interview questions

[Guest thmper]

Hi,

 

I just recieved an invitation for an interview from Uof Manitoba. I have no idea how the interview process is like in Manitoba. Has anyone being to an UofM interview? what is it like....serious, relaxed, friendly? what kind of question do they ask? Where did you stay for the interview(i'm from toronto)? I am interest in any useful tips... THANX =)

 

 

Cheers!

[Guest PARTY cal]

Hey Congrads on the interview...I am also out of province and waiting to hear. Would you mind telling me if your are Undergrad or graduate and how they contacted you (email/phone/letter)??

 

Thanks

[Guest thmper]

I just recieved a letter via mail last friday the 17th. I think they send out interview invite on Jan15th. I am a graduate student.

 

Hope that helps!

 

Is there mediators here???

[Guest QM6]

Hey thmper,

 

www.studentdoctor.net/fee...school.php might help for U of M (or most any other school).

[Guest ManitobaMed]

Hey Thmper,

 

Congratulations on your interview! We just finished our Human Development block, so I've been swamped with exam stuff and haven't checked in here in awhile.

 

 

The questions: My main piece of advice for the U of M is to know your autobiographical sketch well. Most of my interview questions were at least peripherally related to what was contained in my essay. Also, know a little about Manitoba -- why would you want to live or attend school here. In addition, there tend to be some touchy feely questions like: "Image yourself in the position of person A experiencing life event B. How do you feel/what are you thinking?" I didn't have any ethics questions, but there are some on occasion. (For example, you might have to choose between two patients needing a liver or decide whether someone's medical treatments ought to be paid for despite their being a direct, foreseeable consequence of a deliberate choice.) There are also the usual goofy/lame questions (three historical figures for dinner, what are you reading, etc.) Generally speaking, the U of M seems to aim for well-rounded, decent human beings rather than all stars, and there's a significant emphasis here on community medicine. (So, if you have to distribute $1 million in funding to improve health, consider a literacy program.) Oh, and be prepared for your reference letters to come up. The interviewers here do actually pay pretty close attention to them.

 

The format: The interview generally consists of three interviewers sitting around a table with you. I had a faculty member, a doctor, and a med student, but that might have changed for this year. (I'll ask around to be sure.) The atmosphere was fairly laid back and friendly, but it was definitely an interview. In terms of duration, mine lasted over an hour, while others lasted under 30 minutes, so the timing is pretty variable. Generally, they run between 45 minutes and an hour. Last year, all the interviewees started out in one room with some 1st year med students and were then accompanied to the interview location by a couple of those med I's. The primary job of the med students is to relax you/make you feel at home -- and give you a tour when the interview's over.

 

Where to stay: I have family in the city, so I stayed with them. However, out-of-towners frequently stay with med students. My classmates are super, so hopefully that'll be a go again this year.

 

Other stuff: There will likely be an interview orientation on the Friday of your interview weekend where my med I classmates will give a presentation, hand out info, and answer questions. You should also be receiving contact information to ask more questions via email/phone. Again, I'll ask around. (We med I's are taking care of it.)

 

Anyway, good luck! I'll make a point of being on the look-out for further questions.

[Guest brandonite]

I think ManitobaMed covered things nicely.

 

There are two of us who are co-ordinating the interview orientation. Look at Interview Feedback, talk to us at the session, read the posts on here from last year. You should get a pretty good idea.

 

You'll be hearing from our class shortly about billets, people to contact if you want to know more, and about the info session in a few weeks to learn more about the interview.

 

In the meantime...

 

Good luck!

[Guest thmper]

Thank you for the reply...I really appreciate the info. I will definately try to learn more about manitoba. See you guys at the interview.

 

Cheers,

 

Helen

[Guest brandonite]

Good luck with everything. Hopefully we'll see you at the info session on Tuesday or at the meet-and-greet the night before!

