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[BernieMac]

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[Redden]

No one on these forums will ever question your dedication to get into med and that will carry you 90% of the way into getting in. The best and only advice I can give you is to scrap all the structured/pre-formed/strategic responses and be yourself. They're looking for people who can have a true convo with the patient and are testing you by seeing if you can have a true convo with them about a stressful topic. If you don't pre-plan your regular convos don't pre-plan these. Just practice talking about different subjects and try to expand and challenge your thought process and idea each time. And yes smile, the answer for almost any convo is to smile.

[Bambi]

I agree with Redden. The MMI is meant to be a fun experience where you are totally yourself! Back in the day, my entire prep for the MMI were my life experiences and these carried me through. I enjoyed it, had fun, was certainly not scripted or rehearsed and this came through. So, it is importan that you RELAX, ENJOY the experience, treat it like a practice session and you will do much, much better.

[g_easy]

For ethical or social issue type questions, I used a sort of loose structure that looked something like: present the main ethical dilemma, consider a couple of options/perspectives, pick one side and argue for it, and talk about some conditions for how you might implement a plan. For any of the more personal questions, I just went in and talked from my experience. 

Honestly, I think a structure might be helpful in the early stages of practice but you need to be able to break away from it when appropriate or when it doesn't work. So my advice would be practice, a lot. Preferably with other people who can give you constructive feedback. Your interviewers mostly want to see that you are personable enough to interact with patients and colleagues and are capable of making informed and thoughtful decisions. 

Also, don't be too hard on yourself! Remember that even if you were in the 20th percentile, this is amongst a group of highly qualified applicants. Keep working at it and I don't think it's unrealistic at all to go from your position to an acceptance.

[CatLady]

I think the best advice I got was to just be a person in that interview room. A lot of applicants (myself included) are so used to presenting their best/edited self that they forget to admit when they are wrong or don't know something and I definitely did both at multiple interview stations. In one of the stations I made a wild assumption and realized halfway through. I apologized for the assumption, recognized my mistake and proceeded with the rest of my answer.

 

To answer Q3, I also summarized the prompt, but kept this veryyy brief because I could tell some of the interviewers were bored (or were pretending to be bored?). 

 

Anyway, don't give up!! You got two interviews and that in of itself is an amazing accomplishment! I second what g_easy has said, a lot of practice is the only way to get better. And try to practice with as many different types of people as possible, not just premeds... like even your grandma. You never know what will end up inspiring your answer when it comes to the interview. I also really recommend the book "Medical School Interviews: a Practical Guide to Help You Get That Place at Medical School" by George Lee and Olivier Picard. It has some really useful background reading on medical ethics. It goes a bit too deep into the British medical system, but still kind of interesting to read...