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Improving interview performance after post interview rejection


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I was rejected from u of a post interview for the second time around With a 3.92 gpa, 518 MCAT and 8/17 EC score (max was 12, avg for interview invite was 6). unfortunately u of a only tells you if you pass or fail your interview and doesn’t provide any feedback But given that my other stats are decently competitive I’m assuming it’s my interview score holding me back (for reference I’ve passed the interview last year and this year so I’m not doing the worst I could be doing which gives me hope). so I’ve spent a couple hours looking through the forums to try and gather advice and resources for MMI practice/improvement and had a couple questions.

1. I’ve seen a lot of mixed opinions on prep companies, are there any that are currently relevant that anyone could recommend? (Some of the old threads had links that no longer work)

2. Is anyone on here willing to assist me who knows how assessors are grading interviews (I’m willing to pay as well)? 
 

3. are there any books that anyone can recommend? 
 

at this point I’m really willing to try anything to improve and would greatly appreciate any help or suggestions :) I realize there are other post like this but I just wanted any up to date suggestions and if anyone is willing to assist me that would be awesome! 

as a side note the things that I have been doing the last two cycles to prep are the following: mock mmi through my schools career centre, practiced with 2 people who were interviewers for med and dent (I received critiques such as saying filler words less and expanding on my ideas but by the end of it both people said my answers were above average and didn’t think I was horrible so I may have been over confident and not realized I wasn’t doing as well as I could) and then I also did self prep by myself for hours. 
 

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I was reject post interview as well. I hired 3 coaches from astrof which was recommended by my friend who went to UofT. The coaches all said my performance was great, only downside was I didn't seem to be excited or proud of myself. On the real thing, I think I performed way worse due to stress and missed many points I supposed to say. In short, I think coaching is useful if you are not sure where you got wrong but less useful than extensive practice. 

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17 hours ago, HopefulMD786 said:

Your MCAT score isn’t assessed competitively by UofT so the 518 doesn’t really help get you the acceptance, it ultimately depends on your GPA and ECs and your GPA is on the lower side of the accepted average.

Hey, the OP specified U of A (University of Alberta), not UofT. 

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  • 1 month later...

Go to theMedical Interview Forum and go through thoroughly Arztin8s & future_doc’s threads on this subject!

I have helped applicants who did not succeed on prior interviews and this is the advice I gave - which worked! :P

Treat the MMI as if “it is a practice run” and treat the interviewers as if they are inquisitive, interested 12 year old children to whom you wish to explain fully. If you are able to do this, the anxiety will be removed and your performance will dramatically improve. 

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I was rejected before getting in. The single most important thing for me was to craft a new personal narrative that was compelling, coherent and catchy. Instead of feeling like I prepared an answer for the question "Why medicine?", it felt like I convinced myself I was destined to practice medicine and I was confident that my admission would follow at some point. I became enthusiastic about sharing my story and showing my personality to the interviewers. I had to truly convince myself before I was able to convince them.

The process is obviously very personal and you probably have a solid answer to the "Why medicine?" question already, but it might be worth looking at a different personal story that gets you excited.

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I'm gonna be candid here because I truly want to help you instead of giving fair tale advice.

People tend to think that they somehow didn't get in to UofA because their interviewing skills weren't good enough. I think that is not the case for many applicants. 

If you interviewed at 5 different schools and still didn't get in, then chances are you probably should be doing more interview prep. If you only interviewed at once school and didn't get in, and especially if that one school was UofA, Queens, or NOSM, I'm going to argue that you just didn't get lucky enough to get in. I'll explain more here:

UofA interviews ~530 applicants for ~220 offers (this includes waitlist offers). Compare this statistic to many other schools and you will have better odds (UofT interviews 640, sends ~310 offers, Mac interviews ~550, sends ~330 offers, Western interviews ~480, sends ~250 offers, BC interviews 655 for 333 offers). I'm not even going mention Manitoba and Sask since they have super high acceptance rates post-interview. For ontario schools, the statistics I posted is reflective of the ENTIRE pool, however, for U of A the percentage of IP students who get in is even lower, this is because there is a lot more waitlist movement for OOP applicants. My point here is that as an IP applicant, your chances of receiving an offer from U of A post-interview is lower than many other med schools.

