I'm going to hit the record button now. Okay, great. So welcome everyone. Thanks for making time during your lunch hour in a very busy summer. My name is Barbara. I'm one of the associate directors that HPAC and I will let my colleague introduce herself. Hi everyone, I'm Mia Ferraina. I use she/her pronouns. I'm the public service careers coach in our central career services office. So translation, what that essentially means, Is I see students from all across the university, regardless of what they study. And particularly support students who are interested in helping professions and careers that are for the social good. So if that is you, I'm happy to chat with you more and I do a lot of practice interviews, so that's what brings me here. Okay, I'll get started. So we're hoping that through this webinar today you have a better understanding of why medical and health professional schools conduct interviews. Learn how to prepare for them. Know what kinds of questions to anticipate. Come up with some thoughtful responses and frameworks for answering those kinds of questions and we'll also talk a little bit about the multiple mini interview format. Alright, so let's get started with the basics. And you can even just go right to the next slide, Barbara. I always like to start with what even is an interview. Not everyone has experienced an interview before, so I like to make sure we understand it is your opportunity. To showcase what you're able to do and what you find meaningful. So it's both skills and interests. And it's also, Part 2, is your ability to judge. The school or program in terms of whether you would want to attend there. So if there's something important to you, let's say in an ideal world we get into multiple places, what kind of things would help you decide, between different schools, what kind of things would help you decide, between different schools. What kind of things would help you decide, between different schools. We'll talk more about what questions you can ask, between different schools. We'll talk more about what questions you can ask the interviewer later on in this session ... This is chance for you to show off 2 different things:  Skills and interests and it's an opportunity for you to learn things from whoever is interviewing. So, admissions committees use interviews to determine. Applicants that are the right fit for their school so they're looking at you know how you communicate what kind of presence you have. Your current thinking skills. Basically, if they accept you as their student and you have your critical thinking skills. Basically, if they accept you as their student and you graduate and match and you become a physician or a dentist or a health care provider, you now represent that school, right? And they want to make sure that they are admitting students that are their type of students, right? So they will be proud to put you out there and have you represent them. So, fit is actually really important and at this point in the sort of application process, they are really looking for the right type of student for their institution. They're also going to be looking to see if you've done your homework and you fully understand everything that it's going to entail to be successful in that health professional school. The time, the bandwidth, the resources, the financial investment that's necessary, you know, have you got that full spectrum fully understood And they want to really make sure that you're there for the right reasons. Okay, so some general tips just about interviewing in general: We want to be positive. I think that is a great way to make the first impression. Regardless of who you're speaking with. So, show your enthusiasm, your interest. If there's something particular about that school that you like, go ahead and share that. Balancing positivity with not being maybe overly energetic you do want some calm, cool, confident era about you so I think that can be a little bit of a tricky balance for people. And usually you're kind of nervous. So, pay attention to yourself and how you normally handle nerves. If you're someone who tends to get super gregarious and talkative when you're nervous. Maybe you need to be mindful of reeling that in. You tend to get quiet and self-conscious. Maybe you work on public speaking a little bit more. That will help you communicate effectively. And we'll talk more about What "effective" actually looks like for these different kinds of questions. But if you're not comfortable talking about yourself, you know, that can be a little uncomfortable for people or depending on your personality. So again, practice. Whether it's with friend just recording yourself whatever it is you want you want to get comfortable talking about yourself. You don't want the first time you're doing that to be in an interview because sometimes I can feel a little Like you're bragging too much or something, so becoming more okay with. That's the purpose of an interview. You are supposed to say how wonderful you are. So it feels kind of odd, but that is the purpose of the... And Barbara put a note in here about, bringing your photo ID, even if you're in a remote interview. Just to verify who you are. So, the virtual interviews specifically, many of you will probably experience these if you haven't already. But you want to make sure you test your technology and everything's working properly. So if you can, sign into the platform or, you know, download it in advance. Barbara and I got on here 15 min early today just to make sure everything was running smoothly. So when you can do that, absolutely would recommend. You wanna try and minimize distractions, so I cleaned off my desk a little bit so that I wasn't distracted. By what was there and you didn't see it. Dress Business professional, I'm a little more casual than you would wanna be in an interview. There's no one here in the summer time so I'm a little more casual today. But you'll wanna be a little bit more dressed up. if you have distractions in terms of sound and noise. There are some settings you can play with on Zoom to, muffle some of the background, But do try to find a quiet space if you can, use the virtual background if you're worried about people walking around. You know, blurring or using a virtual one if you have the bandwidth that does take a little bit more bandwidth to do the virtual background. But you know, you can play around with that to help the interviewer focus on you and your work. You do wanna be mindful of your posture. So be comfortable. I mean, you don't have to sit super rigidly on the edge of your chair, but I'm trying to again, convey some of that positivity and enthusiasm through