How to Ace your Medical School Interview

It's that time of the year again, where aspiring medical students flock to different medical schools to apply for the next academic year. Most if not all medical schools conduct interview/s with their applicants as part of their screening process. The interview helps the admissions committee to see the applicants' emotional quotient (EQ) and how well the aspirants interact with people which is a key characteristic of being a doctor.

In this blog post, I will make a run down of what are do's and what you should avoid during the interview proper. I will also give out tips on how to prepare for an interview and how to ace your medical school interview.

In preparing for the interview, make sure that you look presentable - hair, clothing, overall appearance. I won't elaborate on this much as being presentable is self explanatory. Just remember that first impressions last and you would want to be remembered as someone who is presentable rather than someone who didn't make a good impression to the admissions committee. After all, they're the ones who will decide whether you get in to the medical school of your dreams or not.

Make sure to read about the school you are applying for, just the basics and at least have an idea about the institution you are getting yourself into. Knowledge is power and it is always impressive for the interviewers that you have at least something to say about the school. It will give them an impression that you are really interested in their program. Also, read about current events especially those which are related to the health sector as interviewers are doctors themselves and having knowledge about what's happening around you is a good plus point for you. I remember, during one of my medical school interviews I was asked about my thoughts on the Dengvaxia fiasco and the act of the President kissing an OFW. Since I am pretty much familiar with the issues, I just breezed out over these questions. 

Also, in preparing for the med school interview read about what are the usual questions being asked like "Why do you want to be a doctor?" "What are your strengths and weaknesses?" "How do you handle stress/pressure?". In my experience, these questions are so common and asked almost to every medical school interview I've been. Knowing the usual questions will give you a good head start and even prepare for the possible answers to these questions. What I did is write all the questions in a notebook and tried to answer all of them again and again. I even wrote my answers down so I can read them over and over. However, be careful not to sound rehearsed during the actual interview and make sure that you sound all natural while answering the questions thrown at you. This is important!

Days before your schedule, make sure that you are familiar with the location of your interview. You wouldn't want to be lost and stressed minutes before your actual interview, first impressions matter remember?

On the night before your interview, prepare the clothes you'll be wearing, the things you need to bring for the interview, set your alarm and go to bed early. This way, on your interview day you'll be more relaxed and will give your brain enough energy to think clearly and answer well all your questions which is really the key to ace the interview.

On the day of your interview, be confident in answering every question asked your way but do not be cocky or a know-it-all type of interviewee. Being articulate will also make your interview look good as you will sound quick witted and know what you are saying. My key secret to any interview I go to is to make it conversational, meaning I just treat the interview as I am just communicating with a friend or a colleague but in a little formal way. Keeping this in mind helps you relax and sound more natural. Also, take your time while answering the question and do not talk fast. Make sure the interviewer was able to understand what you are saying by talking moderately and loud enough.

Below are some of the handy and useful interview tips that I myself used during my interview session.

Interview day tips:

1. Wake up, eat your breakfast and prepare to go early.
2.  Double check your things to bring for the interview.
3. Arrive at least 15 minutes before your schedule.
4. Greet and initiate a hand shake with your interviewer/s.
5. Always smile and maintain eye contact.
6. Relax and answer honestly (answer from your heart).
7. Avoid checking your watch or the clock for the time as this is disrespectful.
8. Avoid fidgeting as it's a distracting action.
9. Grab the opportunity to ask questions to your interviewer when he/she asks if you have any questions or if you need clarifications about anything related to the medical school admissions.
10. At the end of the interview, don't forget to say 'thank you' and to shake the hands of your interviewer/s.

You only have a one time chance and a few minutes to show the admission committee who you are, what your potentials are and why you are worthy to wear that white coat in the future so make sure to make your interview count. Go ace your medical school interview! With these tips in mind, no doubt you'll ace your medical school interview.

There you go for my tips on how to ace your medical school interview. I will create a separate post for all the medical school interview questions that I encountered and heard of. Good luck future doctors and I hope this helps. Any questions, feel free to comment below or send me an email.

NMAT Series: Torn between enrolling to a review center and self studying

Holidays are over and it is time to get back to crunch time to study for the coming NMAT. Many of you are thorn between enrolling yourself to a review center or just do a self study - trust me when I say I know the feeling because I've been there. I'll give you some helpful factors to consider which option will work best for you. 

I did both - enrolled myself to a review center and buried myself with self study materials, reviewers, resources, books and anything that I found will help me prepare for NMAT. 

My thoughts about NMAT review centers depends on which review center will you enroll to. There are a lot of review centers available in the market in this day on but I believe not all review centers will help you achieve your goal %ile rank and sadly, some are just pure business. I know review centers can slash you a good amount of money so be careful to choose for a 'worth the price' sessions that you are looking for. If you have the resources to enroll yourself in review classes, go ahead but if not might as well hit your books as early as now to study for the NMAT. I am telling you, NMAT is no joke and it is not a piece of cake. 

Review centers are good if you need a little push to study and be productive because they have specific time and day of classes that you need to attend to (though not mandatory) and several sample tests even take home tests to work on will be given.  All of the review centers are in a classroom setting so if classroom setting works for you, a review center will definitely help you. Another good thing with some review centers is that they give tips on how to answer the questions and problems easier, faster and correctly which I will share with you guys on my blogs to follow for the NMAT series (so make sure to subscribe to my blog, you wouldn't want to miss it - trust me). 

Be aware of review centers which will just give you incomplete/incompetent review materials, hold classes that will just answer the sample questions they provided and that's it, review done and you can bid your hard earned money good bye. It is a sad reality for review centers. Trust me, it happens. Aside from enrolling myself to a review center, what my friends and I did are share notes, review materials and techniques that the review centers taught us which really came in handy during the actual test. So if you're on a tight budget, it wouldn't hurt to ask your friends (who enrolled in a review center) for the review materials, sample exams and most especially the techniques in answering the NMAT questions (which is what I found most useful tool in acing the NMAT) they acquired from the review centers. 

Doing self study will require a huge amount of efforts because you have to look for the right review materials, notes, and blogs that give out reviewers. Luckily, today there are lots of sources you can get the reviewers from, like some facebook page and groups such as the pinoy doctor, non-premed doctors/future doctors, Philippine NMAT: October 2018. These page/groups provide tips, review materials, sample questions that are really useful that you may think twice if you still want to pay for a review center that much money wherein you can just be motivated and use the available resources and save your money for other things when you're already in medical school. These groups can also be your support group because all of its members are aspiring doctors and always willing to help you with anything like answering a problem that you're not sure of and other NMAT and even medical schools related questions.

As I've mentioned earlier, I worked my hardest to self study and thank God, it worked for me. I spent all my vacant hours studying for NMAT everyday and have a strict schedule set just for studying - no phones, no other electronic devices that might distract me from studying. It takes discipline to do this. I even made my review materials posted in the walls of my room which I found very effective. You might want to consider doing this too - it may be a little 'extra' but whatever works, right?

I hope this blog post helped you decide which option is suitable for you and if you have questions, feel free to comment down or send me a message and I'll be glad to help you with it. Thank you.