How to answer
How to answer the questions every panel asks.
Twelve questions that come up in nearly every medical school interview, from tell me about yourself to the questions at the end. For each: what it is really asking, what interviewers hear too often, the follow-ups to expect, and how to test your own answer.
The questions
- Tell me about yourself. Usually the first question in a panel, and the one students prepare least for because it sounds like small talk.
- Why do you want to study medicine? Every school asks it in some form, and every applicant has an answer ready.
- Why do you want to study here? The one question you can prepare facts for, and the one where students most often recite the website back to the people who wrote it..
- Tell me about a time you failed. The question students most want to dodge, and the one where dodging costs the most.
- What are your strengths and weaknesses? A question most students have a rehearsed answer to, which is the problem.
- Tell me about a time you disagreed with someone. Doctors disagree with patients, families and colleagues every week.
- How do you handle stress? Medicine is demanding, and schools have seen students struggle.
- What makes a good doctor? It sounds like a question about doctors.
- Do you have any questions for us? The last question in many panel interviews.
- Tell me about a time you showed leadership. Students reach for the biggest title they have held.
- What would you do if a colleague made a mistake? More often an MMI station than a panel question, and it is rarely about the mistake.
- What if you don’t get in? It can feel like a trap.
What these pages will not do
They will not give you an answer to learn. I do not write students' answers, and I do not invent experiences for them. A learned answer is easy to hear, and it falls apart at the first follow-up question.
What they will do is show you what each question is testing, so you can work out your own answer and then test it. The structure I teach for putting an answer together is what a session is for.
Two habits apply to every page here. Practise the follow-up questions as hard as the first one, because the first answer is rarely what decides it. And say every answer out loud, to time, recorded: an answer that reads well on paper often runs long or loses its point when spoken. Each page shows a weaker and a stronger opening. Both are invented, and the stronger one only works for the person it is true of.
Where these questions sit
Most come up early in a panel interview, and in MMI stations about you rather than a scenario. Each is marked against one or two of the six domains.
Other guides
- Start here What the interview is testing, and how the cycle runs.
- Timeline planner Put in your interview date and get a week by week plan.
- Pathway planner The whole road from school to consultant, drawn around your choices.
- Practice stations Real MMI stations with a two minute reading phase and a station clock.
- By university The interview at every undergraduate-entry school: format, timing, and what is marked.
- What is marked The six things every station marks, and how to practise each one.
- Question themes The subjects questions come from, from rural health to the profession, with prompts.
- Interview dates When each school sends invitations, holds interviews and makes offers this cycle.
- When you hear back Every school’s offer dates, and why the wait after the interview is so long.
- Formats What an MMI and a panel interview each are, and how to prepare for each.
- Interview soon? Days to go? What you can still book at short notice, and the prices.
- For parents Who your child is working with, and what I will not promise.
If you want a session
Thirty minutes, $40, online, and it comes off any package you go on to book. Bring the question you dread most.