things like eye contact and facial expressions When it virtual, it can be a little bit tricky that idea of eye contact. You don't have to stare at the screen the whole time like this, that gets a little creepy after a while. You can, you know, kind of, glance around at your notes or whatever, but make sure you're just not like staring in your lap. That's really the main thing. I, also, tend to talk with my hands a lot Which I would just try not to do in an interview. So you might have something to fidget with in your hands to keep you from Waving those around and being distracting, which I think comes through a little bit more virtually than in person. And practice, you know, your whole setup. Where are your clothes? Make sure your pants still fit, you know, all of those things. You probably don't wear your blazer very often. So things like that. And if you need to rent anything, there's an organization called The Wardrobe that rents professional clothing for free through our office. You can look them up once you're back on campus if you need clothing. Great, so, medical schools are moving to an MMI model, of doing interviews. It is essentially a series of 6 to 10 interviews stations, each focused on a different question or a scenario. Typically there will be, like a third party interview platform that's used. There are breakout rooms. Similar to what is on zoom, but you'll kind of be automatically moved from room to room rather than having to exit and join rooms. So it's a little bit more straightforward. They last about 2 hours, and at each virtual station you'll be given a prompt and then 2 minutes to think about and prepare, before you provide your response which will last between 5 to 8 minutes  we'll get into all the details of this in just a little bit. The idea behind this is to test, your sort of social and non verbal skills, your teamwork skills, critical thinking, how you communicate, problem solving on your feet. And of course, ethics, so these are all, important indicators of, a good physician or healthcare provider. Really, they're looking for things that aren't captured in your primaries or secondaries, application, transcripts, standardized scores. Okay. I just wanted to share an analogy that I think helps me remember things like this really well. As a former sports person with that view, think of it like a volleyball match or a tennis match where you play a point and then there's a whole new point that comes back. You probably learned a little bit from the one that you just did, but you've got a reset. You, you know, flip up or feel like you didn't nail it that's okay there's another point and there's you know, a whole lot of them coming for the rest of your MMI. No, either. It's been done, but try not to let it get under you skin and learn from it and move forward. typically in interviews you'll see is a wide variety of topics one of the stations could have an embedded behavioral question but a lot of the times you'll see different scenarios with follow up questions. You might actually be asked to do some role play so there might be an actor at the station and there will be questions. There could be stations that are just writing so you might get an essay prompt and be asked to write. In general, they might ask you about challenges you've had, your approach to diversity and inclusion, and of course, you know, "why are you interested in our program?" And I do want to emphasize that, the MMI doesn't test specific knowledge. That's the whole point of going to that health professional school, going to medical school. Which also means it might be a little bit difficult to prep for questions because you won't know what they are in advance. But again, we'll provide a framework so that you're not, you know, you'll have a way to answer these questions In the moment on your feet. In terms of timeline, you can expect interview invites to start rolling in early Fall. And they will continue through Winter and early Spring. The invites, they can be scheduled into Spring. We do recommend that you respond promptly to interview invites, and be professional in that communication. And, I'll talk to you a little bit later on in, in the webinar Alright, so now that you have an understanding of what you're actually going into and what that's going to look like, how do you prepare? So let me kind of break it down into 3 general steps for you. You want to actually research the school or the program. Or if you're, you know, doing a gap year, you know, a job position, but you want to make sure you do your research, but you fully understand. The place that you're headed. Second is determining how you want to present your skills. So the idea is not to tell them everything about yourself. It's to think about how your skills match up with what they're looking for and share that. So maybe you have a shared value in culturally-sensitive medical care. That might be something to emphasize about your experiences because that's a value stated by the medical school. And lastly is understanding different types of interviews and practicing, answering potential questions. You want to actually practice them out loud, not just outline your answers. Because we all fumble through our words sometimes. So you don't want to be rehearsed and memorize an answer. You don't wanna be trying to say it for the first time. So I'll go and take a these in a little bit more depth.  And I think actually Barbara is going to talk about step one. Yeah, so, you all know that you have to do your homework on the institutions that you're applying to, you had to do it for your applications. So what you want to do is look at obviously their mission, their values, their vision. Look into their curriculum, specific courses, if it's a research-heavy institution, what labs, how are they getting funded, you know, what kind of work are they doing? You want to look, if you know the person that you're interviewing with, you know, look them up. And then you want to be sure you understand the full logistics of the interview day, the platforms that you're using, all of that information. I do recommend doing a quick Google News search on the institution before you head into the interview. Sometimes they'll have just announced a big grant that they got, and if it was just yesterday you are ahead of the ball by knowing about it by staying on top of that institution and that's what you want to demonstrate to them, wow, you actually really are interested in us, right?  