Article on Interviews - People Skills

Nontraditional Premed Discussion
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Interesting article from NYT about how some schools are conducting their interviews…


http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/11/health/pol icy/11…

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I still have a hard time believing any of these schools would pass on a 40+ MCAT with a 4.0, just cause they couldn’t pass their “speed dating” gambit.


One school I am applying to has a “patient interaction” component that I like, but it is still combined with the traditional intreview.

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Interesting…


“We are trying to weed out the students who look great on paper but haven’t developed the people or communication skills we think are important,”


This quote rings familiar to me. I just had lunch last week with a physician who used to be in charge of the promotions committee at my reach school. (Deciding which students were ready to move on each year). He said, “I wasn’t a part of admissions, but I sure saw a lot of admissions errors. Students who had it all on paper but just couldn’t cut it once they got in… Medicine is largely about people. If you can’t communicate and relate, you may well flail and fail.”


I’m not sure what the exact right answer is here, with regard to interview style–but I am definitely glad to see schools trying new approaches to evaluate this critical piece of the puzzle.

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  • BaileyPup Said:
I still have a hard time believing any of these schools would pass on a 40+ MCAT with a 4.0, just cause they couldn't pass their "speed dating" gambit.

One school I am applying to has a "patient interaction" component that I like, but it is still combined with the traditional intreview.



I'm not surprised. According to people's posts in the Pritzker SDN forum secondaries with those stats are getting dumped left and right.

At the OPM conference an admissions rep from PCOM-GA basically said at this point there are so many people applying with great stats that they could literally spread their apps out and throw darts and still end up with a qualified class.

So, we can't just have good grades and decent MCAT scores. We have to be interesting!

Also, I believe UofA is using this format this year, in case any OPMers are interested. I believe the questions are not just ethical/problem solving, but a mix, however I can't confirm that for sure.