<p>Kristin, I could be wrong as I have never been to a committee meeting, but I would assume your favorite “kristen” outfit would be fine for that, and then rev up the conservative engines (boring black suit) for your actual med school interviews. </p>
<p>I have a general question about interviews after reading about “Edgar” and the other socially inept applicants. What exactly is the purpose of the interview? They already have scores, EC’s, PS etc, so am I incorrect in assuming that an important aspect of the interview is to view the applcant for their interpersonal social skills?</p>
<p>I was always curious on how it is possible to blow an interview. I think someone has to be really bad at communication or even offensive to do poorly in an interview- most applicants “pass,” with a few really standing out, but I really don’t get how anyone can do so poorly as to turn off the admissions committee.</p>
<p>No, you’re not incorrect. That’s pretty much exactly the point of the interview. It also is a way for an applicant to make themselves stand out in the sea of 3.8/34 files that parade through the admissions offices every year.</p>
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<p>I think that for people who are not socially awkward, it seems really hard to screw up an interview. But it’s not just what an applicant says, it’s how they say it. You can say all the right words, but if you don’t make eye contact, don’t smile, slump in the chair, talk too fast, seem wishy-washy or uncertain, these all negatively affect your interaction with your interviewer. The assumption is that the way you act during an interview will be the way you will act with patients.</p>
<p>And then there are the catastrophes - I heard from someone I know at another medical school that once during an interview, an applicant whipped out an anti-Semitic slur and seemed to think nothing of it. That’s poor insight and lack of judgment - two big bad strikes against them. Suffice it to say that the interview was abruptly concluded and the person didn’t get in.</p>
<p>Thanks shades, that is exactly the reply I was hoping for! Social skills are definitely my D’s strong suit, and I’d like to think she got them all from me, (yet in a much more refined way.) :)</p>
<p>If DS improved his social skills over the past couple of years, he definitely did not get them from me. I am very glad he is off to an OOS college and he has more opportunities to “grow” his social skills there, mostly thanks to his involvement in club activities.</p>
<p>At one time, he even said to us he could learn almost the same on almost all academic subjects at many other colleges including his IS college; but he went to his current college mostly for the extra curricula (not necessarily premed centric though.) When my friend heard about this, he told me to “push it back” and asked me to ask my child to pay more attention to the “school” stuff, i.e., the academics, because I paid the big bucks to send him there. But he did not know how badly my son needs this aspect of “education”, the aspect of education he might not be able to pick it up from us. (And he himself is already serious enough about the academic side of his college life and it is us the parents who keep trying to ask him to “light up” his load, e.g., a gap year. He did complain about the grade-centric aspect of a premed life.)</p>
<p>Many of you may never understand how satisfying and relief we are when we first heard from DS that “now I feel quite comfortable in having conversations with most other people, including even strangers.”</p>
kristin, I don’t want to over-sell my point, or let you oversell it either. As you note, my comments were based on your upcoming committee interview with a prof who already knows and likes you. Med school interviews would usually not have the same dynamics in play. IOW, conversational in med school interviews is a good thing.</p>
<p>You’re going to have to calibrate your tone to the interviewer. I had interviewers who clearly wanted a formal discussion about a couple of the things I’d listed on my resume, and I had other interviewers who, after sounding me out, were happy to talk casually. There is no easy way to generalize this. You must be flexible (and good at reading people).</p>
<p>Harvard Law actually is one of few law schools that do interviews. Their “interview” is a phone call that lasts seriously five minutes. Even during that five minute window, according to their former admissions director, about 10% of candidates will do something so offensive that HLS chooses to reject them.</p>
<p>I wish I’d asked him for some examples at the time, but neglected to do so. But you can imagine that it’d be things like a profane voicemail greeting, or picking up the phone in line at Starbucks and then yelling at the person getting your coffee, or greeting him with a beer-commecial “Whazzzzzap?”</p>
<p>I should also say: you know what, some interviews are going to go poorly. That’s just the nature of the game, and that’s one reason why you do several of them.</p>
<p>My very first interview asked me a lot of questions I had no idea how to answer (“If you could have dinner with any two people – fictional, historical, whatever – who would they be?”) and I apparently botched it pretty badly. The interviewer closed by telling me:</p>
<p>“Michael, I know that things look rough from here. But the good news is that almost half of all students who apply to medical school get in somewhere. You should take comfort in that statistic.”</p>
<p>If I remember it correctly, DS’s premed office asked some medical school students to conduct the mock interview for the premed students. (I could be wrong here, as how can these busy MS students find any time for this?) DS got a very tough interviwer, while one of his friend got a very friendly one. I hope it is not because DS himself was not particularly good at this. – Boy…I bet he at least did not dress up formally for his mock interview or his interview with his premed committee – because he did not have a suite at that time. On a few occasion he needs to wear the suit in the past few years, his roomie lent him that. (He did have his own suit at one time, but somehow one piece of it was likely at his roomie’s house after the end of some school year.)</p>