Wow, you actually really are interested in us, right? And that's what you want to demonstrate. Look at their website. They, a lot of them will have LinkedIn. You want to look at their social media pages, some of them have YouTube channels, and also a great resource could be current students who are Cornell Alumni and it'll be easier to find that through LinkedIn networks for instance. You also want to, as Mia said, as a kind of put your best foot forward that they would be interested in seeing you want to, understand, you know, what are they looking for in terms of the kind of education that's important to them, the experiences that you have if they're an institution in a role studying in all of your clinical experience has been an urban one, it's not because you're not good enough, it's just not the right fit. And then they'll be wondering why you applied to that school. If you have all this urban experience, they won't feel like They are important to you. And so that's something to be really thoughtful about: the kind of skill that you have, right? So if you're interested in pediatrics, but you did all of your clinical work in shadowing in oncology, then you're not skill building in the right area that's right fit for what they're looking for. And then understand their vision of the health care provider that they want to produce and then you should also ask yourself, does that vision align with what I see is my future? And if it doesn't, that's okay, right? It's just not the right fit. Alright, this is a really good way of thinking about how you might present your past skills or experiences. So let's say you are in the situation that Barbara was describing. All of your shadowing is in an urban setting and you're applying to rural school. It doesn't mean that you can't go to where or you're not qualified, but you'll want to talk about how your experience is gonna transfer into this new setting. The while the population might be different. You're still learning communication skills, You're still using critical thinking and solving problem. You're maybe meeting people who are different than you and trying to Make sure that you serve everybody equitably. All of these 8 skills here are viewed as valuable across the board in lots of different professions. There's a bunch of research about that I won't bore you with, but these are 8 skills that, people agree are helpful in lots of settings. So if you're ever wondering. How I represent, let's even say a dance team or club that I was a part of that isn't really related to health at all. That's perfectly fine. You probably got at least one of these 8 skills out of that experience So Step 3 is actually to understand what kind of interview you're going to be doing and practicing those questions. So we've been talking about the MMI style, virtual versus in person. Behavioral interviews are sometimes. Stand alone separate interviews and other times they have the question kind of woven in to a different style. So, those. Behavioral questions. Some people just call a traditional or regular interviews. But why they're called behavioral is because they're judging your past behaviors. Like "tell me about a time when You handled a difficult situation" They're asking for an example of past behavior to try and prove that you're going to have. What they deemed good future results. That's really all they have to go off of, right? Is what you've done in the past. Recorded answers to interview questions are not as common in the medical area, but, some dental. Programs will ask you to do kind of one way, record yourself and in a particular question. Depending on the platform, sometimes you get a second try at that. Or they'll give you a couple of minutes to think about your answer before you actually record. So usually it's not one and done which can be a little nerve racking. I think that's all I want to say about interview type, and we can talk a little bit more about the content of the interview. So some of the very important interview questions that you will almost certainly get and really are part of making a good impression in your interview for things like, "Tell me about yourself" Now, this is a very vague question. I'm not sure why the world has agreed that this is the way ask this question. But really what they're asking you to share is tell me a little bit about you in ways that apply to your professional or medical journey. So you might share some personal information, maybe about where you grew up or something that happened in your family. If it inspired you to pursue medical school or whatever kind of program you are doing. What you don't want to do is just share a list of hobbies, that don't really tie into your whole career in any way. So think of this as. Some people will think of it in like a timeline. And I'll go into that a little bit more in the next slide, but I guess I'll summarize this one. It's not hobbies. It's tell me about your kind of academic and professional self but, another really common question to open the interview with is Why are you interested in this school or in this program? There is a difference between being qualified. Having skills, and being interested. There's more about, alignment of values or, characteristics of the program that, are important to you like Being able to do research, or the focus area of our particular professor. Some of those things that Barbara was talking about earlier when you're researching the school. So the last one is why are you qualified? Kind of making that distinction between what are my skills and what are my values. Those are  both important, but they are different, so making sure that you're prepared to answer these 3 questions. Is pretty foundational to a good interview So, I think Barbara is actually gonna explain a little bit more about this "Tell me about yourself" prompt Thanks, Mia. So, you know, a kind of a good framework for this is to chunk it up, in terms of timeline, and always within the context of: you are interviewing to get into this health professional school. So make sure you stay on track and try not to let this become a 20 minute sort of autobiography on "well, I was born in New Jersey and..." So, definitely helpful to provide information. About you, but always thinking about, you know, answering the question. And so as Mia was getting at, what made you interested in healthcare? So that could be a personal reason that could be family-related, some sort of inspirational story and you know we've talked about this before at HPAC It's What planted the seed? And the present is sort of this, you know, what are you doing about that now, right? So what is sowing that seed, what is nourishing that seed, what is watering that's seed? And then, you know, and that's why need to get to this school because here's my goal, right? And then it's like this seed is going to turn into a tree or the seed is going to bloom into a flower. What it blooms and grows into is up to you, but it's helpful to think about it in that sort of seed analogy in framing your story about this. Tell me about yourself.  