As for anecdotal evidence. I have interviewed at U of C, U of A, and U of T. I got rejected from U of A and U of C but was directly accepted to U of T - St. George campus! I'll also tell you one more thing: I think I did WAY better on my U of A interview than my U of T interview. I remember calling my family and friends after my U of A interview basically pre-celebrating. One of the interviewers actually told me "Wow you did good". I also made them laugh several times throughout the interview. It was a very good experience. I was convinced I would get accepted to UofA. I ended up getting rejected with a 4.0 GPA, 510 MCAT, 8/17 ECs and a Pass like you. I'm gonna be bold and say I think I did the best I could at that interview. There wasn't much else I could have improved upon. Like, what else can you expect other than the interviewer literally telling you that you did a good job? 

 

My point from all of this is that, do not, under any circumstances put all your eggs in one basket. Make yourself competitive for as many med schools as possible. Your goal for the next cycle should be to get more interviews, not just get better for a UofA interview. Obviously, you can always improve your interviewing skills. But unfortunately, there is an element of luck in this process and relying only on one school means that you are playing a risky game. 

 

Aside from my preachy rant, if you are interested in learning about how the interview is assessed, PM me! I can prep with you when the time comes too. Free of charge obviously.

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On 6/26/2020 at 5:56 PM, bruh said:

I'm gonna be candid here because I truly want to help you instead of giving fair tale advice.

People tend to think that they somehow didn't get in to UofA because their interviewing skills weren't good enough. I think that is not the case for many applicants. 

If you interviewed at 5 different schools and still didn't get in, then chances are you probably should be doing more interview prep. If you only interviewed at once school and didn't get in, and especially if that one school was UofA, Queens, or NOSM, I'm going to argue that you just didn't get lucky enough to get in. I'll explain more here:

UofA interviews ~530 applicants for ~220 offers (this includes waitlist offers). Compare this statistic to many other schools and you will have better odds (UofT interviews 640, sends ~310 offers, Mac interviews ~550, sends ~330 offers, Western interviews ~480, sends ~250 offers, BC interviews 655 for 333 offers). I'm not even going mention Manitoba and Sask since they have super high acceptance rates post-interview. For ontario schools, the statistics I posted is reflective of the ENTIRE pool, however, for U of A the percentage of IP students who get in is even lower, this is because there is a lot more waitlist movement for OOP applicants. My point here is that as an IP applicant, your chances of receiving an offer from U of A post-interview is lower than many other med schools.

As for anecdotal evidence. I have interviewed at U of C, U of A, and U of T. I got rejected from U of A and U of C but was directly accepted to U of T - St. George campus! I'll also tell you one more thing: I think I did WAY better on my U of A interview than my U of T interview. I remember calling my family and friends after my U of A interview basically pre-celebrating. One of the interviewers actually told me "Wow you did good". I also made them laugh several times throughout the interview. It was a very good experience. I was convinced I would get accepted to UofA. I ended up getting rejected with a 4.0 GPA, 510 MCAT, 8/17 ECs and a Pass like you. I'm gonna be bold and say I think I did the best I could at that interview. There wasn't much else I could have improved upon. Like, what else can you expect other than the interviewer literally telling you that you did a good job? 

 

My point from all of this is that, do not, under any circumstances put all your eggs in one basket. Make yourself competitive for as many med schools as possible. Your goal for the next cycle should be to get more interviews, not just get better for a UofA interview. Obviously, you can always improve your interviewing skills. But unfortunately, there is an element of luck in this process and relying only on one school means that you are playing a risky game. 

 

Aside from my preachy rant, if you are interested in learning about how the interview is assessed, PM me! I can prep with you when the time comes too. Free of charge obviously.

.

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All seat/offer numbers are available from the AFMC, and schools may release interview numbers themselves. For the 2018-2019 cycle (the last one in the AFMC report) Ottawa interviewed 575 people for 244 offers (similar to the UofA). This year they interviewed 582 for an unknown number of offers (probably similar). The multiplicity of streams at Ottawa does complicate simple math here, although there is not a large OOP contingent. Ottawa is probably between Queens and the UofA in terms of numbers game competitiveness. 

The reasons for UofA and Queen being wildcards (I agree wholeheartedly with the message above as someone who was rejected post-interview at both schools despite feeling these were good/great interviews) is they interview more people for less seats than other schools. There are 86 non QuARMS/non-Indigenous seats at Queens, that is incredibly low for an Ontario school. Some are also MD/PhD seats IIRC. 

Applying to any school is a lottery but some schools are better or worse in the numbers.

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