(Note: We encourage you to supplement this resource with our Med School Interview Question Bank, which includes over 230 of the most common traditional and MMI interview questions, including sample responses for each.)
Medical school admissions is unlike any other admissions process in the world. Between the rigorous medical school requirements you have to complete before even applying and the countless essays you’ll write (e.g., personal statement, secondary essays), you’ll likely be exhausted by the time you finally hit send on your last applications.
But come fall or winter of your application year, it’s time to re-energize for interview season.
Medical school interviews come in a few different forms. You might have “traditional” interviews, where you’ll be asked about your professional and academic background, your strengths and weaknesses, why you want to go into medicine, etc.
You might also be subject to the multiple mini-interview, or MMI, which many medical schools are increasingly adopting as an alternative to the traditional one-on-one interview. Many applicants find the prospect of MMI interviews frightening—perhaps you’ve heard they involve role-play, pretending to be a real live doctor, working with actors, and solving complex biomedical questions on the spot.
But the MMI is actually beneficial for you as an applicant. MMI interviews allow schools to get a more holistic understanding of how you think. They can reveal your thought process, teamwork ability, and character traits—strengths and weaknesses alike.
In this guide, we’ll explain what the MMI is, what types of MMI interview questions you might run into, and how to succeed in different scenarios. We’ll review common pitfalls and discuss how you should approach MMI interview prep. By taking the time to understand and practice the skills covered in this guide, you’ll be well prepared to ace your MMIs.
Invited to a med school interview? Congrats! There's no need to land in waitlist purgatory or the rejection pile. Learn how to craft memorable, acceptance-worthy responses using the resource below.
Gain instant access to the most common traditional and MMI interview questions, plus sample responses for each, to help you craft responses that lead to acceptances. Subscribe today to lock in the current investments, which will be increasing in the future for new subscribers.
The MMI, or multiple mini-interview, consists of a series of short interview stations that are independent of one another. Together, the 6–10 stations assess your capabilities in the following areas:
Crucially, you should think of the MMI interview as a way of assessing your thought processes and situational aptitude rather than content knowledge. In other words, you will not be asked to diagnose a patient based on symptoms or solve a medical mystery.
Different medical schools offer different numbers of stations and the questions they ask vary. You might find as few as 6 or as many as 10 stations. In general, you can count on most of the following information to be consistent across schools.
We’ll go in-depth into the nature of each type of station later on, but here’s a high-level summary to get you started. Each MMI station generally involves a chance to prepare for two minutes by reading the question/scenario. Once you enter the room where the station takes place, you’ll have eight minutes to provide your answer to the question or scenario to an interviewer/evaluator.
Some schools offer a break station where you will have ten minutes to relax in between interview stations. The entire process typically takes around two hours, but may take less time depending on how many stations there are.
(COVID-19 note: Many MMIs will be conducted in the format of an asynchronous video interview (AVI). This simply means you and your interviewer need not do the interview live. For instance, you might be asked to record your answers to predetermined questions.)
Before you learn how to prepare for MMI interviews, you should understand why the MMI has come about, and why it’s increasingly popular. Many schools, such as Duke School of Medicine, UCSD School of Medicine, and University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, have transitioned to MMI-only interview formats or a hybrid format with both MMI and traditional, one-on-one interviews.
There are a few reasons for this shift:
The shift can come with some drawbacks. You may feel more stressed about the MMI process because you need to impress many different evaluators in a day. You may also feel uncomfortable because MMI interviews are fast-paced or because they feel more like a test than a traditional interview setting where you can have a conversation with an evaluator.
If you’re concerned, try to think about the MMI format in this way: it works to your advantage to have many people working together to get a better picture of who you are as an applicant. Your admissions decision doesn’t rest on the subjective opinion of just one or two interviewers. If you underperform in one of two traditional interviews or simply don’t click with one of the interviewers, you might find yourself out of luck. But an MMI allows you more chances to impress.
MMI questions can be broken down into three main categories:
We’ll discuss how to succeed at each of these stations.