I think it's great, you know, to think about what your core values are. So if, taking care of yourself is really important, I think this is a great place to kind of sneak that in a little bit and be like, oh, yeah, at the end of probably a long day. And be like, oh, yeah, at the end of probably a long day. I'm a baker. So I like to make them a little bit and be like, oh, you know, end up probably a long day. I'm a baker, so I like to make muffins, right? And then the interview has learned something about you, right? That, oh, okay. So you do understand work-life balance. There are things that are you are doing to remain functional to take care of yourself and your demonstrating that and not saying, you know, explicitly. I think self-care is important, right? So, something to think about. The how to answer the why this school or program question. I know that you all are doing extensive research. On the schools and programs that you're interested in and you are the expert on all information available online. I will say that you know if you did an internship or a summer program it can be helpful to mention that you have exposure to that site, that campus, you understand. And then I would really encourage you to not just make "I" statements like, well, you know, I could be involved in this, I could do this, and I see this course, but also think about. What you're contributing back, right? so oh there's a mentorship program want very excited about it and excited at the opportunity that I could also mentor somebody else after me, right? So to show them how you, it's a mutually beneficial relationship, not just that you're getting something out of it, but that you are going to elevate their program. You're going to keep contributing and making them better. So that makes you an even more attractive candidate to them as well. So. Can I share one additional thing, Barbara? That I see people say sometime. I think Sometimes what attracts people to a program is it's ranking or it's reputation, valid reason to be interested. That's not really what they're looking to hear. More of the specifics that Barbara was sharing about like the characteristics of the program, maybe the type of electives they offer, those kinds of things are much more unique and specific Than something like a ranking, which is also a little bit of, what I would call like a selfish reason to like a program. Here's all the those "I" statements. Here's what I would get out of coming to the institution. It's more about here's what I admire and like about you and here's how I could elevate or enhance that. You might not think you have much to bring. But maybe you have a different kind of experience than someone else. Maybe you ask really good questions. So it doesn't have to be only experts in that area. No one is expecting that at this point But think about yourself in relation to your classmates and how you would enhance their learning experience in the program overall, not just yours. Thanks, Mia. So ultimately I would encourage you to think about why that question that specific question is being asked and what admissions is looking for not the right answer but why are they asking that question? What are they trying to learn about you? So, I think this is a great example. They might ask you, how did you study for the MCAT, and if your answer is well, I got Blueprint and Blueprint told me to study this many hours that they're learning about Blueprint and not you. What they want to know is, most of the time studying for standardized exams don't happen in a vacuum. So they want to know what else was competing for your attention. How did you prioritize all of the things on your table? Do you understand, again, work-like balance? Do you know how to take care of yourself? So it's really at its core a time management question, not trying to figure out how did you, what's your study schedule, right? So, just to be thoughtful about these questions and try and understand, okay, what is it they actually want to learn about me? Alright, so now you understand what you might be asked. And now you're thinking, okay, Barbara and Mia, what do I actually say? How do I answer these? So these are some more. General tips for great answers across the board. We just covered some of the key, especially opening questions, but these will be or pretty much any other kind of question. So, my biggest advice is to create what I call a story bank, or a toolbox however you want to think if it; that a list of stories, experiences that you could use to answer a variety of different types of interview questions. So rather than trying to predict. Here's the question I'm going to be asked and here at the exact answer I will give for that question. It's very difficult to predict. Don't stress yourself out. Instead, I think you'll find that if you think through the nuance of a particular situation, you'll be able to focus on different aspects of it to answer various questions. For example, many of you do class projects and group projects in different classes. Maybe you participated in one that was a little rocky along the way but it turned out fine. You could talk about solving problems. You could talk about team dynamic. You could talk about the actual topic or content of the project you did. You might talk about leadership if you were part of getting the team back on track. So think through, when I say stories. I'm not saying summarize your entire internship or summarize your entire shadowing experience. But really, zoom in on particular moments that are notable and memorable. You might think of it as like if you called up, you know, your mom or your best friend at the end of the day to say "You'll never guess what happened today," that level of kind of acute,fine-tuned type of story. Not a whole summary of something broader. So this, story bank will help you refresh your memory. It will help you have a bunch of examples ready that you can use for lots of different kinds of questions and help keep you from becoming too scripted. You wanna be more conversational, so you feel, genuine and not like someone told you what to say. So when you make the story bank, it should be, maybe like bulleted ideas that you might cover in that story not an actual, you know, word by word. Paragraph. So don't memorize a script. You wanta make sure you're answering the question I think sometimes people get nervous and this is part of the, I think the issue with trying to come up with answers for specific questions. If they ask you a question that you weren't prepared for and then you try and like force your answer to fit the question and it ends up not aligning properly. So keep in mind what the actual question is and think about what story you have that you kind of massage to fit that question And you'll find yourself feeling much more natural and actually addressing the real question that they've asked and not what you were thinking they would ask.  