Need Advice/resources Preparing For The Interview After Rejection (I Know It's Early!)

[kleck096]

So I was rejected post-interview this year and I feel a lot of it had to do with particular stations (I know I can't really go into detail). Is there anyone else who was rejected the first time around and accepted the next? How did you prepare and identify your errors? How did you change your approach to the stations? Were there any good books out there that helped (yes, I've read Doing Right)? McGill is and always has been my #1 choice (IP) and I want to take an early start on addressing my mistakes in the interview. Thanks!

[LittleDaisy]

I am really sorry to hear this, but are you wait-listed at other medical schools in Canada?

If you have a cegep degree, I know a few people who took a sabbatical year and reapply next year to French schools (you could not apply to McGill after 1 gap year)

If you have a bachelor degree, you could pursue a masters. I am not sure if you could take a gap year and reapply to McGill next year as in the Undergraduate cohort.

For interviews, practice a lot with your friends. Also, I did a lot of volunteering when I was in cegep, it did help to shape my personality and I became more mature and patient after my volunteering with the disabled and the elders. 

You could always improve your personal statements and C.V in the upcoming year.

Don't give up!

So I was rejected post-interview this year and I feel a lot of it had to do with particular stations (I know I can't really go into detail). Is there anyone else who was rejected the first time around and accepted the next? How did you prepare and identify your errors? How did you change your approach to the stations? Were there any good books out there that helped (yes, I've read Doing Right)? McGill is and always has been my #1 choice (IP) and I want to take an early start on addressing my mistakes in the interview. Thanks!

[kleck096]

So here's my story:

 

Graduated B.Sc Biomed from uOttawa last year, continued working in the lab that I did my honours with as we had a publication that was nearing completion, moved to Hamilton with my girlfriend since she was accepted to McMaster Med, got a job as a personal trainer  at GoodLife because I was so burnt out from school and couldn't fathom the idea of doing a Masters at the time. Worked there until I received the news in March about McGill and then decided that I needed to start a Masters to become more competitive at other schools. I've done A LOT of volunteering (taught swimming to disabled children, MFR with St. John Ambulance (promoted to Superintendent in my 4th year), started a tutor club at a community center, worked with ESL kids at my elementary school, etc. In fact I found it very difficult to list all my stuff in the CV as I had to pick which ones I wanted to keep since there wasn't enough room! 

 

I have applied to work as a standardized patient at the hospital here to hopefully see how other people respond to these types of situations, but I want to know how others identified what they did wrong in the interview and what resources they had. 

[LittleDaisy]

You could try to contact the admission offices, they provided some feedback to applicants who were refused post-interview.

However, I heard that they were not very nice sometimes on the phone and could be cold (you need to understand that perhaps a lot of people contact them to know what didn't go well).

Good luck

So here's my story:

 

Graduated B.Sc Biomed from uOttawa last year, continued working in the lab that I did my honours with as we had a publication that was nearing completion, moved to Hamilton with my girlfriend since she was accepted to McMaster Med, got a job as a personal trainer  at GoodLife because I was so burnt out from school and couldn't fathom the idea of doing a Masters at the time. Worked there until I received the news in March about McGill and then decided that I needed to start a Masters to become more competitive at other schools. I've done A LOT of volunteering (taught swimming to disabled children, MFR with St. John Ambulance (promoted to Superintendent in my 4th year), started a tutor club at a community center, worked with ESL kids at my elementary school, etc. In fact I found it very difficult to list all my stuff in the CV as I had to pick which ones I wanted to keep since there wasn't enough room! 

 

I have applied to work as a standardized patient at the hospital here to hopefully see how other people respond to these types of situations, but I want to know how others identified what they did wrong in the interview and what resources they had. 

[oshaku]

since you made it to the interviews, your GPA and CVPN obviously made the cut.  The interview should be your main focus. 

 

The first step to re-evaluation should be on how you felt you responded during the interview.  TBH I don't think books are of much help at the McGill MMIs (even doing right).  If you really want to read, look in to some psychology books.  

 

I found this while prepping for MMI:http://www.royalcollege.ca/portal/page/portal/rc/common/documents/events/icre/2012proceedings/pgme_admissions_selecting_residents/m_campagna-vaillancourt.pdf which contains sample evaluation sheets (though not necessarily used by McGill) and gave me a bit of insight on what adcom might be looking for.  

[Solanin]

I know someone in the past who was WL the first time and passed the interview the second time. The only change according to this guy was "I feel more confident the second time".