Ethnical scenario questions—often the most stressful for applicants—are designed to test how you respond to a high-pressure and morally challenging situation. They’re not aimed to check whether or not your personal ethical compass is pointing true north. Rather, they’re meant to see how you process a difficult situation. Interviewers will ask themselves questions like:
You might be asked about scenarios that you’ll encounter in the future as a physician—a patient in a persistent vegetative state, for instance. But not every question has to do with healthcare. You could also be asked about scenarios that involve your role as a citizen or in personal relationships.
The University of Washington Department of Bioethics and Humanities runs an ethics in medicine website that's a valuable resource for gaining exposure to these varied issues. With topics like confidentiality and dealing with diverse beliefs, it can help you bolster your knowledge of potential ethical scenario questions for the MMI.
It is impossible to prepare for every potential question that you could run into during your interview, but you can follow a step-by-step process to ensure you have a strong framework for evaluating any situation an MMI might throw at you.
Here’s our suggested process:
Step 1: Brainstorm. You’ll have two minutes outside the interview room to consider what the prompt is trying to test you on.
We’ll go through many practice scenarios below, but here’s one we’ll follow as we explain the brainstorming process:
You are a physician who has been taking care of a 45-year-old Native American man who has three teenage children. He has been on dialysis for five years and is now in dire need of a kidney transplant. Fortunately, he is now near the top of the list and is called into the hospital for tests. He then decides to go home to partake in a healing ceremony, a tradition that is very important to him and his family, after hearing this great news; however, after he has left you receive word that a kidney has become available. What do you do?
Here’s how to think through the scenario during your brainstorming time:
The information that he is a long-term patient of yours, has three children, and was just at the hospital are unimportant to your understanding of the scenario.
In the case above, you could easily get stuck on the following issues:
Although all of these questions are important, the primary problem of this scenario can be determined by using the key factors discussed above. The primary problem boils down to this: What do you do if you tell your patient that a kidney is ready for immediate transplant but he refuses because he hasn’t participated in his healing ceremony yet?
Some follow-up thoughts that you may want to address after answering the primary question/follow-up questions that may be asked by your evaluator include:
Step 2: In the MMI. Once you’ve gotten inside the interview room, you can begin the actual process of playing out the scenario.
We will now jump into two full-length examples of how to apply this step-by-step process in answering practice questions, one acting and one non-acting.
Note that actors will have different demeanors depending on how a given school directs them to behave. Some actors might be rude or non-cooperative patients, whereas others will be pleasant and easy. Prepare yourself for both situations.
Here’s the prompt:
You are a pediatrician working in a small-sized community at a county hospital. Your second patient of the day is a 14-year-old girl whom you have taken care of since she was a young child. You know her parents very well. During her physical exam, her dad leaves the room. As you finish the exam and are about to call her father back in, she asks you for birth control pills. She requests that you do not tell her parents. What do you do?
Step 1: Identify key factors.
Key factors in this scenario include:
The first two should be considered in every situation. As a physician, your focus should always be on how to best take care of your patient while respecting their autonomy. But for this case, that first principle is complicated by age. If the patient was 18 or older, she would be considered an adult and able to make her own medical decisions without a parent’s consent.
So how will you navigate the balance between the patient’s autonomy and her age?
Step 2: Define the problem.
Here’s our primary question: Do I give a minor birth control pills without parental consent?
Below, we have italicized the parts of the prompt that are important; you should be doing this mentally for every prompt that you see before you enter the room and begin interacting with the actress.
You are a physician working in a small-sized community at a county hospital. Your second patient of the day is a 14-year-old girl who you have taken care of since she was a young child, and you know her parents very well. During her physical exam, her dad leaves the room. As you finish up the exam and are about to call her father back in, she asks you for birth control pills. Additionally, she requests that you do not tell her parents. What do you do?
After identifying the key factors in the question, the prompt is reduced to the following: You are a pediatrician, a 14-year-old girl asks you for birth control pills. She requests that you do not tell her parents. What do you do?
Step 3: Collect information.