[Guest thmper]

Hi

 

I just recieve my interview confirmation letter, unfortunately I could not get a flight to winnipeg before 6pm on friday, so I can't get to the meet and greet session. There are some questions I really want to ask you guys... what do you like about UofM, (the program and the people)? Is there anything unique? What do you think are the strengths and weaknesses of the UofM medical program? and If you have to make some changes to the program what would it be? Is there much patient diversity...(i.e different culture and age)? What community services do the medical school students provide to the city? What about research...do you feel you have plenty of opportunities to talk to different researchers as well as clinician?

 

I know there's a lot of questions...yikes...:eek if you can answer before saturday...that would be AWESOME!!

 

Thanks in advance

 

HElen

Thanks in advance

 

Helen

[Guest ManitobaMed]

Hey Helen,

 

I'll try to field these -- though exposure to clinicians/researchers might be more of a Brandonite-type question.

 

What I like:

The people. The administration is more supportive than I could ever have believed, and my classmates are really amazing, wonderful people. (Well, except Brandonite, who has a voodoo doll. ) Our classmates tend to be very supportive of one another, and we really enjoy working together. We tend to be pretty active in intramurals and in organizing group activities within the class.

 

The program itself is good. I'm particularly fond of the P/F system, which eliminates competition completely. In addition, as students here, we have the ability to make changes to the program based on our own experiences; therefore, the curriculum is ever-evolving to meet the needs perceived by the students. I'd say that's a definite strength. Also, we have a significant number of hours dedicated to clinical skills, which include hours spent off-site visiting personal care homes, Winnipeg Harvest, and other venues, such as a sweat lodge and the Aboriginal Wellness Centre. To give you some idea of the overall strength of our program, our fourth years finished 3rd in the country on the LMCC exam last year, which included the best overall performance in population health, a topic that receives considerable focus here. Problem solving is integrated pretty well and provides experience in critical thinking, group work, public speaking, etc.

 

Many doctors in the city are willing to take on first year students for shadowing, so we can participate in early clinical exposure as often as we want in a multitude of fields.

 

Weaknesses: Block I, which includes "normal" human science (Structure and Function), "abnormal" human science and microbiology (Disease Mechanisms and Therapeutics), and population health (in addition to ethics and clinical skills), was a little clunky and had some organizational problems. Fortunately, our complaints were taken seriously, and Block I is being rebuilt for the class of 2007. Examination skills in clinical are sometimes rushed, so self-study is a necessity. Also, we don't get to practice the skills we've learned on real patients until Block III (i.e. this month), so a lot of them have been forgotten already.

 

Patients: Diversity is NOT a problem. Health Sciences Centre, our major teaching hospital, is the main tertiary care centre for ALL of Manitoba, plus Nunavut and parts of north-western Ontario. It's also centrally located in Winnipeg and therefore provides care to the culturally diverse core of the city. It includes a children's hospital and a women's hospital.

 

As for community services we provide, individual students participate in the community in their own ways. Collectively, we run a youth drop-in centre in the Winnipeg core two evenings and a Saturday per week. We're also currently running a food drive for Winnipeg Harvest, a food redistribution centre, and our students are in the process of donating blood in a blood drive. We also have an art show every year that focuses on some aspect of medicine. (Last year, it was on autism.)

 

Talkin' to researchers and clinicians:

Our profs and tutors are a pretty even split between the two, so we have plenty of exposure to both. If you're interested in research, we have a BSc(med) program that runs in 2 summers (after 1st and 2nd year) that allows the completion of an additional degree via research and presentation of said research after its completion. As I mentioned previously, the clinicians are very willing to work with even the lowliest among us, so clinical exposure can be obtained to the level you desire.

 

Because I haven't attended any other med school, I'm not sure if anything about our school is unique. (I'd be inclined to say our population health education is very strong relative to other schools, but I really have no idea if that's true.) Ethics is incorporated throughout our entire education, so that's another strong aspect of the curriculum.

 

Other tidbits: As of next year, the curriculum will include a week in rural Manitoba after the completion of Block III. (It's an elective for us.) We can also participate in summer programs in northern med or rural med, which have pay equivalent to that of the BSc(med) program. Oh, and there's Ice Bowl, an annual hockey tournament for the western med schools. This year we sent two men's teams and a women's team.

 

Anyway, I hope this was helpful. If I've forgotten anything important, Brandonite will probably fill in the blanks.

