Welcome again everybody interviewing with medical and dental schools. We're going to get started starting with our timeline. So here here is the timeline for applying to medical and dental school. This is the overview that we've been talking about ever since we started doing these presentations were right on interviewing today. We've come a long way. You've got a long way to go in this application cycle, but just wanted to give you a sense of where we're sitting in the application cycle right now, some of you might be finishing up secondaries. Some of you may be starting interviews. So that's around about where we're sitting. We do have some programming coming up for you about following up with medical school. So today we're primarily going to focus on just the interview piece. So here's the plan for today are going to talk about why we do interviews in the first place and medical and dental schools. What the main steps are for preparing for a medical school or dental school interview, how you're going to be communicating at these interviews. And then how we follow up. Again, we're going to do a much longer piece. I'm following up later on. Craig and I have some tips and resources for you and then of course, your questions. Well, I'll try and take care of as many of those as possible. Okay, So getting started, what is the purpose of the interview? So like we always see, interviews are a two-way street. Medical and dental schools are trying to get some things out of the interview and you're going to get some things out of the interview as well. So for medical and dental schools, you see their list is a little bit longer. And they have had the opportunity to review your written materials, your test scores, things like that. And they want to learn a little bit more about those written materials. This is also a time to gather information about you that maybe wasn't in your written materials or they have additional questions about. For some applicants, this is the school's opportunity to ask about potential red flags in the application. So Income fees a W, a leave of absence, institutional actions. Those are things that, if that's part of your story that you might get asked about in an interview at a medical or dental schools. This is an opportunity for med schools to make judgments and decisions about who they're going to admit, who they're going to reject who, they're going to face on the waitlist how many more people they need to be inviting for interviews at a later date. This is also the opportunity to determine your fit with their medical school, the education they're offering, the programs that they have. And it's also an opportunity for them to recruit you as an applicant. But the virtual space, some med schools are separating that piece. They're trying to recruit you as an applicant from this piece of getting to know you as an applicant and learning more about who knows what that's going to end up becoming in the next couple years. So that's a medical and dental schools are getting out of it as an applicant, this is your chance to tell your story. Or most schools you haven't had the opportunity to be in front of them, talking and telling your story and relaying your journey to them. This is also an opportunity to update your application. Many things have changed for some of you since that application went in. Since, your primary with submitted, since your secondary was submitted, this is also an opportunity for you to gather information about the school and really think, am I interested in going here if I'm extended an offer of admission. So that's that that's the big piece of why we do the interviews. Craig, did I miss anything anything? nope. Alright, and how you should prepare for your interviews so you want to dress for success. So plan a business. Formal outfits, make time to prepare. Among your other obligations. I think that's a really key component that so many people and neglect that. It does require a lot of time and effort. So planning is crucial. So prioritize preparation, whether your job or your academics, scheduled practice interviews in advance, this appointment times booked up, we can't stress that enough. Stay informed on health related issues. So what's going on with Covid-19, the variant, the vaccines, et cetera. Any health care reform, breakthroughs and treatment, news and ethical issues, health care experiences from the front line. Prepare for interviews styles, right? So there's additional one-on-one open files. So that's more of an informed interview, but close files, so there's no information that's available. Behavioral, panels,  group, the MMI or the multiple mini interviews, structured versus unstructured, and then review and practice interview questions you need to really be prepared for when your interviews happen. And this is something that hopefully the school will communicate with you. What's the interview style and what's the format going to be? We hope that they're providing you with a schedule. That doesn't always happen, That's not always the case. And so that is certainly something that we can help you figure out, that you can search online to try and figure out, is it an open file is closed file. What type of interview are we talking about? What what are the interviews typically like at this school? So that's something that we can help with too. And here are some sample traditional questions that you may be asked, right? So tell me about yourself, what do you consider to be greatest strength and how about your greatest weakness? And more importantly, how are you working on them? What did you enjoy most about X activity that you belong to? What else would you like to add to your personal statement if he had unlimited space? How would you define diversity and what are you doing to be an advocate for social justice? These last two points, I think you'd be really good to really have some kind of idea what you want to say in regards to diversity, equity, inclusion, and social justice. Be knowledgeable. A sample behavior, a question could be, tell me about a time that you faced an ethical dilemma, right? So I think that's a really difficult and can be stressful question, right? So having some kind of response prepared, I always suggest to you that you might want to ask a follow-up question. Are you talking about a personal