Dental My "Do Not Disturb" function on my laptop failed to work during my virtual interview...

[AlteredScale]

I recently had an interview with one of my dream dental schools. Because of COVID, it was through Kira, using pre-recorded questions. I was given only 90 seconds to answer each question and didn't have any "do-overs". I turned my phone and watch off, and turned my do not disturb on (or at least I thought it was on). My grandma was hospitalized this weekend and in the middle of a question, I was bombarded with group texts that came directly to my computer, and it was loud. I kind of panicked and didn't know what to do, so I pretended like it wasn't happening. In a traditional interview, I would have immediately apologized and explained myself, but I didn't want to waste my time, I wanted to keep answering the question. Naturally, this made me frazzled and embarrassed, so I think I answered poorly on the following questions. Should I do anything about this, or just cut my losses?

What do you mean cut your losses? Life happens. I’m sure you answered as well as you could and I’m sure you could explain to the admin or faculty via email about what happened and they will most def talk that into consideration.

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[TheBoneDoctah]

You will be fine as long as you didn’t bomb the questions. Things happen and ADCOM know that.

 

[Mr.Smile12]

To give you a much less optimistic perspective: it's an asynchronous interview. You are given enough warnings and practices to turn off all your devices or leave them in a completely separate room so you could focus. Sure, life happens, but you are right that you don't get second chances. Now, evaluators can completely overlook the interruptions, but that depends on your evaluator and what the grading rubric the school's adcom chose to employ for that question.

That said, that is one question out of many. It depends on how your question is scored and how much it matters relative to the other questions in your set. It could matter very little. It could matter quite a lot. If you want, you can feed your anxiety until it's fully engorged. Or you can just let it go and not let it dominate your thoughts. Chances are, it's not a big deal and is one bad experience relative to the totality of your application review.