How to answer
Why do you want to study medicine?
Every school asks it in some form, and every applicant has an answer ready. The answer is rarely what decides it. The second and third questions are.
What it is really asking
On the surface it asks for your reasons. Underneath it asks whether the reasons are yours, and whether you know enough about the job for them to be informed. An interviewer has heard the same five answers all morning and is listening for the one that could only be yours.
The marking domain page on motivation covers how this is scored across the whole interview. This page is about the question itself.
Also asked as: “Why do you want to be a doctor?” “What first made you think of medicine?” “When did you decide on medicine?”
What interviewers hear too often
- Helping people. True, and shared by every other health career and half of everyone else.
- A love of science. A reason to study science. Interviewers will ask why that is not enough.
- A relative’s illness, told as drama. Real and painful, and often told in detail with nothing said about what it showed you.
What a good answer does
- Starts from something that happened. A moment, a person, a conversation, a job. The reason grows out of it rather than being announced.
- Knows the job. Shows you have looked at what doctors do all day, and want it anyway.
- Holds under pressure. Still makes sense after the interviewer asks why, twice.
Two openings
Both invented, and neither is yours to borrow.
The first is a summary anyone could give. The second starts somewhere real and invites the obvious follow-up, which is where the panel wants to go.
The follow-ups to expect
- Why not nursing, or another health career?
- What do you think a doctor’s day involves?
- What part of the job do you think you would find hardest?
- Have you ever doubted it? What happened?
- Why now, rather than after another degree?
Test your own draft
- The swap test. Read your answer as if someone else had written it. If it could be theirs, it is not finished.
- The why test. Ask yourself why after your answer, then again after that one. If you run out of answers on the second, the panel will find the same gap.
- The job test. Does your answer show any knowledge of what doctors do that you could only have learned by looking?
What it is marked on
Related questions
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.
- How to answer The questions every panel asks, what each is testing, and the follow-ups to expect.
- 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
In a session I teach the structure, then ask the follow-ups until your answer holds. Thirty minutes, $40, online, credited to any package.