Caduceus Newsletter: Fall 2003.13, Week of November 17 Special Edition: Interviews

è 1. The Medical School Application: Prepping for the Interview, appearing in http://www.bol.ucla.edu/~ericwang/Application/intv_prep.html
è 2. The questions that interviewers ask may range from "What would you do if …" all the way to "How about them Tennessee Titans?"
è 3. What happens if the confidentiality of evaluations or letters of recommendation is breached by an interviewer?
è 4. May I suggest two books to help guide you through various parts of the application process.

è 5. And now for something COMPLETELY different -- I am doing my solo debut on keyboard as a benefit for the Peru Project at Java Cabana on Saturday night, November 22!

è 1. The Medical School Application: Prepping for the Interview, appearing in http://www.bol.ucla.edu/~ericwang/Application/intv_prep.html

The Medical School Application: Prepping for the Interview

Men should bring a suit and tie. You don't have to wear a full matching suit, but at least wear khaki slacks and a sport coat. A tie is a must. If you don't dress like you mean business, then your interviewer will think you aren't serious about the school. Ladies should wear something somewhat conservative and business-like. Stay away from the flowery dresses because this remindes the interviewers (old doctors and PhDs) of little girls in church. You want to present yourself as mature women to become doctors, not little girls.

Bring some kind of nice folder to carry things you will receive the day of the interview. It looks unprofessional to come into an interview with loose papers and a school catalogue slipping out of a nervous, sweaty hand. Most people carry a leather folder. It doesn't need to be leather, but don't go in with a manilla folder.

Make sure you bring an alarm clock! Don't assume wherever you stay will have one. A small travel alarm clock is only 10$, nothing condsiderng you might spend 2000$ in travel costs for the interview season.

Check out your interview outfit before you go. Wear what you are planning to wear and make sure everything looks OK and fits right. It'd be pretty embarrassing to break in a pair of new slacks interview day and forget to remove the tags on the back or to realize you are missing a button on your shirt.

You will sometimes be given a choice of when to interview. If you are, you can try to arrange several interviews together at once in the same region. For example, I arranged UC Irvine, UCLA, UCSD, and USC all in the same week. This saved time and money. However, don't push an interview back too far! If you do, it will appear as if you don't want to attend that school. A good rule of thumb is pushing back an interview at most three or four weeks beyond what they suggest as an interview date. If the earliest date offered you for an interview is November 7, don't push the date past December 7.

Also, you may want to arrange interviews at schools you care most about in the middle of the season. The first couple interviews you do are invariable going to be worse than the last few, simply because you haven't done them before. It is not a good idea to interview at your dream school first, because it probably won't go well, being that it's your first interview. So, try to arrange interviews for backup schools first; they should be the first ones to offer you interviews, anyway. But, remember it is not a good idea to push an interview back too far because admissions are rolling; if you are offered an interview for your favorite school in October but fear that it will be your first, do not push it back too far. Pushing it to November might be fine, but January would be too long.

Practice, practice, practice! Most people interview better as the season progresses. This is simply because they have interviewed so many times. So, practice ahead of time, and your first interview will be as smoothe as the last. You can practice with your premed advisor, a premed friend, or just in front of a mirror. Just make sure you do it!

Be able to answer the following questions fluently and intelligently:

• Tell me a bit about yourself?
• Why do you want to be a doctor?

These questions are always asked. There is more on this in the section The Big Day

Know your application. Anything you put down on the application is fair game, and you should know your own application inside out. Take a look at it before you arrive and the night before. Be prepared to defend any weaknesses and present your strengths.

Do some research on the school. Go to their web site. Be familiar with special acronyms and programs they have. Do they use a traditional curriculum or problem-based learning? You should know the school before you go so you don't look as if you're just applying blindly.

Visit the interview feedpage web page. This is a great resource for people who have interviewed at any particular school, and you should definitely read up, as well as contribute.

Read up on current events. Run through the science and society sections in Time and Newsweek, and run through a good paper. You want to be abreast of emerging scientific, medical, and ethical issues. You don't really have to read everything, but be aware of the newest developments. If your interviewer asks, "So, what do you think of that sheep cloning thing?" or "Do you think Mickey Mantle should have gotten that liver?" and you think, "What the hell is he talking about?" the interview is not going to get started on the right foot.

Take a look in the mirror before you meet your interviewer. Maintain eye contact, and be animated. If you are a naturally quiet person, try not to be during the interview. Your interviewer might think you are apathetic about the school.

Have questions prepared! Interviewers always will ask if you have questions for him, and you should always have something ready to ask specific to that school. It really looks like you don't care about the school if your interviewer asks if you have questions for him and you answer with, "Ummm. . . nope."

è 2. The questions that interviewers ask may range from "What would you do if …" all the way to "How about them Tennessee Titans?"

Typically, an applicant is interviewed by at least 2 individuals during separate interviews. Theoretically, they should NOT have access to your evaluations, and they may ask just about anything.

There are NUMEROUS websites which provide questions which applicants remember being asked by their interviewers, and they give you an idea of the range of questions that may be posed. Here's a sampling:

http://www.cbu.edu/~seisen/FAQs.html

http://www.studentdoctor.net/interview/index.asp

http://web.mit.edu/career/www/pminterviewquestions.pdf

http://gradschool.about.com/cs/medicalinterview/

è 3. What happens if the confidentiality of evaluations or letters of recommendation is breached by an interviewer? 

