MD/PhD Interview Prep

[mr.scienceguythebadman]

Dear All,

I have had one interview so far. In this interview, I was usually asked "tell me about your research." I have worked in several labs in multiple projects. So for this question, I chose one of my projects and spoke about it. This panned out to be ok over the course of my interviews.

Now, I have some other interviews coming up. I'm just wondering what the format of these interviews are in general. Will they mostly be in the form of "tell me about your research" with a subsequent back and forth discussion. Or, do the interviews sometimes pick out a specific project you have participated in before and ask you questions about it.

Also, when asked "tell me about your research" do you think it's appropriate to just pick a single project. I found it to be extremely difficult to try to go over the wide range of things I've done and chose to focus on my most significant project in detail.

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[starfun21]

Hi there! Congratulations on your interview

In my experience, almost all of your interviews will have read through your entire AMCAS application. Thus, they should know that you have participated in multiple projects. I found that most of the time, my interviewers would comment specifically on one of my projects (especially a very small project I did in particular since it was kind of unique/weird lol), and then I would elaborate on it as necessary. However, especially on the medical school side, they may ask the more general question for you to tell them about your research.

In this case, the approach can vary. For me, I felt it best to state something like, "Overall, I did four years of research, one at Institution X and three at Institution Y. My major project during that time was......" and then to expand on that, as you stated. So to answer your question directly: yes, picking a single project is likely the best way just so that you don't confuse the interviewer, but it can be very helpful for you to contextualize that as your longest project or your most significant project so that they can follow up about others if they choose.

Hope that helps! Good luck to you and any others reading this!!

 

[mr.scienceguythebadman]

Thank you for your reply!

Now, just a follow-up question.

In your experience, were the interviewers interested in your specific contributions to a project or the project as a whole? Did you ever get asked what did you specifically do in this work? Or could the questions ask about anything that was in the project (even figures/data you yourself did not generate)?

 

[Chimpoid]

My interviewers tended to leave the question open ended, but a couple times I was asked about a particular project that I included in my research essay (sometimes research from previous internships).

Interviewers were generally interested in a summary of my most significant research experience. I found it most effective to briefly describe the project, and then provide details about my specific contribution and the current progress of this work (if relevant). Nobody asked about figures or instruments used, etc. If there are aspects of your research that could be considered critical to understanding your project even though you didn't work on them, I would be able to explain them briefly. For example, if you were running an animal study evaluating a receptor antagonist that a collaborator generated, an interviewer might ask you about the antagonist's mechanism of action or how it was made. Hope that makes sense =)