Now that you’ve identified the key factors and defined the problem, it’s time to collect additional information pertaining to this specific situation
Because you’re in an acting scenario, you can ask questions. In fact, you should not make assumptions about the patient. Avoid sounding judgmental. Your goal is to find out more information while being supportive.
Here are some good questions to ask:
Step 4: Make a decision.
Now that you have data, let’s go over how you’re going to make your decision now. Remember, your answer should fall between two extreme possibilities:
Answer: Give her the pills after asking questions, making sure she understands what they are used for, how to use them, what safe sex looks like, and so forth. This option respects the patient’s autonomy while looking out for the patient’s best interest.
The word-for-word answer you give will differ depending on the level of knowledge the patient currently has (such as if she knows what birth control does, what safe sex is, if she will decide to use protection, etc.). You may also want to give her time to think about her decision if you find that she is uncertain after being informed of the information that you’ve told her.
What makes this an effective response: By discussing what the pills are used for, how they are used, and safe sex practices, the physician demonstrated that the patient’s best interests are the top priority. Though she is a minor, the patient still has a right to bodily autonomy and this response shows respect for that. Furthermore, by engaging with the patient under these circumstances, the physician has shown themself to be someone the patient can trust, which will be important as other issues may arise.
It shouldn't take very long to state your decision! Be clear and concise and explain your thought process.
Invited to a med school interview? Congrats! There's no need to land in waitlist purgatory or the rejection pile. Learn how to craft memorable, acceptance-worthy responses using the resource below.
Gain instant access to the most common traditional and MMI interview questions, plus sample responses for each, to help you craft responses that lead to acceptances. Subscribe today to lock in the current investments, which will be increasing in the future for new subscribers.
A 20-year-old patient with Down syndrome has become pregnant. The patient does not want an abortion, but her mother and father want the patient to have an abortion. What should you do as the physician taking care of this patient?
This question is on the more difficult end of the spectrum, but the same concepts used in the first example can be applied here as well. Let’s walk through the step-by-step process once again and see how to answer this question correctly.
Step 1: Identify key factors.
The biggest factor here is the competency of the patient because they have Down syndrome.
Step 2: Define the problem.
This is the question: Do I side with the patient and allow her to keep the baby or do I side with the parents and allow an abortion?
The case would be quite simple for a patient without Down syndrome. Given that the patient is 20 years old, she should be able to make her own medical decisions without a parent’s consent.
However, in this scenario, your main objective should be to determine if the patient is competent or not. (Note that being legally dependent is not the same as being deemed competent to make medical decisions.) This will determine if you will side with the patient or the parents. This prompt is short and to the point, so you do not have to worry about any extraneous information.
Step 3: Collect information.
For non-acting scenarios, you will have to discuss your entire thought process because you will not be able to ask questions to narrow down the specifics of the situation. You’ll be sitting across from an interviewer with no other individuals to interact with in the room.
We recommend talking through both sides of the situation in your answer. Below is an example script for doing so.
I would first start off by talking to the patient and asking why she would want to keep the baby. Depending on her answer, I would then follow-up by asking her if she understands what it means for her if she were to keep the child.
Does she understand what it means to be pregnant and what truly becoming a mother entails? Is she fantasizing about the idea of potentially being a mom and having a baby without understanding the responsibilities? Or does she understand how difficult the transition may be—physically, mentally, and lifestyle-wise?
Ultimately, her answers will help me determine if she is truly competent and understands the situation, or if she is deemed incompetent to make her own medical decision. This is really important to understand because Down syndrome is on a spectrum-scale, and everyone is unique.
I would then ask the parents questions after talking to their daughter alone. I would start by asking them to tell me about their daughter: What does her day-to-day life look like? Do they believe she is competent enough to make her own decision? Does their daughter really understand what is going on? The answers to these questions will further provide me a more well-rounded understanding of the patient’s Down syndrome.
I would then move on to ask why they don’t want their daughter to continue with the pregnancy. Chances are, the parents will restate that the patient isn’t competent or independent enough to take care of the child on her own. They might say that they would end up taking care of the newborn and that they no longer have the energy or maybe even the money to support an extra mouth with their current financial situation.