Recently, a pre-health advisor posed the following situation to the HLTHPROF listserv recipients:

He then asked what he should do, since the confidentiality of at least one of the letters was breached. The general consensus among the responses was that the interviewer was acting in violation of rules that are generally agreed upon, that if interviewers have access to evaluations and/or letters of recommendation, they should NOT divulge the details during the interview.

Nonetheless, interviewers will divulge details, either by paraphrasing or even directly quoting passages in a letter of recommendation. When that happens, advisors are entitled to contact the dean of the respective professional school to inform him/her of the incident. Sometimes, the person who breached confidentiality is removed from the Admissions Committee, and sometimes there is simply a "corrective conversation" between the Admissions Committee Dean and the interviewer regarding what the correct policy should be. Nonetheless, some of the responses from advisors and Admissions Committee members were very interesting and telling:

From another pre-health advisor:
If I may be so bold, and meaning no personal offense, but I feel it was unprofessional for your student to ask prospective writers whether "they could write a good letter", and inappropriate for you to advise him to ask this. Yes, letter writers will be unwilling to be candid in the
future because of this breach of confidentiality by the admissions committee; but letter writers will also be unwilling to be candid if they are interrogated in advance by the recommendee. Your student was free to select letter writers of his choice; students generally know which faculty / mentors / supervisors have good impressions of them. Asking this question of a prospective recommender waves a red flag, as does requesting "non-confidential" letters.

This doesn't excuse what the interviewer did, which in my opinion is
grounds for legal action by your school.

J.

This pre-health advisor disagreed with Advisor J.:
J., I must disagree with your comments to K. First of all, I doubt that Kent phrases his advice just that way. He probably does as I do, which is to have applicants ask potential recommenders, "Do you feel that you know me well enough to write a positive recommendation?" This
gives those faculty who don't know/like/want to an "out" before they reluctantly agree to write what might be a neutral or negative recommendation. They can say "no," quite gracefully. The student can ask someone else.

I think this breach of confidentiality is outrageous and agree with others that Kent should speak to the director of admissions at that medical school, at a minimum.

C.

Finally, this is a reply from an Admissions Committee member of a medical school:
I agree with the issue of confidentiality. It is so important to medical school admission deans/directors that it was introduced to our "Traffic Rules" a few years ago, to make it more "official." Having said so and even though it is something probably all of us emphasize to our interviewers, occasionally someone will "sin." I think that medical schools should be contacted immediately when such an incident occurs.

The reason I decided to write, though, is C's message. We have discussed many times at regional and national meetings how important your letters are to us. If they are to be also valuable and if we are to consider seriously the information given in letters supplied by applicants' recommenders, it would be preferable if the applicant asked a potential recommender: "Do you feel that you know me well enough to write an evaluation for my medical school application?"
We need evaluations, not "positive recommendations." And evaluations can say positive things but they should always be stated from a realistic perspective. I personally will give more weight to a letter telling me that a student knows how to swim well and won't drown than one telling me that the student walks on water.

My two cents.

L.
 

è 4. May I suggest two books to help guide you through various parts of the application process.

1. Get Into Medical School! A Guide for the Perplexed, by Ken Iserson, M.D., M.B.A.

Ken Iserson, M.D., MBA, is a Professor of Emergency and Directory of the Arizona Bioethics Program at the University of Arizona. A new edition of his book, Get Into Medical School! A Guide for the Perplexed, will be available in January from Galen Press at a special prepublication price:

$30 + shipping ($3.50 for "media mail, about 1 to 3 weeks delivery time; or $8.00 "fast," about 1 to 3 days) until January 30, 2004. You can also contact the press for bulk rates, such as for premed club orders that go to the same address.

If you are interested, you can send the order with their mailing address
(mentioning your site/newsletter, i.e. the Caduceus Newsletter, for the discount) to:

Galen Press, Ltd.
PO Box 64400
Tucson, AZ 85728-4400 or call (800) 442-5369 to order, get additional shipping information, or bulk order prices.

Galen Press does accept Visa and Mastercard, personal checks, or money orders. Their Web site is www.galenpress.com; E-mail: sales@galenpress.com.

If you would like more information about the book itself, write to ml@galenpress.com .

2. Writing About Me, by Linda Masse and Barbara Huntington

The book was written by Linda Masse and Barbara Huntington. It is a step-by-step guide to developing a powerful personal statement for your application to schools of medicine, dentistry, chiropractic, optometry, pharmacy, physician assistant, podiatry, and veterinary medicine.

The book is a workbook with charts for such things as self-assessment and values assessment, and chapters on preparing to write, writing, polishing, common errors, etc.

It is avalable through Montezuma Publishing of San Diego State University. To order, call Montezuma Publishing at 619-594-7552 or e-mail montezuma.publishing@sdsu.edu .

è 5. And now for something COMPLETELY different -- I am doing my solo debut on keyboard as a benefit for the Peru Project at Java Cabana on Saturday night, November 22!

Several of the students in my BIOL 413, Parasitology, class are interested in participating in a week-long rotation in a hospital located in Iquitos, Peru during Spring Break 2004. Since the beginning of the semester, the students have conducted a number of fundraisers, so I've decided to get into the act by doing my solo debut on keyboard as a benefit for this Project at Java Cabana on Saturday night, November 22, 9 to 11 p.m.(!)

Java Cabana, which serves coffee beverages, teas, milk-shakes, quesadillas, sandwiches & desserts, is located at 2170 Young Avenue, half a block east of Cooper. It IS Cooper-Young's Coffeehouse.

TELL YOUR FRIENDS, NEIGHBORS AND RELATIVES TO KEEP THE TOMATOES AT HOME, BUT BRING THEIR $$ WITH THEM!!