. But, it was a very uncomfortable, this was a 3 on 1 interview.

 

[lilycat]

At one school I was asked very extensive, hypothetical role-playing dilemmas, one dealing with abortion, and one dealing with euthanasia. Talk about stressful! But, I don't think they were trying to really tease out my opinions one way or the other, just seeing how I might try to deal with delicate situations as a physician. Somewhat surprisingly, I ended up getting in!

 

[spacecadet22]

I got asked the following:

So you get along with your family...is med school tuition going to be a family affair?

Please explain to me what a chemical buffer is and what it does in the body.

Finally, I was asked my opinion on stem cell research and partial birth abortion.

Also---this one interviewer gave me this whole long story about how his wife is Candanian and had fertility problems. She finally got pregnant and her doctor told her she needed to be admitted to the hospital for 3 monthes prior to birth. It turns out the baby was born with a ton of congenital defects and in turn had to be hospitalized for 3 months...The kicker is the wife chose to have her services in the US although she had no insurance. If she would have delivered in Canada there is socialized medicine so no money issue. It turns out she worked for the peace corps in a department that dealt with US relations. When the whole delivery and child care was calculated at cost...it was over $500,000. The Bush administration paid it and he wanted to know if I thought it was correct to have US tax payers pay for a Canadian's health bill and if I thought it was correct for the wife to have the baby in the US at all...Shouldn't she have gone to Canada to deliver? (The wife's reasoning to deliver here was that her Mother and Sister lived in NYC, where she delivered....)
All I can say is this made me so uncomfortable!!! He wasn't giving a hypothetical and I felt if I said the wrong thing...he would mark me down.
Crazy! (I should mention, I did get into this school!)