FAQ: Medical School Interviews

Pre-Med & Medical School Med School Interviews
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First of all, if you’ve received an invitation to interview for medical school—-Congraulations! Something about your application caught the eye of one or more of the application readers and you’ve advanced to the next round of the medical school admission process.

Medical school interviews come in a variety of formats.

AMCAS publishes the MSAR Report for Applicants and Advisors: Interview Procedures every year that lists the type of interview format(s) each medical school uses.

Here’s the link to the 2026 version.
https://students-residents.aamc.org/media/7051/download

Generally speaking interviews fall into a five formats:

  • One-on-one faculty member/applicant
  • One-on-one current med student/applicant
  • Group interview with several applicants and one or more faculty and/or med students (Interview panel)
  • Multiple Mini Interviews (MMI)
  • Mixed format that includes both one-on-one interviews and MMI

All of these formats are pretty self-explanatory except for the Multiple Mini Interviews

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Multiple Mini Interviews

This format involves an interview circuit that is partly a situation judgment test. Students will circulate among 6-10 different stations where they will be presented with a scenario or a question they are expected to respond to. Applicants will be given a time limit within which to respond. Most of the scenarios involve an ethical or behavioral situation. These scenarios are assessing non-cognitive skills like empathy, communication and teamwork.

Schools that use MMIs will require the applicant to sign a non-disclosure agreement. This is to prevent other test takers from learning what the questions are in advance. A MMI scenario is designed to assess an applicant’s naive (unprepared) and presumably more honest response to a situation.

There are some commercially available prep materials available for MMIs.

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Things to know about med school interviews

Your interviewer may or may not have access to your entire application. Some schools blind interviewers to certain information such as GPA, MCAT score, LORs, or ECs.

Most interviews will be conversational and informal and won’t follow any particular script. Be polite and act interested. Maintain good eye contact. Don’t fidget. Make sure that your personal appearance is neat, well-groomed and professional.

If the interview is virtual, try to have the camera at an appropriate height so the screen centers on your face. Be sure there is nothing distracting visible in the background. No political signs, no pets, no weird posters. If your wall behind you has visible stuff on it, consider hanging a plain bedsheet over the wall to provide a professional (i.e. blank) background. Again, professional dress and a neatly groomed appearance is expected.

Be prepared to discuss anything that is mentioned anywhere in your application or letters of evaluation.

If you’ve claimed a very high level of fluency in a language other than English on your application, be aware that your interviewer may interview you in that language.

Questions may get intensely personal. If there is topic that you find highly personally upsetting and don’t want to discuss— a death in the family or a sexual assault, for example, it’s best to not include it as part of your application.

Occasionally, some interviews may be stress interviews. In this type of interview, your interviewer may act aggressive and argumentative. They may contradict every statement you make or ask a question and repeatedly cut you off before you can answer. They will try hard to provoke an emotional response from you. If you should encounter this situation, it’s important not to react to the provocation, but to remain calm and professional at all times. “Never let them see you sweat,” as the saying goes.

In some very, very rare cases, interviewers may ask you illegal questions or express hostile opinions or commit micro-aggressions about your gender, education, ethnicity or race, appearance. In these cases, it’s best not to react to provocations, but remain calm and professional. As soon as the interview is over make contemporaneous notes about your experience, and, if you feel it’s warranted, be sure to inform the Dean of Admissions about your negative experience so the interviewer can either be removed from future interview rotations or scheduled for retraining.

For illegal questions/comments, I suggest developing in advance a bland, inoffensive, all purpose response that you can offer in the moment, then attempt to move the conversation forward.

Examples of illegal Questions or Comments:

  • Where else are you interviewing? (this one is very common)
  • What does your spouse/partner think about moving to [town where med school is located]?
  • How old are you?
  • Do you plan on having children?/ Do you have any children?
  • You’re too pretty to be an actual physics major.
  • You seem very competent, but we already have too many [ethnic/racial/gender group] in this school.
  • Couldn’t you do better than going to [name of your college]?
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