ethical dilemma? Professional and academic write some faced by asking a clarifying question, then allows you a little extra time to kind of formalize response or more importantly, it ensures that you're answering the question after they're hoping you would answer, right? So asking clarification When in doubt. And if you can remember the star technique when you're asked to behavioral question, use your behavior question. Starts with tell me about a time, right? So if you think about star, so as to the situation so you wanna describes the situation from your experience, right? So talk about the who, what, where and why things T is the task at hand. So explain the tasks that were involved, what were the challenges and expectations? And then the most important components to a behavior question are the a and the r. So the A stands for the Action So elaborate on a specific action that you did not what the team did what you  did specifically. And based on your actions are what were the results, right? So to summarize the results, they achieve any recognitions earned if it was a group task focused on how your actions contributed that you really want to find out about the why of things. That's the whole purpose of asking and behavioral questions to determine how your past actions could impact your future performance. We had a question in the chat. You have any suggestions or resources to use to stay updated on health related issues like Craig mentioned. And in general, medical schools are expecting you to know what's going on in the news. And so we do recommend that you choose your favorite reliable news source and be consuming that as much as make sense. So if there are new developments and there are new things coming out in healthcare news, that's something that medical schools, they're not going to expect you to be experts on it. And we'll get into how to answer a question if you don't know the answer. But they are going to expect that you care enough about health care and health care related news to be read up on the main developments. And notice how I used the word liable resource, right? Because there's so much fake news out there. So you really want to make sure that you choose your news source carefully? Yes. And if it's something that you want to become an expert on that you're really curious about, that you're consuming several different sources of news about is who really get the full perspective for sure? If I'm on my brush. So here's a sample MMI question, right? So a 40 year old patient with schizophrenia needs hernia repair. The surgeon discuss the procedure with the patient. Who understood the procedure Can the patient give consent? So once again, in a question like this, you can always ask some clarifying questions. Just be prepared that your interviewer might not have that information, right? So, but I think it's always better to ask. And if they don't, then you're going to have to make some assumptions right with your analysis. But I think it's always better. Kind of talk it out. Okay, So how do you get ready to do these interviews besides reading up on the news and seeing what's going on, you are a really great source of information for how to prepare for these interviews. You all have produced hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands and thousands of words of writing for your application. Starting with the easy stuff that you submitted through the personal statement, the secondaries. You all know the volume of writing that you have done for this application. That's where we want you to start, reread the stuff that you submitted to these schools in the first place. And while you're reviewing that writing, be thinking, Excuse me, about how you've evolved and changed from the time that you started that very first HCEC reflection journal, that might be 10, 11 months ago that you really started putting together material, for your medical or dental school application. So is that still true of you? How have you evolved, how you changed, what's new for you. Certainly be reading, re-reading your primary application, be rereading your secondary application. So this specific school, anything in that writing is fair game for schools to be asking you about. So we want you to be prepared, especially because you've got a source material right there. Also reviewing changes that may have happened. Again, either changes in your maturity, changes in your evolution as a person, as a future professional, but then also have their credentials changed. Have you graduated, Have you gotten a new job? What information to the schools not yet have about you? Certainly it, Let's start by going back and reviewing all of that stuff. So here are the things that we expect you to go into every single interview, being able to verbally communicate to the medical school and I specifically write. Verbally because you're probably looking at this list than being like Ana I already wrote this and my secondary, I already wrote the summit personal statement. How they not know right now why medicine or dentistry is not right for me. But we really need you to think about how you might communicate this verbally to medical schools. Because even in an open file interview where the interviewer has that information about you, we want you to assume that they have just skimmed it and  that and they need more information about you. So why medicine or dentistry, of course, why you're a good candidate and what you've done to prepare for this career. So the courses that you've taken, opportunities, you pursued, all that stuff. They want you to be able to demonstrate your commitment to service and talk about your commitment to service, and also to talk about why this school is right for you. So even if you've got it down on paper, we read that and formulate it into a verbal response. And one other point about in regards to school, they could ask a follow-up question like geographically, what is it about the school geographically is of interest A lot of students really, like, all right, those are the expected has to answer that question, right? But knowing why the right school, but also Geographic, what is it about the school and the geographical location that really resonated with you to apply. Also be prepared to answer that. Yes, absolutely. Here's some tough questions that we also want you