And it's always okay to clarify the question if you're not sure what they're asking. You can ask some follow ups or ask them to repeat it. Okay, Barbara, go ahead. I'm going to really encourage you to put your admissions hat on and think about, the why and this is why we say if you look at their mission and their vision and try to identify what they're looking for, then you can customize your answer To each school that you're doing an interview for and then it won't feel like, to the school, that you're reusing answers. It will feel new and genuine authentic for each school that you interview with. And a great way to do this is to think about the core competencies, right? And anchor your questions in those competencies and think about, you know, Mia mentioned teamwork, communication. So a lot of the things that they're looking for are built out of the core competencies  So a lot of the things that they're looking for are built out of their core competencies and that's why we, talk about them so much and we have you do the self reflections on all of them is because this is essentially the framework that helps you be prepared to answer any question, that might come your way. Yeah, so a couple of, examples of how to think behind this. Question. So They might ask you, "tell me about a time when you were asked to do something you had never done before." Now you might say. I don't know why are you asking me this? Why does it matter? Well, in medical school, dental school, health care setting. You might have to tackle new challenges of things that you weren't thought previously or maybe something new arises in the field over the course of your career. So they might be looking for skills like critical thinking, problem solving, taking initiative to maybe learn something or teach yourself something in order to execute that task Using your resources, thinking creatively. Also, That's kind of, I guess one example. Thinking of the question. Or the reasoning behind the question and what they're looking for. One other example is related to communication, tell me about a time you were communicating with someone and they didn't understand. Now, this might be a question where you ask for clarification, but maybe it's literally that there's a language barrier in the person didn't understand you or maybe it's about. You using terminology, they don't know, maybe something to medically-specific. So you probably. Depending on what you've been doing that far, a medical thing if someone who's having trouble understanding. If not, that's okay. Give me some example of communication and flexibility where you adjusted the way that you had planned something, whether that was because of language, culture, vocabulary in the medical field. Yes, learning, what you're learning in class, explaining to your family, you can think of it in a lot of different ways, explaining to your family. You can think of it in a lot of different ways, but ultimately, I think it is kind of translation or, synthesizing information for people based on who you're talking to, which doctors and dentists and all of those health professions do all of the time. We'll give you a structure of how to actually answer these questions. And some people like to outline their story bank in this way. If that's helpful for you, feel free. But this is called the STAR method. Pretty, widely used. So if you're a natural storyteller, this might not necessarily. Be of use to you that might over complicate something that you already do well, but many people, especially when they're nervous, forget some of the key elements of their story. So STAR helps you remember. So, I even have some students that will put like a little star sticker next to their camera just to like remind them to include all of those parts. But the S stands for situation. Provide some context about what you were working on, who you were working with. Maybe what job that took place in those sorts of things. This does not mean you have to give the entire background of the whole situation, just things that are important in order to. have this story make sense for someone who wasn't there. I would say, key details, not all details. T stands for task, which is what were you responsible for doing? What needed to be done? Was there anything challenging about it? Some of this will vary with the question. But sometimes people skip from here's the situation and here's what I did. And they didn't really tell me why they did that thing or what was the ask that prompted them to take that action. So A stands for action. And if you can, try to name what you specifically did in a circumstance. Not just the team as a whole. You might talk about both. You know, oh my team decided to do this topic and ultimately I took the lead on researching. So it's okay to acknowledge your team. You don't have to pretend like you did it all by yourself but again, they're trying to learn more about you and determine whether you are going to be successful in this field. So you have to share that. And lastly is the result. Don't forget to actually explain all things turned out. Did it go well? Did it not? We'll talk about how to answer negative questions later, but, make sure you don't leave them hanging on this is what I did. Especially if it's something negative. So we'll talk more about that. Barbara is gonna give an example. And then we'll talk more. So we've all seen this question. Tell me about a time that you encountered conflict and how did you resolve it? So we'll use the STAR method to demonstrate and I'll start off by giving you a not great example. So we don't want to, we always want to put our best foot forward, so we might say well I always get along with everyone where I try to get along with everyone so I can't really think of an example of conflict. But what that does is actually make the conflict about people. And not about the actual challenge or issue or problem that needs to be resolved. And so you don't want to make it about people. You want to make it about the thing the task at hand. And so a stronger example, and I'll base this in a clinical study, a great way to start is, to take, sat, "yeah, I get it." "Conflict happens no matter where you are. And I try to resolve the issue and not make it