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Preparing for anticipated medical school interviews is strongly recommended in order to sharpen your interviewing skills overall. Many applicants are rightfully intimidated by this process; it is my goal to present some resources I have collected over my years of applying and supporting applicants to help make this process easier for you. While this website takes a formal tone tone, please have fun with this process! You and wonderful colleagues/friends are getting to know each other while growing as professionals. Order food, bring treats, laugh, and enjoy the journey ☺️.
Separately, it is important to create a safer space while doing your preparation as a group. Understanding that people come to the group with diverse lived experience and with many identities that contribute to who they are is important to maintain a respectful environment. Agreeing on group norms is important, including how to indicate if someone is feeling unsafe as well as how to navigate challenging or sensitive topics.
When I was preparing, a group of five medical school applicants and I (six total people) met once a week from November to March. We ran it as a "weekly class" in very structured way, with a consistent, booked room. (This is naturally optional, but having it organized and more "formal" sets a strong tone.) We met for 1.5 hours, with the following approximate schedule:
Staring one of these groups should be your first priority for your prep.
I recommend capping the number of attendees, for logistical reasons, to ensure there is lots of opportunity to practice, and to help you stay focussed. In my opinion, six people really should be the maximum number.
In the MMI and Traditional Interview prep resources, there are literally hundreds of questions. There are a number of ways to approach using the questions, including typing out responses, discussing answers with friends, or speaking them out loud and recording them on your own for review after. (You can use Word Online to transcribe them into text for free if you say something particularly insightful you want to keep a record of. Your school likely gives you access to this for free.) I would recommend doing a mix of these, especially prep with others.
Do not feel that you have to do all of the questions, or even most of them. Naturally, you should cover the more common interview questions like "tell me about yourself" and "why do you want to be a doctor." If a question seems challenging, you should certainly try to answer it.
At times there may be tension between completing coursework and preparing for interviews. Especially if you know you have interviews, I would say that this preparation should have equal priority as your coursework. Please take this with a grain of salt, though.
Enjoy the process!