to be prepared to tackle in your medical school interview. The first is what makes you unique? Certainly that how did COVID-19 impacts your, you personally, if at all. So there are global impacts, of course the local impacts, but you particularly, we recommend it for this question focusing on remembering the big picture of what has happened globally and perhaps locally to you and focus on you. What happened to you, what you did kind of instead as an alternative, that sort of thing. Most med schools, if not all of them, are going to ask you what questions do you have for us? So that is another thing to be prepared. That's usually the end of every interview. What questions do you have for me? And then ethical questions. In general, you can be practicing. These are often they're common for MMI's, but we do sometimes get them for traditional interviews as well. Okay, So how do you communicate? So we talked about how to prepare what you need to communicate. This is how you communicate and this is a critical part of the process. The first is to understand the question before you begin answering. Craig was alluding to it's fine to ask a follow-up question to make sure you understand what's going on. I always say it's okay to slow down and to pause, I have a tendency to talk really fast. And so I had to remind myself, in these types of settings, you slow down, take a breath, take a pause, and part of that pause can be do I really understand the question as it was being asked and can I check my understanding somehow? Articulate carefully and make sure that you are making your interviewer is understanding what you're saying. Answer thoroughly, but don't be long-winded. When did I know that? That's a tough one and that's certainly something we can help you with. In a  practice interview. We want you to be able to demonstrate your ability to think critically. They are looking for you to be able to think on your feet. A stress interview is not common in med school, but it does happen. And that's why we often put in here. We want you to be able to show that you can be flexible, that you can be resilient, that you can handle stress. Just because it's important to the interview, but also it's important as a future health professionals to have these sorts of skills that we want you to be demonstrating that I'm in that interview. Be thinking about what you've learned from different situations, particularly things that had been tough for you. So even if you're not sure where to start with, getting prepared for interview is a great spot, can be. What are some challenges that I've overcome? Or what are some hard things that have happened that I've been able to grow and learn through that process. And so being able to speak about those things is a great way to get started being prepared. Did I miss anything Craig?  Nope. So here's some tips from Craig and Ana So remember, You're always interviewing, right? So you want to be polite, professional, and respectful to everyone with whom you interact with, right? That's really important to be honest. It's okay to say, I don't know, right? It's better to be honest as opposed to fabricating a response, right? Be yourself as much as possible, and then be mindful of gender pronouns. I think that's really important to talk about diversity and inclusion, to be mindful when we're talking about people that started to keep a gender neutral. Here's some the core competencies or AAMC. I think these are really important to keep in mind especially if you're struggling, okay. I don't know what to talk about, how to answer this question. If you keep these in mind, that might help you in formulize your responses. And one thing I'd like to highlight here is the capacity for improvement. A lot of times when I am assisting pre-med students, they really view that as a weakness I don't like to talk about, but to me, we're all human. And to show that you have that capacity for improvement And I think that's something to really just embrace to be your authentic self because we're also assessing you on that. I think keeping in mind that that's actually a strength that you have a capacity for improvement because we're all human right. So I think that's something to really keep in mind and to embrace. And then here's some virtual interview consideration, right? So professional attire  is still required. Being mindful of the background and backdrop. You want to look at the camera periodic, right? I think it's okay to kinda lean in. And sometimes you can use hand gestures, right? When you want to prove a point and know what to do in advance, you have encountered technical difficulties, so Ana talked about, you know, sometimes these interviews are stressful. A lot of times, yeah. You gotta have stabilization problems, right? So maybe stress that happens. I'm going to turn my camera off or just kinda communicate what happens. And then if you come back, once again, you're showing that resilience in that positivity, right? You need to really project a given Y was not expecting me a technical difficulties. We call these more likely, it's going to happen. So you just need to adapt and react and remain calm. And then you want to practice ahead of time. We can't stress it enough to really put into practice before you're actually before your interview comes around, right? So it's scheduling practice interviews and advanced. We highly encourage. Okay. So then after the interview, we do encourage you to send thank you notes. Those are via e-mail. Thankfully, we don't need to be sending snail mail, is that what we're calling it, snail mail. the preference is that these thank you. Notes. The e-mails are going directly to the person with whom you interviewed when, whenever possible. Online interviews are great for this because most of the time you have that person's first and last name right in front of you. So it's not up to you to write down what somebody's name is on the name tag or something like that. Do send a personalized thank you to everybody with whom you interact and that you have their name and be mindful of keeping track of those things provided to you at a schedule. The next piece is one that students often skip, and so it's definitely on here for you to say it out loud. Take some time to reflect on the experience. If you are lucky enough to be in a position where