Jump to content
Premed 101 Forums

Interview Difficulty Thread


Recommended Posts

Moderator edit: Comments considered in violation of confidentiality protocol have been retracted throughout the thread. Please exercise caution when posting and adhere to the confidentiality forms you signed when you interviewed. While discussing "interview difficulty" is fair, it is not reasonable to discuss specifics of interviews- including interview content.

 

Share your subjective feedback of interviews here. I've noticed a lot of variation between the schools I've interviewed at so far...! 

 

Here are my (relative) ratings, with a 5/5 indicating the hardest I've done so far

Manitoba: 

- Simple MMI 

- 10 stations, 1 rest station, 1 ten-minute writing station

- 2/5 difficulty 

 

UBC: 

-  MMI 

- ~10 station MMI, 1 rest station

- 30 minute writing station 

5/5 difficulty 

 

Ottawa: 

- 3 person panel

- ~45 minutes

3/5 difficulty 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Share your subjective feedback of interviews here. I've noticed a lot of variation between the schools I've interviewed at so far...! 

 

Here are my (relative) ratings, with a 5/5 indicating the hardest I've done so far

Manitoba: 

- Simple MMI  (retracted by moderator)

- 10 stations, 1 rest station, 1 ten-minute writing station

- 2/5 difficulty 

 

UBC: 

-  MMI 

- ~10 station MMI, 1 rest station,  (retracted by moderator)

- 30 minute writing station 

5/5 difficulty 

 

Ottawa: 

- 3 person panel

- ~45 minutes

3/5 difficulty 

I'm curious, what made Manitoba's MMI that much less difficult than UBC's?  I've done a few mmi's and they all felt more or less the same.. whirlwind of needing to go to the washroom and adrenaline as time flies bye haha.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

A 30 minute writing station? The most I've ever had for a writing station was 10 minutes. I think it was at the same school that you had it at, but I don't remember.

If there was a 10 minute writing station, I don't even think i'd be able to write down my full name :P 

 

The 30 minutes for UBC's went by so fast, and i was hustling to get my thoughts in a logical manner onto the paper!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just curious - What is it about Ottawa's interview that gives it these difficulty points? Generally I've heard that it is a much more relaxed experience than the MMIs.. 

I personally think panel is harder, cause you get to be alert for the whole 40 min non-stop. Plus if you get into a trap in panel you are pretty much done. MMI is good cause it gives you a come back chance. But for UBC for me the main problem was its length otherwise the contents were really straightforward.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Edit: completely messed up the formatting of this post lol

 

Just curious - What is it about Ottawa's interview that gives it these difficulty points? Generally I've heard that it is a much more relaxed experience than the MMIs.. 

 

I found that the questions were getting extremely in depth and one of my interviewers was a little aggressive, but overall it was fun. I agree that it is much more relaxed and even more fun than an MMI though. 

 

 

@UBC2012: a few reasons, I'll list them: 

  • Before the MMI started, they briefed us on how it would proceed and gave us one last chance to use the washroom hahaha
  • No "curveball" questions - not going to go into depth about this but there was nothing that threw me off or that I felt was intentionally put there to mess with me. Either that or I just handled it very well. 
  • 8 minutes is much more comfortable than 7 minutes 
  • At the 6 minute mark, you're told that you have 2 minutes remaining - I found this incredibly handy, as did the interviewers. 
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Personally, I found UBC had some of the most straight forward questions of all the MMI's I've done. Yes, the writing station is strange, but I found it my best MMI experience to date. Assessing interviews this way is clearly subjective, as some people interpret questions & situations easier or harder than others.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@UBC2012: a few reasons, I'll list them: 

  • Before the MMI started, they briefed us on how it would proceed and gave us one last chance to use the washroom hahaha
  • No "curveball" questions - not going to go into depth about this but there was nothing that threw me off or that I felt was intentionally put there to mess with me. Either that or I just handled it very well. 
  • Interviewers I had were all quite friendly, (retracted by moderator)
  • 8 minutes is much more comfortable than 7 minutes 
  • At the 6 minute mark, you're told that you have 2 minutes remaining - I found this incredibly handy, as did the interviewers. 

Yes you're right the warning bells at other MMIs were definitely helpful.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I apologize for the disappearance of this thread earlier today- I decided to mask it while the moderators deliberated on the content. We have decided to retract information that is considered a breach of confidentiality. Please exercise extreme caution with what you post- if anything about the interview is revealed here that is not available elsewhere- either on the school websites or your interview offer emails- then we will delete it. The adcoms of various schools monitor these boards and it is expected that all members adhere to the confidentiality forms they signed. I have indicated in red where I retracted information from posts. I'm going to leave the thread open as I believe it is a valid topic to discuss, with the expectation that all posters will respect the rules.

 

Unacceptable content includes, but is not limited to:

1) Discussing the nature of mmi stations

2) Discussing interviewer demeanor

 

These are the two major points I had to erase in this thread.

Thanks for your understanding.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I agree that no new information was shared, except interviewer demeanor, but we felt that while the websites give ambiguity about interview station possibilities, personal posts here are more confirmatory about what actually occurred. The edits I made were done in order to preserve that ambiguity. 

 

Cheers

Leon

Link to comment
Share on other sites

UBC: 5/5 difficulty.  Undoubtedly the trickiest one I've had thus far.

 

Memorial: 3/5 difficulty. More what I expected, relative to UBC.

 

Ottawa: 2/5 difficulty. Don't want to get into specifics of interviewer demeanor, as Leon said, so I will just say that I felt it went well. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...