<p>There are several things that have come out time and time again as common med school tactics during interviews. How common they remain is debatable, but they’re designed to fluster you, much in the same way as the ethical questions could be used.</p>
<p>The first is to tell you that your LOR’s are great, except for one. And that one is AWFUL. Occasionally they’ll tell you which one, sometimes they won’t. But they want to know why you could have gotten such an awful LOR from someone you solicited the favor from.
This did happen to me during my interview at UMKC’s 6 year program when I was a HS senior (I must have done a good job explaining it away, b/c I got accepted, though obviously turned it down - thank God).</p>
<p>The other “classic” is that they have the heat up high, or AC turned off, so the room is stuffy, and ask you to open the window - but it has been nailed shut…so no matter how hard you try, you’ll never get it open. Part of it is a test of your habits of observation, part of it is again to make you flustered (as if you needed more nerves during a med school interview). This trick is likely no longer used, because it’s pointless and really adds nothing to the interview. More an “old-school” relic of a time when medicine was all male, and admissions decisions not so highly scrutinized.</p>
<p>I think BDM and Shades and others will agree that interviews are nerve-wracking but they can also be fun and a great experience. In one of my interviews, the interviewer was so laid back that he had a leg swung over the arm of his chair and we got to talking about so many other things that he didn’t get all his questions in he was supposed to ask. That was my best interview by far. I pretty much walked out of that one feeling like he was going to do his damnedest to get me in that year’s class.</p>