Or maybe they are worried that a pregnancy for a Down syndrome individual would be dangerous to their daughter’s life. It is important to understand that there could be a large variety of answers that are given to these questions and as a physician, I need to be able to listen to their concerns.
Finally, I would ask them why they believe their daughter wants to keep the child if we hadn’t yet covered this.
After talking to the parents separately, I would then go back to the child and ask if she grasped why her parents were against keeping the child. Then, with all the questions and responses I’ve gained, I would be able to determine if the patient is competent or not. My decision would be based on the competence of the patient.
There are, of course, always many other factors to consider in the real world, such as malpractice suits and the logistics of delivering care. But know that in the MMI scenario, you’re looking to genuinely determine the human aspects of the case.
Is the patient competent or not competent in this case? That’s what you need to focus on.
Step 4: Make a decision.
Now that you’ve covered your bases on both sides of the situation, it’s time to make your decision. Again, this will come at the end of your data collection process and shouldn’t take long to state.
Similar to acting scenarios, the answer will fall in between two extremes. However, unlike the acting scenario, most non-acting scenarios will have two answers between the two extremes, given that there are two sides that could be “right” in a situation. Let’s take a look at the options:
Answer: Make your decision based on the patient’s competence. If you deem the patient competent, side with them. If you deem the patient not competent to make her own medical decisions, side with the parent.
Here’s another sample script:
Based on the discussion that I’ve had with the patient and parents, if I deemed the patient competent, I would advise keeping the baby. My role as a physician is to provide the best care to the patient and respect her autonomy. If she is a competent adult, the patient’s wishes take priority of her parent’s in this case.
However, if I were to deem the patient not competent enough to make her own medical decisions, I would side with the parents and allow for an abortion. In this case, the patient cannot truly understand the situation and having the baby would not be in her best interest.
What makes this an effective response: In this situation, the respondent was not provided an actor to work with, so they had to think out loud to emphasize a clear understanding of the biggest issue at hand: patient competency. This stream of consciousness highlights the interactions that would take place with both the parents and the patient, and it shows an awareness of their conflicting desires while keeping any judgmental thoughts out of the picture. Additionally, it addresses the patient’s unique circumstance by acknowledging that not all patients with Down syndrome are the same and it specifies the considerations in this particular case.
Note that interviewers will continue asking you questions until time runs out—they’ll fill the full eight minutes. If you finish the primary question early, they will ask follow-up questions—rebuttals are meant to put you on edge.
As long as you have covered both sides of the story and relied on logic, be confident and collected! Take a moment to think, smile, and answer the questions presented to you. For the second example, a follow up could be: “If you allow the patient to keep the baby, how would you handle the parent’s reactions? What if they are mad? What would you do in this situation?”
Remember: the questions aren’t implying that you’re wrong. The interviewer is just trying to find out more about how you would react in a difficult situation. Plus, your ability to maintain composure in the stress of an interview speaks about your ability to be professional and confident.
We’ve given you a highly organized script above, but your response will likely be more fluid in real life. The lines between the third and fourth step may blur—that’s fine!
Invited to a med school interview? Congrats! There's no need to land in waitlist purgatory or the rejection pile. Learn how to craft memorable, acceptance-worthy responses using the resource below.
Gain instant access to the most common traditional and MMI interview questions, plus sample responses for each, to help you craft responses that lead to acceptances. Subscribe today to lock in the current investments, which will be increasing in the future for new subscribers.
You’ll likely be familiar with questions like these from traditional one-on-one interviews, but they’ll feel different when delivered in an MMI context. You will still be given two minutes outside the room to prepare and eight minutes inside the room with an interviewer. But you may be able to relax a bit more in these rooms because these types of questions tend to come from the standard interview book.
Be prepared to answer questions like, “What is your greatest weakness?” and “Tell me about a time when you made a mistake.”