[Guest MiniMedGirl]

Hey Helen,

I'll see if i can answer some of these as well:

 

What I Like:

The students. They are all super friendly and try to help each other out as much as possible. And not just in the one class either, the upperclass students are great about sharing their tips for getting through, studying, partying and for overall being friendly shoulders to lean on.

 

The faculty: some of our profs are truly extrodinary. It may be the end of the day and you may be tired from listening to the incessant droneing and your bum may hurt from sitting for hours on end...but then you a prof that takes the time to explain theings are repeat things and pass on to you a bit of the enthusiasm they feel for their lifes work and you just want to stay there for another 8 hours to listen to them!!! I know all universities have their "honour roll" profs and i can't comment on other schools but the approchability of our faculty is extrodinary. They realize that we may end up being colleagues with them and thats how they treat us.

 

The administration: We have some of the nicest and most easy-to-talk-to Deans and "People in Charge". And these are people you see in the halls all the time, and who may even teach you classes. They are visible and approchable and just downright amazing.

 

The program is fairly decent, although we are only now getting into the guts and gore of anatomy/phys/histo etc with the start of our cardio and resp block. I am not the biggest fan of the first two blocks (block 1 -the "lets get everyone on the same page" block and block 2- "how is everyone feeling today" block) but overall...it was relatively painless. Add to that, the faculty have actuallly listened to our concerns (see above) and as ManitobaMed said things are going to be reworked for the class of 2007.

My favorite aspect is the off site/skills stuff that we do with small groups and a practicing physican or other member of the health care team and the chance to get out inthe community and DO stuff (i'm all about the hands-on and we get loads of chances here)

 

Diversity: Tons. in school, in the patient population, in the teaching staff...

 

Other stuff that i think is cool....

Once again, i go back to loving the people of the school...there are a ton of class activities such as intramurals, an Art Show, potlucks...maybe this isn't a unique thing to this school, but basically we are all about helping each other out instead of worming our way to the top using not-so-nice tactics.

 

Hope this was of some help....

[Guest MiniMedGirl]

oh one more thing...

 

although you may not see us at the Friday meet-and-greets, there will be people there all day saturday if you want to ask questin beofre or after the interview. So no worries! Ask away, that's what we will be there for!

[Guest brandonite]

Aww, thanks for the shout out ManitobaMed. And for the record, it was her - the "soul-less one", who gave me the voodoo doll. I'm not a "touchy-feely" sorta guy, so I'll leave the community service questions to ManitobaMed. And I'm not too sure who MiniMedGirl is, but she seems to have a better handle on that than I do too.

 

In terms of exposure to researchers and clinicians... I would say that about half of our professors are researchers and about half are clinicians. Interestingly enough, I think most of our clinician faculty members are researchers on the side - and I can think of a half dozen right now that have the full MD/PhD. I can think now of a situation or two where we had a clinician who wasn't too sure of the basic science, and one specific situation where I had a researcher for a tutorial leader who hadn't been out of the lab in a decade or two. But aside from these few exceptions, we've had a lot of exposure to both. And we have a few really amazing professors who are leading researchers in their field and amazing lecturers - if you come here next year, remember the name Zhanel.

 

If you're interested in research, U of M does offer the B.Sc.(Med) program during the two summers. It's basically a useless degree (you already have an MD, and a bachelors in something, what do you need another for?), but it is a really nice structured research program. You're guarenteed a stipend, it's set up by the university to basically ensure you can get a paper out of it at the end (as far as my understanding is), and there are a range of projects you can work on. And U of M is starting to become more of a centre for research - the National Research Council has a big lab that does MRI work a few blocks away, Health Canada has the National Microbiology Lab just across the street (where they have the only level 4 lab in Canada - they have diseases like Ebola there!). And the St. Boniface hospital is becoming a real international centre for cardiac research. They hosted the international heart conference a few years ago, which was a very big deal at the time.

