How Should I Answer "why Do You Choose Our School" Type Of Question

[武田信玄]

Hi all. I have an interview from the States coming up in a few weeks and am wondering if anyone could perhaps share some thoughts on this potential interview question. I have got some of my own ideas too:

 

1. I can talk about their curriculum, which I wrote a bit on the secondary.

 

2. Should I talk about how I would fit their mission? It seems that most of these schools have pretty similar missions (patient centred care, compassion, leadership, blah blah blah) so how should I discuss it without sounding too generic?

 

3. Should I also talk about their clerkship program? This is where I am a bit confused since I'm still not very clear on how university and hospital work together in a MD program. My understanding is that each medical school has a teaching hospital which offers clinical rotations during 3rd and 4th year. It also seems to me that most schools offer the same set of rotations (internal, surgery, neurology, same old same old). If so, what makes one clerkship program better than the other? What determines a good clerkship program? What resource and statistics should I look into in order to say something positive about their clerkship program?

 

4. Similar to 3, should I also talk about their residency program? I'm not sure if they are going to ask me what specialty I am interested in but it's a possibility. Again, being a noob in medicine and having no physician connection whatsoever, I don't exactly know the intricacy of obtaining a residency position. I know you have to apply through a natinoal-matching system, but I also heard that people tend to stay in the hospitals where they did their clerkship. So do you think I should look into the teaching hospitals of the university and their residency programs? Again, what makes one residency program better than the other? What resource and statistics should I look into in order to say something positive about their residency program? I heard there is a residency ranking system in the States, could anyone shed some lights on it?

 

Thank you in advance for all your inputs.

[武田信玄]

bump

[bearded frog]

Don't talk about residency but you can mention all those things. More specifically you should relate to how specifically YOU are a good fit for their school. You could be like you're the 4th ranked med school thats why I want to go there, but its better to say that "Although I grew up in canada I have family in X state and have spent time here and become familar with the people/community and my background in X research/volunteering/hobby makes me a good fit at this school due to its emphasis on X".