It is expected and crucial that you draw from your past experiences to answer these questions. Admission committees don’t want to see generic answers to these personal questions. So prepare some personal anecdotes to illustrate your character traits rather than speaking in the abstract.
Let’s go into more detail on the two common questions above.
Questions about weaknesses are always difficult to answer. Do I tell them I have a weakness? Do I turn a weakness into a strength? Do I make up a weakness?
Some schools will not allow you to state your weakness but will ask you to choose from a list in the room. You might encounter a paper with many “negative” words (for example: pessimistic, stubborn, greedy, forgetful, impatient, selfish, nervous, oversensitive, resentful, temperamental) and you’ll be asked to circle a few that describe you. You might also encounter a paper with many “positive” words (positive, honest, loyal, respectful, empathetic, responsible, humble, forgiving, kind, optimistic) and you’ll be asked to circle a few that least describe you.
If you have extra time or if something you said doesn’t make sense to the interviewer, you may be allowed to follow up. You should explain:
If you happen to find your pre-planned weakness on a list, great! If not, don’t freak out. The same principles apply!
Here’s an example that answers this character development question:
“Pessimistic” immediately stood out to me when I saw the paper. In the past, I’ve struggled with things like assuming the worst outcome would happen or automatically assigning negative intentions to other people’s actions, which has resulted in misunderstandings that, in retrospect, could have been avoided. Another symptom of my pessimism is that I’ve sometimes felt hesitant to enter new situations because I’ve baselessly assumed I wouldn’t enjoy them, like when I kept declining my roommate’s invitation to go rock climbing because I assumed it would be boring. Fast-forward six months to when she practically strong-armed me into going—it turns out I love rock climbing, and now I can’t imagine not hitting the climbing gym at least once a week. Little situations like this gradually made me wonder what else I had been missing out on and led me to actively work on not jumping to conclusions. Now when I feel a pessimistic thought rising in me, I remind myself to keep an open mind and to remember that things usually turn out better than I think they will. Something that’s really helped me is keeping an “optimism journal” in which I write down pros and cons for situations I’m feeling negatively about. For every con I can think of, I force myself to also write down a pro, which has helped me keep a more balanced perspective. I admit that pessimism can still challenge me on occasion, but I’ve found that consciously trying to adjust my thought patterns has opened my life to opportunities that I might have otherwise missed and more trusting, empathetic relationships.
You’ll approach this question with a similar method as the “weakness” prompt. But in this case, you need to pick a story that accurately conveys a weakness—one you’ve worked to improve since!
“What is your greatness weakness?” asks you to name your trait first. “Tell me about a time when you a made a mistake,” on the flip side, requires you to tell a story to demonstrate a weakness. They both get the interviewer similar information, but you must follow inverse structures in responding.
In this case, keep the scenario as simple as possible. Excessive details can clutter and confuse the evaluator. The purpose of your story is not to tell an intricate narrative. Your story should be a platform that you use to explain a mistake, show how you dealt with the mistake, what you learned, and how you’ve grown since.
Here’s a process—it’s very similar to the response we’ve suggested for “What is your greatest weakness?”
Here’s a sample response that works:
Sophomore year, I decided to get involved with my university’s student-run environmentalism center. I’ve been interested in environmentalism and sustainability since I was in high school, and after I learned about the work that the organization was doing, I was inspired to join. After a couple of months, I was asked if I could help lead a campus educational campaign about reducing water use. Long story short: due to stress from my course load that semester and the fact that organization has never been my strong suit, I accidentally wrote down the wrong date for a crucial grant deadline with our student affairs office. This resulted in the environmentalism center not receiving the funding it needed to create materials for the campaign. I felt awful and embarrassed—it was my first big project with the center, and on top of that, reducing water use was an issue I felt passionately about, having grown up in a desert environment. After I realized that there was no way we’d be able to pull off the campaign we’d initially imagined, I quickly switched gears and moved the campaign online exclusively, so that the cost of overhead would be much lower. The project actually turned out better than I’d imagined, and I’m proud of the way our members came together to execute a solution. That said, I learned a valuable lesson in attending to details and staying organized, which has actually improved the way I do things in both my academic and personal life. You can bet I always triple-check my dates now.