you're holding more than one. Except sometimes these interviews can blend together and it's hard to remember. Was that the school where I got that weird vibe from that one person was that the school where the students really made me feel like I was part of the team already, you know, taking notes, thinking about it, reflecting back that can help you if you're in a position where you're holding multiple acceptances or you're in a position where you're trying to decide, do I stay on this wait list so I get this. What makes the most sense? Because remember from the beginning of the presentation you're interviewing them too and so your opinion and your thoughts absolutely come into play when you're making those decisions. Hopefully if you've got more than one choice to make. Attends an additional health careers workshops. We're going to be in communication with you about the timing, the schedule, the topic of them, certainly, you follow up we're going to be talking about so beyond thank you. Notes. There are additional follow-ups that you can sent to medical and dental schools throughout the year. You don't have to stop your communication with them just because you've submitted your secondary you had that interview and thank you. Note, That's something we're going to talk about. I will tell you it's not an immediate concern for anybody you right this hot second, that's not even September yet, so you don't need to worry about that, but information on that is forthcoming. Okay, so like Craig said, practice interviews are a great help. Here are some things that we can coach you through if you choose to do a practice scenario. Formulating answers that are concise and yet have the details that we need to answer the question. Conveying competence, conveying enthusiasm, answering those diversity and inclusion questions. You've made debriefing and adapting. If you have a challenging interview, we don't want you to have a challenging interview. Sleep at night and then the very next day it goes to another interview And if you please come in and chat with me, a chat with Craig, a chat with a health careers advisor in your home college, we can help you debrief and get you hiked up for that next interview because there's always another chance, right? Deciding if, how or when to disclose a marginalized identity. We're happy to be confidential resources if you're trying to figure out, does this make sense to disclose and my med school or dental school interview, if it makes sense to disclose when do I disclose it? How might I go about that? Those are absolutley things that we're happy to put you through. So and when I say we and us talking about me and Craig and your health career advisor in your home college So some next steps, right? You want to review and practice sample interview questions. Look on the lookout for emails about practice interview events, scheduled a practice interview. So all students from any college can certainly schedule an appointment with me. So your Cornell Career Services website, arts and sciences students with Ana through the arts and sciences career development web page. And then CALS and Human Ecology can also contact your college career office. So you want to  create your own list of questions that you want answered during the interview experience and adds all of the information that we share with you today. We are happy to keep your question in the chat. Please take a second if you've got questions and we'll type in, and Craig and I will give it a shot. Anything come up that I missed, Kay? Okay. No, no, I don't see any. You can also raise your hand or unmute if you want to just verbally ask the question on that too much to type. I'm sorry. I see a hand. Feel free to unmute and ask your question. Yeah. Hi. Thank you so much for the presentation. I was wondering for the practice interviews other than like the AMCAS application, what resources would be helpful to like supply with whoever is administering the practice interview ahead of time. Yes. We probably have a slightly different processes, but in our office is there's a form that you submit that's specific to healthcare. So it asked things like, what three questions are you most concerned about answering? It asks about your MCAT score and your GPA and that sort of thing. So that we can get a sense of kind of like a little mini at what an open file application might look like. So that's what we do and I'm assuming your processes a little different, right? Yes, for For Barnes like we basically if you want to attach your AMCAS Application or or just your resume. I think that saw that report. And what school your interview and I think that's that's how that we need. Okay, great. Thank you so much. You're welcome. And I see there's a question about the different types of interviews so I was going to find that slide and share it so that we can all look at it together. Oh gosh. Thank you. Different types of interviews. I'm working on it. Hang tight so that I'm not sharing my screen, am I? No. No. And that's why I'm texts of bright here. I think the theory I different interview style. So these are the different we're looking at different anyway, South, right? Yes. Yes. So traditional one-on-one. So usually when we talk about interviews, we're talking about traditional versus MMI. Those are the main two interviews within tradition out. That's kinda like what you would think of a medical interview. There's two people. One person is the applicant and one person is the person asking the question. Sometimes a faculty member, sometimes somebody from the admissions committee, sometimes a student and something like that. They're going to be asking you questions. You're going to be answering the questions. That's tradition, not the open versus closed buyout that has to do with whether or not they've seen your application ahead of time. And then the open file interview, they've got your application. Those of you who participated in each CEC interview as part of your application process? That was an open file interview. That person was able to read every single thing you submitted to the East you see before you started. And it caused by interview. They might know your name. That might be it. Sometimes they know your name and your pronouns, your name and your undergraduate institution, whatever it may be. So there they