 

I passed this year (the only med school interview in my life...) at McGill. I think I was just "being myself". When you have doctor-like characters, it's pretty easy and smooth. That being said, contrary to what people were telling me that you cannot really prepare for McGill interview, I did find some resources very useful, especially the books on health professional communication skills that were mainly for new clerks and residents. Read them, and you will feel yourself really in front of some special patients that requires you to talk to them. For example, if Mr. A is terminally ill, and he is the only parent of his daughter, what will you say to him if you are announcing the bad results? Do it yourself, keep notes of what you may say, and compare to the one that an attendant would say. You will find a lot more maturity in the "professional" answer. Do some practices like that (I only had time to do five or six before the interview and it was really hard but helpful). These practices will not tell you how to perform well in stations, but they really gave me a lot of confidence. I also learned some tricks that doctors use, e.g. when you don't know what people are thinking, there are some ways to intelligently invite them to talk (yeah, for silent patients, doctors do need to dig the whole truth out in the real life and there are key words that they often use).

 

Another advice that could be very useful (having talked to those who failed the interviews) is that do remember they are recruiting a future doctor who will be doing a doctor's work. Doctors meet patients in a time restrained fashion. For each patient, the whole visit finishes in 10 - 30 mins. So if you were the doctor, you don't want to lose time in talking about unimportant things. That's the same in the interviews: when they test you the critical thinking skills, keep a good pace and show them that you think fast. When they test you the interpersonal skills at actor stations, dig out as soon as possible what the real issue is and react appropriately but in a short delay. If you try a solution and it doesn't seem to work, then try another and another until you run out all the possibilities. It turned out good answers do exist for some stations, I had one successful station (the actor(s) didn't want me to leave even after the beep), but actually I did not get the point in the beginning and it was by thinking all what I could say and by trying a good number of divergent solutions that I finally got the "ah ha" and put myself on the right direction in the last minute! I also learned some brilliant answers from other people for other stations that I did not feel perform well. (When I heard the "right answer", I thought  "Wow! Why didn't I find it? It was so obvious but so easily neglected". Some stations were admirably well designed! ). I also heard that some people who failed the interview did some actor stations with nothing to add anymore and waited for the beep. Though I don't think it necessarily downgrades your performance, what I did in that case was even if I thought the main problem was resolved, I continued to deal with some other related problems that I could think about. But this is not the same if it's an interviewer who asks you questions: you'd better let the interviewer finish the list of questions and wait for the beep than spending the whole 8 mins to develop your first answer without letting the interviewer to ask other questions. (Some helpful interviewers would cut you if you are talking too much, but some others would just let you continue and you had no idea how many questions were waiting for you unless you run out the questions...)

 

I also want to add that as we've signed the non-disclosure consent form, but I'm not so sure to what extents we could not talk about it, so if someone thinks my post is risking the violation, please let me know and I will adjust my answer. I wrote all these because I remembered how I was stressed before the interview and tried to learn every tip I could find. And having failed once may make you feel more stressful because you tried hard and it didn't work, especially when you don't know why it did not work.

 

Finally, some statistics to bright you up: having a first interview experience do give you a step ahead compared to newbies. All the people I knew got in after the second or third interview attempts (if you are invited, but there do exist a good number of people who failed the post-interview once and who did not even get an invitation for the second time). I rarely heard that people tried three interviews or more and were still rejected. If this does happen, then maybe you should consider another career because the interviews really check if you are the type of person to be a doctor (and a failure after several attempts might be good for you because you will probably not be happy as a doctor even if you get in). If you think honestly and based on all facts that you are a doctor-to-be (I was very convinced that there were no other jobs that would suit me more than this), you will succeed, because it's your destiny.

[Sceptical]

I got rejected from McGill post-interview in my first cycle. Got accepted the following year. In between that time, to be honest, I didn't really do anything different or extra to prepare, except that I remember taking the second time a lot more lightly and being more relaxed (my submitted application was nearly identical for both times). My success the second time around could be a combination of luck, experience from MMIs, and less concern in trying to guess at what each station was looking for.

 

Scep

 

So I was rejected post-interview this year and I feel a lot of it had to do with particular stations (I know I can't really go into detail). Is there anyone else who was rejected the first time around and accepted the next? How did you prepare and identify your errors? How did you change your approach to the stations? Were there any good books out there that helped (yes, I've read Doing Right)? McGill is and always has been my #1 choice (IP) and I want to take an early start on addressing my mistakes in the interview. Thanks!