These questions are not testing you on making ethical decisions; rather, they assess how you deal with difficult situations that you may run into during your time in medicine or in life outside of medicine.
You might be asked to simulate a difficult conversation with a family member or a friend, for instance. In these cases, you can follow the same general rubrics as above, taking care to respect the other person’s personal values while maintaining a basic moral standard yourself. The best way to prepare for these is to reflect on times you’ve had to make tough ethical decisions and to ensure you know what your core values are and how you weight them.
The answer to these questions will give insight into how you have acted or will act in the future in these situations. As long as you are empathetic and respectful, these questions should answer themselves. Again, these questions should be easier than the other two types of questions in this category because you’ve probably faced similar situations before in your life.
You have promised your best friend that you would attend their wedding; however, the day before the wedding, your dad has a stroke and is hospitalized. Enter the room and talk to your friend.
Like most character development acting questions, this prompt doesn’t involve reasoning through an especially difficult or thorny choice. Rather, the decision is simple or even self-evident. What’s tricky is delivering that decision in a way that conveys personal traits like compassion, respect, fairness, dependability, and so on.
Before you enter the room, you need to choose whether you’ll attend the wedding or skip it to be with your father. Think through each outcome. If you attend the wedding, you risk minimizing the severity of your father’s condition, which might reflect insensitivity and a lack of reliability as a family member. If you don’t attend the wedding, you risk upsetting your friend. While your friend might also feel that missing their wedding reflects unreliability, we believe that the majority of people would understand missing a wedding due to such a serious incident.
Thus, our goal in the conversation would be: convey to your friend that you won’t be able to attend the wedding, making sure to attend to the reality that they will likely be disappointed.
Here’s one way to begin the conversation:
I have some bad news. My dad had a stroke yesterday and is in the hospital. I’m really sorry to say this, but I need to go be with my dad, so I won’t be able to attend the wedding. I was so looking forward to seeing you get married and I’m incredibly sad to miss this important day, but I know you’ll have an amazing time and I can’t wait to celebrate with you another time.
You can take it from there depending on how the actor reacts, remembering to demonstrate compassion while adhering to your own standards.
Invited to a med school interview? Congrats! There's no need to land in waitlist purgatory or the rejection pile. Learn how to craft memorable, acceptance-worthy responses using the resource below.
Gain instant access to the most common traditional and MMI interview questions, plus sample responses for each, to help you craft responses that lead to acceptances. Subscribe today to lock in the current investments, which will be increasing in the future for new subscribers.
Another category of questions will ask you to prove yourself in a team environment. Whether you’re working with other physicians, PAs, nurses, or other members of the clinical team, as a future physician, you will never be working alone. Once you understand that admission committees are looking for team players, these scenarios are easily demystified.
Here’s how they go. Depending on the school, you will either enter a room alone or with another applicant. You’re then responsible for completing a task—often building or assembling something—either alone or together. In the room, you might see a pre-built structure made of, for instance, Legos, K’Nex, or Jenga blocks, or a piece of paper with a design that only one person will see. The goal, in this case, might be to replicate the design, using only words.
If you’re alone in the room, your job will be to deliver instructions to your interviewer out loud. If you’re one of two people, you will probably give instructions once and receive instructions a second time so you undergo both experiences. (It’ll be with different partners; you won’t be working with the same person twice). In some cases, you might be in a room with a larger group, but following the strategy you’d follow with just one partner will work just fine then, too.
In both cases, you’ll face some constraints. You may not be able to look at your partner, or the words you can use might be limited (e.g. no colors, no shapes, etc). In total, you’ll have around six minutes to work together with the remaining two minutes used for follow-up questions by your evaluator. If there are two candidates in the room, there will be two evaluators—one for each of you.
Here’s how to succeed in both roles, that of the instructor and that of the doer or performer.
