<p>Congrats, Wirefox! I know that one school allowed my son to change his interview date after it was scheduled but I 'm not sure if all schools allow it. Luckily the assigned date worked out for your son! My son hasn’t found his professors to be overly accommodating. He has two exams scheduled on the day of his first interview. One of the professors is allowing him to take the exam a day early but the other has told him that a med school interview doesn’t qualify as an allowable excuse for a make up exam at his school. </p>
<p>Thanks Ohiomom. My son graduated in May so he isn’t dealing with professors who don’t accommodate students. But if this happened to my son, I’d suggest that he look into it further. Your son can’t possibly be the first student from his college going for a med school interview so I wonder if the school has any official protocol for a situation like this. Maybe he should talk to a pre-med adviser to get some advice. Will this professor possibly let him take the exam one or two days early? </p>
<p>Wirefox, he said that a med school interview is not listed on the dean-approved list of excuses that guarantee you a make up exam, so it’s up to the professor. One professor is allowing him to take her exam the day before the actual exam. The other professor has told him he can’t take it after the exam day and he won’t have the exam written beforehand for him to take it early. And no, he’s not the only person at his school ever to have gone for a med school interview. They just don’t seem to be very supportive or accommodating. It irritates me, too, that they plan to offer mock interviews, but “not yet”. Heck, the interview season could be half over before they decide to help them prepare. I’ve been surprised at the lack of pre-med advising that my son has gotten. We’ve learned way more from CC than from the pre-med advisors at his school. I sort of expected it with S1 who went to a small LAC, but this son (S2) goes to a top 10 school with its own med school. Actually, S1 said that his professors at the LAC were very supportive and bent over backwards to allow him to make up work. I think we expected more support from S2’s school. </p>
<p>Ohiomom, I actually spoke to my son about this today. He said this happened to a friend of his last year. (The school my son attended has its own medical school too but my son thinks there is some protocol in place for med school interviews and missed exams.) My son told me that his friend asked the professor if he could take the exam early and professor told the student if he missed the exam he would get a zero. I guess the student went for some advice (I’m not sure where) and then went back to talk to the professor again. This time the professor said there would be no make up and no zero for the missed exam but the remainder of the semester’s tests would each count a higher percentage of this student’s final grade. The way my son told me the story, his friend just said the professor was in a better mood the second time the student spoke to him. Probably not an ideal situation with missing one exam but certainly better than taking a zero or not going for the interview. Maybe your son could see if the professor would be willing to do something like this. Or maybe he should discuss with the Dean to get this changed.
And you are right…mock interviews but ‘not yet’. Geez, some kids might be finished with all their interviews by the time the mock ones start! At least at S’s school he did a mock interview this past spring semester before he graduated. It’s certainly better than having it happen after the real IIs.</p>
<p>Wirefox, Actually, that’s what my son was able to get his professor to agree to…he won’t get a 0 but his grade for the class will be based on one exam and the final instead of 2 exams and the final. Better than a 0, but it puts a lot of pressure on those two exams.<br>
I suggested that my son check with the career services dept. to see if they offered mock interviews – I really think he could use some practice! – but he was told that they offer them for job placement but not for professional or post graduate schools. He’s stuck waiting for the pre-med folks to get their act together. Any other ideas for interview practice?</p>
<p>He should go to the med school at his own school and ask them help him with one.</p>
<p>Theoretically, premed folks are there because they never made it to med school. What would they know. 
