Hi! I'm Dr. Lauren Prufer. I'm an admissions expert with BeMo Academic Consulting.
Today I'm gonna be talking about how to answer the med
school interview question, "Tell me about yourself". This is the most commonly asked
question during Medical School interviews but it's also the question
that students most commonly struggle with so I'm gonna go over how to answer
it properly as well as give you guys an example and talk through some mistakes
that students commonly make. So first of all when you're thinking about this
answer what you don't want to be doing is just talking through your CV that's
not only really boring but you're also just giving the interviewers information
that they already have in front of them on a piece of paper assuming it's an
open interview. What you want to do instead is choose the three most
important qualities about yourself that are relevant to medicine and organize
them into a chronological narrative so basically tell a story that illustrates
each quality in yourself. This is gonna be more memorable, more interesting and
it's actually giving the interviewers insight into who you are as a
person which is really important. They're looking to see whether your
characteristics match what they're the people are what the program is looking
for in terms of medical students and future physicians. So I think the best
way to show you guys how to do this for yourselves to go through an example. I'm
gonna kind of go through the exercise I normally do the students basing this off
a student I did this with last week. It's pretty easy you guys can follow them do
it at home do it for yourselves. Okay so this student did kind of this the
typical student thing and gave me an answer that was just based off his CV,
very dry just not really telling me a lot about himself or showing a lot of
personal reflection or insight into his own character. From his answer I couldn't
really tell you know why he was here and or get much of a sense of his
personality. So what I did with him is I asked him just off the top of your head
name your top three favorite things to do like if you had three days left to
live what three activities would you and those three days doing. He said I
would work on cars, I would play video games, he I don't know plays Call of Duty
or something I have no idea, and I would spend some time running and with my
running team. And I said okay those are all good activities they have nothing to
do with medicine but they all sound good and he's kind of wondering where I'm
going with this as I'm sure you are right now. And so then I asked him okay
so what do you enjoy about working on cars and he said I enjoyed the
problem-solving and the analysis and I really liked working with my hands. He
also mentioned how he liked learning new things.
When I asked him what he liked about video
games he said problem-solving and the sense of community I get. I guess playing
video games with other people it's a way for him to connect his friends and it's
really important to him in that way. When I asked him what he liked about running,
I mean you ran a hundred miles a week you must like something, he said he
really enjoyed the sense of community, being team captain, working together
towards a common goal, as well as the sense of exploration, testing his own
limits and how I'm running little thing the efforts could add up to something
really big so kind of perseverance. Okay so now we're starting to see some
motivators these are the things that are motivating him to do the things that
he's doing and these motivators are actually really relevant to medicine he
actually likes all of these things for similar reasons that he would probably
be an excellent medical student, an excellent doctor and enjoy a career in
medicine. So if we look at the common ones we've got problem-solving twice so
clearly he likes using those analytical thinking skills that's great because
physicians are always using their analytical thinking skills.
He enjoys learning new things, lifelong learning is hugely important in medicine
you really have to keep up to date, and it also likes working with his hands so
that could be anything from suturing to casting as an emergency physician would
do, to more complicated surgeries.
Importantly he also has this enjoyment of a sense of community and teamwork is
very important in medicine. You're also a big part of your
community is a family doctor or big pair of the hospital community and community
at large as a specialist or surgeon or whatever.
Finally, perseverance is hugely important in medicine because it does take a long
time to do your training. You'll basically have to put a lot of small
achievements in the bank to eventually make the big hole. So all of these things
are great motivators in terms of pursuing medicine and they're all great
for including in that tell me about yourself question. So if you're having
difficulty, you know, answering these questions, figuring out
why you're doing the things you do then try to ask why and then ask why again
what feeling are you getting from that thing
what did you really enjoy learning from that activity, what keeps you coming back.
If you still can't figure it out, ask a friend, ask a family member, or a
counselor even to help you. So now that you have your motivators,
you're going to take those things and you're going to look at other areas of
your life. So for the student he's probably not gonna talk about these
three personal things in his entire "tell me about yourself for medical school",
you probably want to throw something professional in there. He ended
up telling the interviewers a story he started off with running and talking
about his cross-country experiences and races and some of the victories he had
with his teammates as team captain and showing off that community teamwork
leadership piece first. He then went on to talk about how problem-solving and
running relates to problem solving and other aspects of his life such as his
research experience and his decision to pursue engineering as an undergraduate
degree. His research experience led to him talking about how he decided to
volunteer at the hospital because he thought he might have an interest in
medicine. That allowed him to tell the interviewers a story that demonstrated
his perseverance and desire for continued self-improvement and also his
ability to self-reflect. So basically using these concepts the student was
able to weave together this chronological narrative that was not
only engaging and showed some personal details but also showed some of these
critical characteristics that the interviewers are looking for in terms of
medical students and future doctors. So when you're doing this for yourself keep
in mind your motivators. What really motivates you why do you like the things
that you like and how is that gonna help you as a medical doctor. That's really
what you're trying to answer with this "tell me about yourself" question. Then
once you have your story, once you know what you're going to say, you need to
practice it. So in order to practice it, I would recommend
jotting down some brief points just so you vaguely know
what you're going to say and then they're practicing in front of a mirror
or a camera watching for any vocal tics or physical tics
like playing with your hair, looking off to the side anything weird like that you
might do. Also practice in front of a friend or a family member who you trust
and who's going to give you an honest opinion. It's also super valuable to seek
professional feedback in terms of someone who knows interview skills and
what to look for in terms of your answer and the actual content. If you are
looking for professional help, we do offer that service at BeMo. You can click
the link below to sign up for your free initial consultation today. Otherwise if
you want to read more about how to ace your interviews check out our blog, we
have a lot of great resources there. Thanks for joining me, I'll see you all
again next week!