<p>This reminds me that I had better mailed him a suite as soon as possible as the interview season is near. Hopefully, he knows how to put on his tie by now His roomie who has a very good father to teach him how to be a gentleman is no longer with him, to help himn with this. Last weekend, this past roomie showed him around NYC, maybe even walked together with him to “visit” one of the medical schools (either NYU or Mt. Sinai?) there on purpose, just in case DS MAY need to be there for an interview (He has not got an invite from either of these.) He appreciated his help very much.</p>
<p>Committee interview was a total love-fest. Doubt it could’ve gone better. Quite enjoyable, actually! Looking forward to completing my files at my schools–should have 8 out of 13 secondaries submitted this weekend, which doesn’t count the ones which don’t require essays!</p>
<p>Most people come out of the interview feeling like they did pretty well. Only a few are truly exceptional interviewees. Only a few are offensive and lacking in self-awareness. Most are pleasant, nice, but ultimately unremarkable. You will feel like you established a connection with your interviewer only to be waitlisted 6 weeks later. This is not unlike the third year of medical school where you can feel like you did well, receive great feedback from your residents and attendings, and end up with 5 out of 9’s on your evaluations. </p>
<p>For the vast majority of med schools, your application still carries weight even after you’ve received an interview. In other words, not all interviewees are on equal footing. I personally believe that the % of people for whom the interview is make-or-break is smaller than we think.</p>
DS heard the same from one of his friends who interviewed at many schools on the east coast and midwest last cycle. (Maybe he/she is naturally good at this though. A very successful applicant who decided to attend a medical school in a big city in the end, i.e., the location is very very important to him/her because of a personal reason. – Interviewed at a single California school as an oos applicant but did not get into any California school in the end.)</p>
<p>There seems to be a special program from Columbia medical school which requires you to be at another location (i.e., not in NYC) during the last 2 years of medical school years. DS is not interested in that program. (Likely a program for producing primary care doctors?). But he said if you do not fill out something for that, you are not able to submit your secondary application even for the regular program.</p>
<p>Should he just put a “dummy character” like a space or a period on that secondary essay so that he could submit? He said some SDNers had run into a similar problem and no one is very sure about what to do here.</p>
<p>^ The special program is called “Bassett.” Anybody ran into a similar problem that DS ran into? That is, he is required to enter something for the Bassett program otherwise he could not submit his “regular” secondary.</p>
<p>^^ I am sure that the program can’t force you into being a primary care doctor. I am sure you have a choice after your 2nd year of medical school. It seems strange that an ivy league research based medical school would do something like this.</p>
<p>mcat2: I ran into that problem, I just wrote “Not applicable.” and didn’t even think twice about it. Hopefully that wasn’t an application snafu!</p>
<p>norcalguy: today’s was with my premed committee, whom I already knew quite well. I’d hoped it would go well because the head of the committee is pretty notoriously known for being a huge jerk (he likes me though, which is great)–which is why I’m thrilled it went great! But I don’t doubt what you said regarding med school interviews, yet nonetheless am looking forward to them.</p>
<p>GAMOM: I went with a mix–black slacks from suit + coral top + white jacket + watch (+ good luck sillybandz which is a blue elephant, but he was hiding under my watch so I didn’t look like a first grader with my bracelets!)–and I think it looked great! :)</p>
<p>Although I do not claim to be experienced on this subject, what I have gathered so far seems to confirm Norcalguy’s theory. Most interviewees are unremarkable, with a few that are truly exceptional, and a few that become immediate rejections afterwards due to horrendous social skills. I consider the interview very simple in its goal. Obviously, the admissions committee needs to see the applicant, because basing a decision solely on what the applicant says about him/herself would not be prudent because people tend to portray themselves in a positive light. LORs may be skewed too, because people only choose the professors that like them.</p>
<p>It also varies from school to school. I was told explicitly at one school: “This isn’t a philosophy of ours – we don’t do it intentionally – but we studied our own results. And what we found is that apparently, after the interview, we don’t care about MCAT scores, GPAs, that sort of thing. Apparently, all that matters to us is the interview.”</p>
<p>I was told at another school: “Frankly, the interview really is just a psycho-check. As long as you’re not a psycho, we evaluate your applications pretty much based on the same material we had going into the interview.”</p>
His roomie who has a very good father to teach him how to be a gentleman is no longer with him, to help himn with this. Last weekend, this past roomie showed him around NYC, maybe even walked together with him to “visit” one of the medical schools (either NYU or Mt. Sinai?) there on purpose, just in case DS MAY need to be there for an interview (He has not got an invite from either of these.) He appreciated his help very much.</p>