 

In terms of the program in general... I have a few issues with the first two blocks - the first one seemed scattered and disorganized, and the second one was a bit dull. The goal of the first block was to get everyone to the same level on the basic sciences, so I think a bit of disorganization is a given. The second block is human development, which is psych and pediatrics (among other areas), and neither area interests me in the least, so that might be a part of it. But Block 3 has been great so far.

 

The people here at U of M are great. I think that would have to be their biggest advantage. The students are all friendly and non-competitive. I interviewed at a school last year where this was not the case... But your classmates are people you are going to be spending more time with in the next four years than anyone else in your life, so I think it's important that you like them. And the faculty are great. They really listen to our opinions, and they go out of their way to help us. They're just going through redoing Block 1 as a result of our feedback. And they are all really approachable. I've had questions about a few lectures, and I've just wandered up to profs and asked them. It's a really nice atmosphere. I would suggest that you look closely at the students at the schools you interview at - does the atmosphere look like something you can handle?

 

The weaknesses of the school... Well, blocks 1 and 2 aren't too thrilling. I think we should do more anatomy earlier. And I think they need to work on the air conditioning in the gross lab. Small stuff, I suppose. The school is in a dumpy location, but really, Winnipeg is small enough you can drive there from a nice neighborhood in like 10 minutes. I thought it would be an issue, but it's not really. And Winnipeg can be really cold. Like really, really cold. And it's not too exciting.

 

U of M is a great school. The people are great, the research is great, and it's cheap. Like ManitobaMed said, our 4th years finished 3rd last year on the LMCC's. You get a great education in a friendly environment. And you save $10,000 a year over the U of T, not to mention the cheap cost of living. Like ManitobaMed said, it's hard for us to really compare, because we've only gone to one med school, but I think we're all really really happy with our choice.

 

Good luck! And to all those interviewing next weekend, I'll see you then!

[Guest ManitobaMed]

Ugh, how could I have forgotten Zhanel??? He's definitely an example of uniqueness here. He teaches antibiotics, and he's highly entertaining.

 

Just an addition in the community service arena: The first year students volunteer at the Children's Hospital on Thursday evenings.

 

And, for the record, I purchased the voodoo doll because it suited Brandonite's personality. He's kind of mean-spirited (not to be confused with soul-less, which is strictly my preserve) -- just the kind of person who would stick a pin in your back. (j/k!)

[Guest MiniMedGirl]

OUCH!!! oh soulless one (*shakes head sadly*)...since brandonite isn't here to defend himself i guess i'll have to do it for him.....(*thinks hard*) nope. sorry can't think of anything...can't deny that he DOES seem to be the kind of guy to stick a pin in your back. Sorry brandonite!

 

As for stellar profs....you forgot Paunovic!!!! how could you forget him!!! And Bshouty is pretty cool too. But you are right..Zhanel tops the list. Come to U of M just for Zhanel's lectures...you will thank all the antibiotic gods that you did!!!:lol

[Guest thmper]

I heard that Zhanel makes antibiotics Sexy... yeah...baby...

 

 

Anyhow, thanks minimedgirl and manitobamed for all your help here and on the interview day. I thought you guys definately have made the day a lot less stressful.

 

Good luck with everything

 

Helen

[Guest ManitobaMed]

Hi Helen,

 

I'm glad we could help. I hope you enjoyed your sojourn in our neck of the woods, and best of luck with the peeps in admissions!!!

[Guest lots of thinking]

Firstly, thanks to the moderators,

that provided quite a bit of info on UofM med!!

 

Second- when I did my undergrad at UofM Zhanel came in to teach a couple of lectures and I totally agree about him!!

 

Third- has any one had an interview at UofM this year??

Are the questions like in previous years?

Since the interview feedback is still not totally running, I was wondering if people who have had interviews wanted to post most difficult/interesting questions here.

I certainly will after my interview.

anyway,

goodluck to all

M

[Guest ManitobaMed]

Hi there M,

 

As the people in charge of the interview orientation stuff, we med I students are operating under the assumption that the questions are similar to those asked in previous years. I will, however, ask around and check if anyone has heard anything from friends who have already interviewed. So far, though, I haven't heard anything from the interviewees I've met to suggest that there've been any changes.

 

And glad to hear there's another Zhanel fan in the building!