Questions From The Interview Trail

Happy Monday, and welcome to Medical Mondays! Since I’m done with the whole interviewing process, I thought I’d share some questions from the interview trail!

Before I get to that, I want to belatedly thank everyone again for all your support on my scholarship writing competition! (I wrote about it over in my post about following your dreams!) I won first place, and I definitely couldn’t have done it without all of you. Thank you so, so much! <3

And…interviews.

Some of the questions were somewhat difficult, while others were really fun to answer. Sad as it may be(?), I still have a hard time talking about my grandmother sometimes, even though it’s been several years since she passed away. I think she’s the reason why I especially enjoy working in geriatrics, and ever since I lost her, the elderly ladies at my church back at home have kinda filled in that hole.

One of the ladies I was closest to moved back to China about 1.5 years ago, but my mom would call her often to see how she was doing and to let her know we were thinking of her, and she’d always tell my mom to tell me that she was praying for me to get a scholarship. (I was super happy to let her know that I really did!)

She passed away at 99 years old, and had lived a very long, very full life. I’m really glad my parents got to go visit her, and I really wish I could’ve been there too. One of my interviews fell a couple days after she passed away, and I may or may not have teared up a little when they asked me: “You seem like you really enjoy working with the geriatric population. Is there any reasoning behind that–any experience in your life that really touched you?”

I hope he didn’t notice. :[

..but here are some of the other questions I was asked on the interview trail!

The question I was most commonly asked on my interviews was…”Do you have any questions for us?”

There were also the standard ones:

• …Why our program?
• …Why family medicine?
• …Why this location?

And then came the fun and/or random ones!

How did you get into powerlifting?

What’s Asian glow? (Just in case you’re wondering, he was telling me about things to do in town, i.e. breweries, and I told him I couldn’t drink because of Asian glow + my aldehyde dehydrogenase deficiency.)

Do you ever sleep?

Can you tell me about a time that you received feedback? How did you respond, and what did you do about it?

What kind of practice do you envision yourself having?

How would your friends describe you?

What would you do if you couldn’t go into family medicine? (The behavioral specialist who asked me this question drew my distressed expression on the paper as my response.)

What’s a lesson that you’ve learned from your parents that you really took to heart? What’s a lesson that they tried to teach you that you just didn’t agree with?

It looks like you’ve been pretty set on family medicine from the start. Can you tell me how you reached that conclusion?

Can you tell me about one of your favorite patients?

What kind of music do you play?

What are your expectations for residency?

What do you do for fun?

Why do you think we have so many people that are under-served in medicine?

What’s Tahitian dancing?

What can you bring to our program?

Medical school is hard–can you tell me about the most challenging experience you’ve come across so far in life?

Does our gym have enough for you to work on setting national powerlifting records?

If you couldn’t go straight into residency after you graduated, what would you do with your year off?

What do you anticipate yourself having the most trouble with?

How much can you lift?

Did you do any sports in high school?

You wrote about your grandmother in your personal statement–now that you’ve gone through medical school and know what you know, do you think there’s more that you could have done to help? Is there anything you would have changed about her care?

Who’s your favorite composer?

How did you choose between medicine and music? For a while, it looked like you were going toward music.

• What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever been asked on your interviews? I wouldn’t really classify any of mine as weird–most of em’ were a lot of fun to answer!
• Hardest question you’ve ever been asked?