The instructor must lead the performer through the simulation. As the instructor, your goal is to work with your partner—either your interviewer/evaluator, who will be acting as the performer, or a fellow applicant—to replicate the design in front of you in the given timeframe.
As the instructor, keep the following things in mind:
The performer will be working with the instructor to replicate the given design. If you are in the role of the performer, the instructor will likely be a fellow candidate.
As the performer, keep the following things in mind:
After you are given six minutes to work with your respective partner, there will be a two-minute period during which your evaluator will ask you a few questions. “How did you think you and your partner did?” “Why do you think the project was incomplete or had errors?”
Here's a key trick: always speak positively about your partner’s performance and more critically about your own performance. Whatever the reason for the incompletion of the project or errors that occurred, never blame your partner and always reflect on how you could have done a better job in your respective role. Blaming your partner will result in immediately failing this station (no matter how poorly you think your partner did).
As a bonus, think about and mention how teamwork is important in your future success as a physician—no physician works alone.
You’ve likely prepared for traditional interviews before by asking friends, colleagues, or mentors to do mock interviews with you. You might even have a pre-medical or pre-health advising office at your college that offers interview advice or practice. (If you haven’t looked one up, do so! Even if you are an alumnus of your college, you may be able to set up a remote interview.)
But given the MMI’s unique demands, how can you prepare for it?
You can still ask advisors and friends to do mock interviews with you, especially in non-acting scenarios. And consider asking your most theatrically-minded friends to try out some of the acting scenarios. You can also learn how to make the most of the two minutes by reviewing our questions, setting a timer, and planning out your response. That will help you warm up so that you don’t get paralyzed under the time pressure on the day of your interview.
As you practice, do not memorize answers. Understanding and knowing how to apply the concepts discussed in this guide will allow your answers to be spontaneous and real.
Consider doing some basic research on current healthcare systems and how they may change. This is not officially tested in MMIs, but understanding the basics of healthcare systems will help give you context for your answers, especially in ethics-related scenarios. You should also develop an opinion on potentially controversial topics such as abortion or physician-assisted suicide.
This is a natural question to ask, but a difficult one to answer. It’s important to remember that this isn’t a typical interview where you’ll be asked traditional questions like “Why do you want to attend our program?” or “Why do you want to be a doctor?”
Your opinion on the situations presented to you during the MMI isn’t as important as your ability to follow a line of ethical reasoning in explaining your answer. Some people will find that task more difficult than others. However, we’ve given thorough explanations earlier in this guide of the types of questions you will encounter to help you manage the difficulty.
As with every part of the medical school admissions process, the MMI requires a certain amount of preparation. We recommend 1–2 hours of reading over MMI strategies and another 2–3 hours of mock interview practice. Don’t try to cram this all into one day, either. Rather, spread your practice out over a few days leading up to the interview. This will give you time to absorb and consolidate your practice before the real thing.
Occasionally, premeds want to know if they can write notes while being asked questions during the MMI interview. For example, they think it would be beneficial to be able to take down some key points they’d like to discuss during the speaking portion of the interview once they’ve read the prompt.
Generally speaking, this varies by school. Many schools won’t allow you to bring anything, while some may provide you with a paper and pencil. Your best option is to prepare as thoroughly as possible for not being able to take notes and if you’re allowed to write things down, it will come as a welcome surprise.
Dr. Shirag Shemmassian is the Founder of Shemmassian Academic Consulting and one of the world's foremost experts on medical school admissions. For nearly 20 years, he and his team have helped thousands of students get into medical school using his exclusive approach.
In addition to the interview support we provide our students through our premium 1:1 application plans, we offer à la carte interview coaching to help you present your best self on the big day. It would be a pleasure to guide you!
In this section is a bank of MMI prompts that you might encounter inspired from recent interviewees, questions major universities such as the University of British Columbia have made public, and our collective experience advising students. You can use these in practice interviews to prepare for your first MMI.
Acting
Non-acting
Invited to a med school interview? Congrats! There's no need to land in waitlist purgatory or the rejection pile. Learn how to craft memorable, acceptance-worthy responses using the resource below.