about the people that I'm with." So here's a quick example. A patient complains to the front desk about their wait time. There was an issue with the notification system, so you didn't even get pinged that they were, they had a arrived that they checked in. So when the patient comes in to see you, they're upset, they're angry, you know, they're just really frustrated. So you take a minute, you apologize for the situation, has nothing to do with whether that was your fault, but you can say, hey, I'm sorry this happened to you. And then you thank them. I'm so glad you stayed. Thanks for your patience. Listen and empathize with them and then explain what happened. And then tell them and this is what I'm going to do to rectify that situation. The result is that the patient and I were able to maintain a positive relationship, we continued with the appointment. So the result isn't a guarantee hat that person will never have to wait in another waiting room. But what what the result is focusing on is that you preserved the patient-physician health care provider relationship, so that they trust you that they are important. Right? So you're saying to them, hey, you are important, you are an important, you know, you, you are valuable, your time is important, so I understand why you're upset. Getting them to understand that you understand is the outcome that you want, not that they'll never wait again, right? So, I do want to provide an MMI framework because you could be asked an infinite number of different types of questions. So, as we've talked about, do your homework. I do recommend practicing new questions. So instead of repeating questions you've already seen in attempt to perfect that answer, I like to call this practicing uncertainty. And so, you know, every night trying to, set of questions and getting used to like the initial surprise that you get when you hear something you've never heard before. I think that's really the key to interview practicing is doing that uncertainty practice. Please review the 4 pillars of ethics. You know, your duty to do good, duty not to harm treating all of your patients equally and equitably and respecting patient autonomy. Think about broad healthcare issues and challenges and what you can do at the community level, at the individual level, to start alleviating it. It's important that you're informed. You don't have to be the expert. That's where you're going to medical school. You do want to be informed so that admissions can see that you're not just like, "oh, I want to be a doctor," but you've understood the full landscape of what it means to be a practicing healthcare provider. So we talked about this, thinking about some personal examples of experiences that you've had. That will help you anticipate questions and Mia will talk about curveball questions. And just a really big please take what's on Reddit with a fistfull of salt. Not everyone has good intentions, and even if they do, the information can be outdated, admissions can decide they're doing something completely different. From cycle to cycle. So during the actual interview, once you've received your prompt or question in the 2 minutes that you're given to prepare, rather than start immediately writing what your answer is going to be Please take a second and say this is the question that's being asked, right? So, identify the core and then bullet point, what of the things that you're going, how are you answering that question? The actual details you can flesh out in your response because you were all very brilliant and smart and you know because it's your own experience that you're talking about. But that's framework is essentially what you're building in those 2 min, right? So that you can stay on track and ask. You know, answer the actual question that's being asked. If you have questions, ask the interviewer. They may not have additional information or they may be instructed not to answer questions, but you can still ask, okay, try and see if there's information that they can provide. And please be succinct and try not to get lost in the details. A hot tip, that I like to do is if it's relevant, I'll kind of give for the answer and say, hey, you know, I'm going to answer this question and then I'll go back and flush this out so that the interviewer is not waiting for 8 minutes for you to get to the actual answer So as I said, you're not expected to know everything, that's the point of going to medical school. So please, please be okay with saying I don't know. Don't make up an answer you're not expected to, and what you could do instead is say, you know what, I actually don't know the answer to that, but here's what I would do in that situation. And what you're doing is you're sharing your thought process, right? So you're saying I would ask if it's not an emergency, I would ask my supervisor, my mentor, my colleague, I would go research this journal. I would collect the information, synthesize it and get back to whoever I was talking to. You could say, well, I don't know what the law is, but I would look up the legal parameters for the state that I'm licensed to practice in and then I would abide by that. This makes it so you don't have to know what a particular law is for every state, right? You're just saying, here's the framework for how I would do that. I mean that is actually better than knowing all the laws for all 50, you know, because then you're again sharing your thought process that you can do problem solving that you can attack complicated problems that you don't know the answer to. And that reassures them that you have the skills that you can transfer and implement as a practicing healthcare provider. Okay, so things to keep in mind. Again, you're not demonstrating content. Expertise but that your thoughtful so i'd rather have a physician who takes their time and figures out what the issue is. It's not about who's raising their hand the fastest to answer the question. I want to feel reassured. I want to feel that my health care provider is calm and steady even in what feels like a really horrible situation. I want them to really, be thoughtful about, you know, being deliberate. Being calming. That calming presence, in that room with me. It's also important to demonstrate that you understand what it entails to be a health care provider. And that you always, always respect patient autonomy. So always bringing in those 4 pillars of ethics to show that you know what they are. And then essentially the biggest thing is to reassure the interviewer you're in it for the right reasons. And that really has nothing to do with your level of knowledge right now, right? Which is a good thing because that's not what