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<p>You might ask any family friend or acquaintance who does hiring/interviewing for their employer to do a mock interview. It’s the formal give-and-take of interviewing and the how well the applicant self-presents that’s important, not so much the medical aspect of it. </p>
<p>Ohiomom, Maybe your son should try a mock interview through the career center at his college, like you suggested. It won’t be the same as a mock interview for med school but it will help him with how he presents himself. I think WOWM is right about the formal give and take of interviewing and establishing connections between the individuals involved. He obviously should review the commonly asked questions during med school interviews and give some thought to how to answer those. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, his school won’t do a mock interview in the career center because they exclude med school applicants. I think they are assuming that the pre med dept. is taking care of this. </p>
<p>Wowmom, good idea. I may see if my brother would do a skype mock interview with him. He has done a lot of interviewing and may be able to give him some good feedback. In person would be better, but maybe this is the best we can do. </p>
<p>I’m curious about something in regards to med school admissions. Are med school admissions done holistically like many colleges? In other words, once an applicant gets an II, does the initial application along with the secondary application continue to be used in the decision process or are all the applicants who receive an II given a level playing field without further evaluation of their individual initial and secondary application? My DS and I have both wondered about this although we have not found any information on different school websites that would answer this question. If anyone has thoughts or ideas on this, please let me know. Thank you!</p>
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<p>I don’t think an applicant’s stats are ever completely dismissed from consideration once the II extended. (Adcomms want students who will be successful academically and score well on the USMLEs, and GPA +MCAT while an imperfect metric is the best they’ve got.) </p>
<p>LizzyM described the admissions process like this–after the initial committee review, applicants are ranked and placed on a staircase. The interview and overall “fit” of the applicant can move the applicant up or down the staircase 2 or 3 steps, but it won’t move an bottom ranked applicant to the top of the pack and most applicants won’t move more than 1 place, if at all. And, of course, a really disasterous interview can always get an applicant tossed over the stair railing and totally removed from admission consideration. (It happens at every school at least a few times every year. The adcomms over at SDN all have many stories about interviewees behaving badly.)</p>
<p>The ranking becomes important when the adcomm reconvenes and decides where to set their cut-off for admissions. That one step up or down could make the difference between an acceptance or a waitlist.</p>
<p>And each school’s committee will look at different things when ranking an application. Some value stats highly; some value research; some value community involvement/community service; some value the match between the applicant’s goals and the school’s mission. IOW, one size doesn’t fit all when comes to how a committee ranks an applicant. (Otherwise the process would be a whole lot more predictable than it is.)</p>
<p>Another way to look at it is that many schools’ adcomms use a scoring rubric to rank applicants. Within that rubric there is a point allotment for interview impressions. (Say interview is worth up to 15 points and the applicants whole score is out of 200 possible points.) See how the individual’s base assessment never completely goes away, but a strong interview performance can possibly make a difference in how an applicant is ranked?</p>
<p>I have heard from people in the process that they use the type of rubric described above where the scores are cumulative all the way through interview, especially at the State schools.</p>
<p>Thank you WOWM. Your explanation certainly gives us a better feel for this whole process.</p>
<p>Would the interview be such a small percentage of the whole rubric? I would think the interview would count a lot more than 7-8% of the entire evaluation. I can see how a strong interview (or a poor one for that matter) could move an applicant up or down in the ranking especially if large numbers of applicants were closely bunched in the rubric.</p>
<p>My numbers are entirely hypothetical. </p>
<p>I’m not privy to how a particular school weights the interview. And I strongly suspect the weighting will vary from school to school. </p>
<p>Ok! Thanks for clarifying. It is all a mystery to me and DS as he goes through this process.</p>
<p>My son didn’t have a lot of experience…only completed 6 applications, but at the 3 schools he received acceptances, the interviews were weighted about 30%. </p>
<p>Anyone who gets an II has been determined to be worthy of admittance. The interview is “the crazy test” or some other litmus test. </p>
<p>DS had an II last week and he said right at the beginning all the applicants were told that their GPA and MCAT no longer mattered. That would make sense based on what you posted mom2college, that all are worthy of admittance once an II is offered. He also said there were 6 applicants at the II and each of them were interviewed by different people which certainly adds some subjective evaluation to the whole process. Overall, he found the II not to be too stressful which hopefully is a good sign. However, he felt 1/2 hour with each of the interviewers was not enough time but I guess that could be the nature of the interview process.</p>
<p>The multiple interviewers reduces the subjectivity in the evaluations since one person is not deciding on the candidate.</p>