What's the worst possible mistake you can make at an interview?

[Catalystik]

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Did this happen??

What if it's your dress robes?

That would be OK, then. Covered with grass stains from a quidditch match gone wrong, not so much.

 

[Goro]

So, I made an Applicant BINGO game in honor of this thread.

@Goro @gyngyn @LizzyM and any other adcoms, please print off and play during interview season and keep us updated 😏

View attachment 240775

You made me bellow out loud with laughter!

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

That would be OK, then. Covered with grass stains from a quidditch match gone wrong, not so much.

It only went wrong if you lost. Did you catch the snitch?

 

[EasyEveryoneWouldDoIt]

would house matter? gryfindor? slytherin? hufflepuff or ravenclaw only?

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

would house matter? gryfindor? slytherin? hufflepuff or ravenclaw only?

Depends on the school. Georgetown only takes slytherin.

 

[Red_Panda]

Wouldn't Ravenclaw be the first pick? Aren't they suppose to be the nerdy smart ones? Other than Hermione of course.

 

[WedgeDawg]

Wouldn't Ravenclaw be the first pick? Aren't they suppose to be the nerdy smart ones? Other than Hermione of course.

That's why med schools look at ECs too 😉

 

[DoctorSwagger]

Doing Fortnite dances


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Walter Raleigh]

Things that have actually happened: lighting up a cigarette in the interview.
Things that have not yet happened: lighting up a joint...

Light up some crack cocaine, one-up the joint guy. Who will probably come to exist.

 

[Walter Raleigh]

Sounds like someone who would interview at @gyngyn's school! He's seen just as bad, if not worse.

Could our legendary premed rockstar get away with this? Chechen refugee, Harry Potter fan. D1 athlete with first-author Nature paper and a 4.0 from Caltech. And a 526 MCAT. He's also one of the most charismatic people to ever have spoken the English language; in his native Chechnya he was very nearly lynched by a mob...but managed to not only convince the mob to spare his life, but got the mob to pay for his dying mother's cancer treatment.

 

[Walter Raleigh]

I have a CLASSMATE that did this
because he didn't miss the actual interview, they let him interview anyway........
result: now we have a classmate who is chronically late

how this was allowed to happen I do not know

Connected parents? Hefty donations? Superb stats and ECs?

 

[starfun21]

I may have made a few... "mistakes" during my interviews. 🙂

#1: Bad mental math -- not "unforgivable" but probably didn't make me look so bright!
-I was applying to MD/PhD programs and asked about how I saw my time being divided between the clinic and my future lab. I said, "Well, I plan to spend about 85% of my time in lab, and then the other 25% in clinic."
-Interviewer (program director) and I both stared at each other, realizing the math didn't equal 100.... but I thought it would be even worse to fix it, so I just smiled and we moved on

#2: Super "airhead" moment -- definitely made me look like a doofus!
-Another meeting with an MD/PhD director. I found him super intimidating and this was my very first interview, so I was nervous!!
-He asked me about what I had seen so far at the school that I liked. I gave a completely fine (I think!) answer about the collaborative nature of the school... I spent just a minute or two talking about some of the collaborations I had already heard about and how collaboration was so important to me in my training, etc.
-I was then caught totally off-guard, as the second question that the director asked of the entire interview was "Do you have any questions for me?" I wasn't prepared for this yet, so I scrambled very quickly and early in the morning to at least draw from one of my pre-formed questions until I had more time to pick a better question. Unfortunately, the pre-formed question I chose was, "Yes, would you say that this school is a collaborative environment?" D'OH!!


In reality though, some of the worst things that I think an applicant can do during an interview are:
1. Rudeness to any person throughout the day, ranging from office staff to other applicants to directors/interviewers.
2. Insulting any type of medical profession
3. Ignoring clear instructions on where to go next and what to do, etc. Applicants will get accidentally lost or be late every now and then, and I found that schools were honestly forgiving with this. But when there were clear instructions, and the students decided they wanted to check out something else instead and made up their own path... that wasn't so great.
4. The obvious - calling the school the wrong name, struggling to think of positive things that you like about the school, etc. 🙂

 

[Doc_Ock]

Mention that I'm an exotic dancer on the weekends.

 

[Robin-jay]

I was applying to MD/PhD programs and asked about how I saw my time being divided between the clinic and my future lab. I said, "Well, I plan to spend about 85% of my time in lab, and then the other 25% in clinic."
-Interviewer (program director) and I both stared at each other, realizing the math didn't equal 100.... but I thought it would be even worse to fix it, so I just smiled and we moved on

You should have said "Because I always give 110 percent".

 

[starfun21]

You should have said "Because I always give 110 percent".

HA!!!!!!!!!! I didn't even think about it --- that would have been a pretty epic recovery!

 

[LAIsTheBestPlaceEver]

In my last MMI, at one of my stations, I started by saying "This is hard, hmm, this is hard." before realizing I was thinking out loud.

 

[H.E. Pennypacker]

Keep it professional at all times. I was tempted to return the advances of my interviewer, but in the end I kept it on the up and up. I didn’t get in. But I kept my head down and kept with the process. I got into the next place I interviewed with. Blessing in disguise