they're testing for. So quickly, and these decks will be this the slideshow, the deck the presentation will be on canvas, but the first QR code is, AAMCresources on MMI. And then this is like a huge, like please don't create a script for all of these questions. So I debated putting this in but I thought it might help you all feel better to have some practice questions. So as long as you're not creating a script for them, please do use them to practice. Okay, thanks Barbara. That was very thorough coverage of the MMI. Which Barbara does a lot more often than I. So I'm gonna talk a little bit more again about, real questions that might be sprinkled in throughout your MMI. So here's some additional questions. You might be asked. Number 4 we talked about a few slides ago kind of understanding the thought process behind the question. So this is just to give you some more ideas of things to think through. I know that the conflict question can be difficult and Barbara walked through that example earlier. If you are conflict averse, whether personality- or culture- wise. Like to come up with an example that's similar and we'll talk about that as we continue through some of the like challenging questions that are coming up. But, let's say they ask you about a time you disagree with a supervisor. That might not be something you've ever done because you are, someone who's more likely to defer to authority. So if that's the case, you might talk about a time where you disagreed with a teammate or you don't have to think of a disagreement or conflict like an argument. They hopefully aren't in a professional setting, but just a point where you have a different opinions about how to move forward, even if it just like in a club event planning process. Something close or similar again think about the reason behind the question they want to understand how you handle conflict. Regardless of kind of who it with so. So some challenging questions that can kind of come up or I guess challenging parts of the interview if you want to think of it that way. That first one being asking them questions. And why do you ask the interviewer question? It shows you did your research you know you don't want to ask something that you could have found on the website, so take it a step further maybe you say I notice this program or this elective or this mentorship opportunity. Can you tell me more about that or, how do I get involved in that? You want to be careful of just using questions from a generic list that you find? Because questions imply what you find important. So if you're asking someone else's question but that's not really important to you. You're just asking questions because you know you're supposed to. That's going to give them a, I guess, indication of what you're curious about because you took the time to ask the question about it. So, on the next slide, we have some examples of questions you might add. But again, think about what's actually important to you. So you can ask questions about the program, culture of the, I guess like, community, if you will. The campus and other people you'll be studying with. Ultimately, I would summarize it. Think about what would help you decide between. Similar programs or if you've got accepted multiple places. What would help you make that final small determination between different things. Do you wanna add anything else about that, Barbara? No, I would just echo chiming in with any questions that you have. I sometimes will ask "Do you have a dry cleaner that you trust?" And that's a fun kind of question, but it also indicated I anticipate living in there, living in that location and I need to know things about living there and that's another data point for them that says, okay, you've pictured what it's like to be part of our program. And that's just a really, really helpful bit for them to reassure them that again, you're in it for the right reasons. You really want to go there. Yeah, and you can even preface your questions with kind of like why you're asking it. So that's right, cleaner question might seem kinda out of the blue. But if you say something like, you know, I know I'm gonna be living here for a few years. I'm really excited about the community. What's your favorite restaurant? Where would you recommend for this? Maybe you, need a certain kind of hairdresser, all of those kinds of questions. I like, I'm going to be part of this community, not just this program. So, get you a little more embedded. So do you wanna talk about how to answer negative questions? I know we're, running toward the end of our time here and this is something that makes people nervous, here's some examples of negative questions on the left. The right side is have a general framework of You're still going to use the STAR method. Framing some, you know, background about what happened. Being honest about things taking ownership for your role and what may have gone wrong. But ultimately the R in this situation, the result. Is either going to be how you fixed something in that moment or if it wasn't really fixable, what you learned from that experience that you're carrying forward with you or what you would do differently the next time if this were to come up again. So, this is less about were you able to fix it and more about what have you been doing to get better? To improve. I always think of these questions with like an upward trajectory. You want to be honest about the negativity or the The role you played but you also want to talk about how you fix it or what you're doing differently. Growth mindset. Yeah. Good, good phrasing. In terms of, you know, a failure or a weakness, you don't have to pick like the largest failure you've ever had or something personal. But you want to. Find something that's a balance between genuine but also not something that is too directly related. So as a physician, you are going to need to talk to a lot of different people every day. You might not want to say "I really don't like meeting new people." That's a big part of your job. What you might say is maybe like "I'm somewhat introverted and it can, take a lot of energy for me to meet new people, but I really enjoy the satisfaction, from getting to address so many different people's issues." Those kinds of I guess almost like counterbalance to what your weakness is. You're not saying, oh, but I'm trying to be less introverted. You're just saying here's how I manage. This thing that might be viewed as a weakness in the situation. Shout out to the introverts out there. It's not a weekend. It's just a different way of functioning. So. Just wanted to say that. And Barbara's gonna talk about kind of the trickiest question of them