have very, very little information until you are responsible in that interview for providing basically a 100 percent of the information. You can assume that that person knows anything about you really beyond your anion. And so the burden is a little higher in a closed file interview because you can't make assumptions or illusions to things. Like in an open a file, in a view. You might be able to say something like. Well, in my personal theme and I wrote about my relationship, my grandma, they were really close. And then I might launch into a different story about my grandmother, but I'm assuming that person knows something about my relationship with my grandmother and I know I attended Cornell University or they know I'm working in New York City right now. Closed body can't make that assumption. Behavioral interviews sometimes that's a component of a traditional interview, that that's what Craig was saying. Tell me about a time when you you're asked to use your past experience to predict future behavior. So you're saying, tell me about a time when you experience a conflict with another individual that's giving them an insight into how you might approach conflicts when you experience that in medical school with patients, colleagues. And so that's behavioral question. Panel interviews. It's usually remember I said like a traditional interviews, a one-on-one admissions person, a faculty member, or a student. Sometimes panel is all three of those people asking you questions all at once. A group interview, typically we're talking about group, we're talking about you and other candidates being together in a group. So sometimes it's a panel of customers and then a group of applicants. Sometimes it's one group and one question when one person asking the questions, it really just depends. And sometimes groups can be a component of MMI's, which are multi  mini interviews. We're going to do a session on multi mini interview assignment. I give it a quick, a quick overview, but multi minute, interviews are basically ethical questions or scenario-based questions that you were going to be asked to speak for a longer period of time and it's less of a conversation, it's more one-sided. You get the question, you formulate a response to the question, and then you give your interview response. MMI's are different than traditional interviews. So in a traditional interview, it's one person asking the questions. In an MMI. Each question is asked by a different interviewer. That make sense. So, so let's say I'm asking the question about that patient with schizophrenia and the hernia repair. It. I'm the interviewer. I'm asking the schizophrenia hernia repair questions all day long. So I might your 12 different people answer that question. So me as an interviewer, that allows me to evaluate candidates equally because I'm only hearing it answers to one question as opposed to a traditional one-on-one interview. If I spend one hour with one candidate, we've always been in conversations. We're not really jive with them personally. You fine, I'm going to move on. Right, if you get in that situation where an interviewer and a candidate don't really jive with each other. It's not a big deal because you move on to a new Kent that and so that's the purpose of the MMI's that reduces some bias that we see in traditional interviews. Structured versus unstructured. This is usually the shocker. Most students who come back from interviews, if you have people that you know who interviewed for medical school in the past, they might say something like really chill. Like they're really chill. It was still relaxed. It was just a conversation that's usually what we're talking about with structured versus unstructured. So a structured interview, would be I have questions to ask you. Why do you want to be a doctor? Why do you want to go this school? What's your biggest weakness, right? Unstructured one might be like, Hey, I see you went to Cornell like, you know, I been to the Finger Lakes, It's beautiful there. Do you do any hiking? And then all of a sudden you're talking about hiking, right? And then we're talking about hiking and then all of a sudden we're talking about the time that I sprained my ankle So now I'm talking about sprained ankle and it turns out they're an orthopedic surgeon, you know, So that's the kind of it flows more like a regular conversation. You're still being evaluated on that regular conversation, but that's often feedback I get from students they get back It was really, really chill. I hope that that helps. Other questions. Yes, Emily asked for the interview type requested on the form that I was talking about for Arts & Sciences students, yes. Indicate health careers and that should help you. Other questions. I do see a thank you, but also are there any resources you recommend for gaining exposure to different types of ethical question? I have a one resource that I recommend. I don't know if you do. I'm trying to think like UW has a good Bioethics website that I use often, Craig, I feel like you have a resource, um yeah, Cornell has something. Ethics in medicine, and it's a pretty, this is a pretty good website. I found an asset segments to pick up on. Summer project is too late for a summer project though already mid-August. One question that came through is, do you know if med schools are doing more in-person then virtual interview? It seems like it's more virtual this year. Some med school had said we are doing virtual for safety reasons. Med schools have said we did virtual interviews and we loved them so much for you to keep doing them. Other meds schools those are going to see, we wait and see. Or some schools have expressed like as soon as we can get back to in person, we want to get back to in person. So it really depends on the school. but it looks like it's more virtual just from the few people that I've talked to you. So far Did I miss something? Resources.  Other questions? I'm going to put a link in the chat. As I mentioned, Cornell has a great resource tool about diversity, equity, inclusion. So the grant them, right? Alright ya'll well, thanks for coming. You know where to find us if you have questions and certainly where I round off all for practice for support whatever you need , alright ya'll.  And schedule those practice interviews. Have a good one, bye ya'll. Bye.