Note: All questions below are “common” or “typical” medical school interview questions, and none are specific to any medical school’s admissions. For Singapore, with NUS and NTU Medicine adopting the FSA (Focused Skills Assessment) and MMI (Multiple Mini Interviews) respectively, you can expect very varied scenarios and questions that are often not “typical”.
Interview Questions on Personal Background and Motivation
Why medicine?
Always, always go into a medical school interview having an answer to this ready. An answer that is unique to you. This goes for any question about you or your personal statement that you get in your interview: rely heavily on examples. Which is to say, tell your story.
While “helping others”, “having a passion to serve”, and “a love for science” are all perfectly reasonable answers, they don’t enable you to stand out from the crowd. Try to interweave your response with your own personal story; make it compelling.
What are your strengths and weaknesses?
Strengths: Just be honest and highlight whatever you think are your greatest strengths. Once again, make it examples-driven. Anecdotes are best for illustrating how you display your strengths. Again, you can leverage experiences you’ve written about in your personal statement (or you can choose to highlight others that couldn’t fit there).
Weaknesses: This is where we have traditionally been counselled to use a “double-sided coin” (or whatever you call it). For example, the classic “perfectionist” statement (“I’m a perfectionist, but this just means that I take pride in my work and set exceptionally high standards for myself” etc)
It’s true that whatever “weaknesses” you mention should have a “positive” side to it. But once again, honesty is important. If you’re not a perfectionist, you don’t have to say so just for the sake of the interview. If you talk about weaknesses other than “perfectionism”, it could even show greater self-awareness and maturity of thought.
(For instance, mine included “I find it hard to forgive myself”, “focusing excessively on the details”, and “wanting to do too much”. I’ll leave you to think about how there can be “mitigating” explanations and stories behind each of those points.)
Note that the “positive” or “mitigating” element could include how you realised this was a weakness of yours (showing self-awareness, receptiveness to feedback etc), what you have done to improve upon it, and what you intend to continue working on in the future (showing the constant drive for self-improvement).
Once again, it would be great if you could relate it to the medical profession. Draw on experiences of doctors you’ve read or heard about. You can even talk about how their memoirs or experiences have engendered personal reflections and inspired you to change.
What challenges do you foresee in your medical journey?
Be honest and answer whatever you feel could be a challenge for you. This is where you show that you have delved deeper into the profession and understand the tougher parts of it, rather than what is seen on the surface. Common challenges faced by medical students and doctors
However, you have to deftly frame your response such that it doesn’t seem as though whatever you’re describing will be insurmountable. While they’ve only asked for “challenges”, you should be following up each of your “challenges” with possible solutions. Overall, you should show maturity of thought in recognising that medicine is far from an easy career, while simultaneously conveying that you are prepared for the gruelling path ahead.
Very roughly, I would probably answer this saying that I haven’t really thought of any; I understand the academic rigour of the course, but that excites me and I look forward to the intellectual stimulation. While I have read articles on physician burnout and recognise that it is a very real problem, I know with clarity why I have chosen this path. I will always remind myself of why I started, and never lose my passion and compassion—both for others and myself.
I will then concede that there is perhaps one greater challenge I foresee: committing an error in medical practice. I will allude to how in neurosurgery, for instance, one millimetre could be the difference between life or death, as vividly recounted in Henry Marsh’s Do No Harm, or Paul Kalanithi’s When Breath Becomes Air (“In taking up another’s cross, one must sometimes get crushed by the weight.”). But then I will bring in an idea I came across in When Death Becomes Life by Joshua D. Mezrich, which I find particularly trenchant (see quote below).
One piece of advice I’ve always liked is that every surgeon needs to have a metaphorical “box” into which he places all his complications. He should be able to access that box each time he sees the patients with complications and their families, and when he presents a case at an M and M conference. At the same time, a surgeon should be able to close that box and put it away when he goes home to his family. Those who fail to maintain access to the box become cavalier and lose their compassion. Conversely, those who don’t have a box can struggle to keep their sanity, can’t stop thinking about all the bad things that may have happened or they may have caused, even after hours. Such surgeons often leave the profession entirely, or never really get started once they finish their training. Others limit themselves to small procedures, and call partners in to help at the slightest turn of a hair. Whatever the right strategy, we surgeons have to find a way to live with complications, to learn from them, to help patients get through whatever we may have caused or at least been a part of, and to move on.
Something like that. You can frame the response in your own way, always “buffering” the challenges with yes, I understand that all this is part of the journey, but I still resolutely want to do medicine.
Interview Questions on Medical Ethics
Such questions may often be presented in the format of a scenario. Scenarios may vary widely, and no one can predict or “prepare for” every single ethical scenario—there are simply too many. There is, however, a certain framework you can use for all medical ethics questions.
The first step is to know the four principles of medical ethics: autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice, and understand what each of them mean. Next, when faced with any medical ethics scenario, simply apply the relevant principles and explain them in terms of the scenario. Lastly, conclude by weighing the different “sides” to give a balanced response and overall action plan.
Example of applying the four medical ethics principles to an MMI question
MMI Question: A member of your family decides to depend solely on alternative medicine for the treatment of his or her significant illness. What would you do?
- Autonomy: Patient has the right to decide his or her own treatment.
- Beneficence and non-maleficence: Alternative medicine may not be able to (not scientifically proven to) treat the patient’s illness. Not following the standard of care / evidence-based treatments recommended by the healthcare professional could potentially put the patient at greater risk.
- Justice: Not really relevant to this scenario.
- Action plan: Focus on my relative’s wellbeing and safety, gather information, and respect their autonomy, while also relaying my concerns about their health to them (plus other considerations that you would elaborate on in your response).
Even if the question is more specific and asks you to answer a particular aspect, you can always bring the relevant principle(s) into your response. Even for scenarios that are non-medical, the four principles give you a helpful framework to think through your response. If all else fails, simply follow your own moral compass and give a convincing argument for your case. There is often no “right” or “wrong”, but your thought process matters and demonstrates to the interviewers the kind of person you are.