How to answer
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.
What it is really asking
Whether you have looked at this school specifically, and whether what you found matters to you. Schools differ in where they train students, which communities they serve and what kind of doctor they say they want to produce. The panel wants to know that you know which school you are sitting in.
Each school’s own page on this site says what it publishes about its interview and, where it has one, its mission. Start there, then read the school’s own pages.
Also asked as: “Why this medical school?” “Why is this your first preference?” “What do you know about our program?”
What interviewers hear too often
- The ranking. Being ranked well is a reason to want a degree from somewhere. It is not a reason to train in a particular community.
- The website, read back. A list of facilities and program features with nothing about why any of them matters to you.
- Convenience. Close to home is a real reason. On its own it sounds like this is the school you could not avoid.
What a good answer does
- Specific to the school. Something about this school that would not be true of the one down the road: its clinical schools, its community, its mission.
- Connected to you. Why that particular thing matters to you, from something in your own life.
- Honest. If it is your second preference, it is fine for it not to sound like a lifelong dream. Being glad to train there is enough.
Two openings
Both invented, and neither is yours to borrow.
The first fits every school in the country. The second only works at one, and only for the person it is true of.
The follow-ups to expect
- What do you know about where our students do their placements?
- Have you applied anywhere else? Why there?
- What would you do if you did not get a place here?
- What do you think is different about the doctors we produce?
Test your own draft
- The other school test. Replace the school’s name with another. If the answer still works, it is not specific enough.
- The you test. Is there one sentence in it about you, and not about the school?
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.