"What will you do if you don't get in this year?"

[Cerberus]

---

Members do not see this ad.

How do you answer this if you've already gotten in? It kinda took me by surprise, I said i'd get an MPH and some research experience (but i've already been accepted so that won't be an issue).

 

[MWillie]

Where is this coming up? Secondaries? Interviews?

 

[Cerberus]

Where is this coming up? Secondaries? Interviews?

interviews. Aren't all the secondary deadlines long past?

 

[Fermata]

If that's the case then a horse's head might appear in the interviewer's bedsheets the following morning. 😀

 

[MedApp05]

Same thing happened to me. I wasn't quite sure what to say at first, but ended up saying something along the lines of, "Thankfully, that won't be the case... but if it had been, I would have done..." The tone of the interview changed after that and the interviewer ended up basically trying to sell the school, which was kinda nice. I ended up getting accepted, so I guess that answer was OK. 🙂 At another school, the interviewer asked the same question, but also said, "regardless of whether you've already been accepted elsewhere," which made the question easier to answer.

 

[LauraMac]

i said i would have either done grad school in biomedical engineering or become a registered dietician... most likely the dietician cause i love learning about that stuff and it's still something where you get to interact with people unlike engineering.

i never said that i've already been accepted. the way he asked the question was i know you'll be at med school next year, but if you weren't to do medicine what other careers interest you? so for whatever reason i felt weird saying i'm already in. it was cool cause at that particular school they all kept saying how we'd all get in somewhere for sure. i liked that. 🙂

 

[krelian]

I got asked the same thing, sort of, after I had already been accepted. The difference was they asked me what would I do if I didn't get in. I asked if they meant what alternative career path I would take and then they asked, no just that school. I responded that I was dedicated to medicine and would persue it at another school. I mean, did they expect me to camp out in front of their school and beg until they accepted me?!? That school was removed from contention in my mind--the whole interview just seemed so snobby/elist.

I've been asked "what would you do if you couldn't pursue medicine" but never "what would you do if you couldn't go to our school." That's so wrong. My answer would've been, "I would attend another school and donate my million in earnings to them"