all. So, how I'll summarize this is that, You, it's not about your quantitative qualifications anymore. Those already got you to the stage in the process where they offered you the interview. And so you really want to focus on the state in that process where they offered you the interview. And so you really want to focus on the qualitative. What makes you unique? Added value so new information you know it's helpful to think about things but what are you actually really really really proud of? And that doesn't have to be your grades your scores academically but it could be a personal example. So really in truly thinking about something that they don't already have. And then keeping in mind, you want to wrap that up with the, and this is how I'm going to contribute how you're going to benefit from this, right? Always thinking about that mutual benefit kind of thing. So it doesn't feel extracted, right? I would avoid sort of general, I'm a team player. I would avoid sort of general, I'm a team player, I communicate well. I'm a team player. I communicate well. It's hard to verify those in the moment. I could say I have a team player, I communicate well. It's hard to verify those in the moment. I could say I have a pilot license and the moment you wouldn't know until this emergency situation and it turns out I don't know how to fly. So, I don't know how to fly. So, I know you all are not doing that, but, just to remove the room for interpretation that somebody else might have about what you're saying. If you root it in something very unique and specific to you, then they can't interpret it in any other way. I want to talk about one other type of difficult question before the, you know, wrap up here. I think Barbara mentioned the term curveball questions before which are basically those kind of weird random questions that you feel like make no sense. If you were a, what would you be or, would you rather fight? 10 horse-sized ducks or a hundred duck-sized horses like this weird, that's an actual example that I've heard. So this weird things like that. What they're mainly looking for in those types of questions is how do you emotionally respond? Are you like? We're nervous and overwhelmed and how could I possibly answer this? This is so weird. You might get some word questions in your health career or things that have to do a little off guard. Part of that is being able to take it and not let it all show on your face. So that's part of it. Just how do you react? You keep your composure.  Part of it is the creativity. So Barbara is putting some more of these curveball type questions in the char. You do not need to pre decide an answer for all of these. That's not the point. But you know, what things would you take to a desertted island with you? You might, walk through why those items are valuable to you or, maybe it's more about survival and you're into that sort of thing. The kitchen appliance or, animal you would be if they're asking you to compare yourself to something. It's about what characteristic you pick that aligns with that. So I would be a toaster oven because I'm super versatile and you can use me for just about anything. I'm a team player and I'm happy to  Rise to the occasion of whatever it calls for. Yeah, whatever it is. You just wanna have a reason that, reflect positively. So that's all I'll say about that one. Cause I do wanna talk about, some resources you have Thank you notes after the interview are helpful. There are some details in here about exactly, you know, when and how you want to do that, but many of you have already been doing something like this. So I'll go ahead and talk more about the resources that are available to help you. So, that first one is the Career Development Toolkit. You have a canvas module, or course. Simply for medical topics but you've also got you know, an interviewing Module here in the general toolkit, networking, resumes, anything you could think of Pretty much is in here. So you can use this in complement with your health care specific... A tool I would recommend for actually practicing your responses. Is that one in the middle called SkillsFirst. This is a tool that we, purchase or subscribe to that you can use for free. That will give you Interview questions, give you a little clip with either tips or a sample of answering that question and then you can actually record your own answer, watch it back, take a note on what you would change.So that kind of walks you through the process, That, I think it's really helpful. And can give you some different ideas, like if you're, to be applying to a dental assistant position in your gap time, you could type in "dental assistant" and it would give some more specific questions. LinkedIn also has an interview prep tool And if you look ahead, I can just circled some things on this slide, Barbara. So you want to go to LinkedIn and go to the job section and then go to interview prep So this is. A little bit more AI-powered. More about the pacing of your answer, if you use filler words, was the answer to short or long, that sort of thing. It's more about delivery of your answer than content, so just being mindful of that, I guess when you're picking what tools to use. Think about what you're struggling with. And Barbara is gonna share the wonderful last resource for you that HPAC is offering I'm sure you all know this already. We are doing virtual LMI simulations. Registration is required and space is extremely limited. One MMI slot individual. If you haven't already, do sign up. Via Canvas. And I would treat this like a real thing. As Mia was saying, you know, put on your blazer, practice being in the clothes, practice letting the folks you live with snow this is a, you know, this is a trial of the real thing. So really using use an opportunity to use what you've learned today. Do a little prior practice on your own and then do it with us in that in that simulation. So that brings us to the end. I know that we ran a little bit over so if you need to go, please do, we will put all of this on Canvas so you have access to it. At another time. If you have a couple of minutes, please do provide us feedback. We want to make sure we're providing information that's useful and helpful to you. And since we run out of time, if you've got questions, do feel free to reach out to us. Via email and let us know how we can continue to support you. When I say big, big thank you to Mia. Thank you so much for helping Mia.  thank you so much for helping me host this. I couldn't have done it without you Thanks for coming, everyone. You have HPAC and Career Services to help with any questions you have Thanks everybody. Have a great day. Take care.