Why Do You Want to Become a Doctor?: How I Answered

Why Do Medical School Interviewers Ask “Why Do You Want to Become a Doctor?”

I was asked “why do you want to be a doctor?”, in pretty much every medical school interview I went to. This is the ultimate ice-breaker that can come up in medical school interview questions. It’s a question that’s so simple on the surface but can become painfully obvious to the interviewer if you don’t give an authentic, convincing, and genuine answer. You do NOT want to head into your interviews without preparing for this deceptively innocent question.

So, let’s get into the mind of an interviewer for a second and think about why someone is asking this question, and what information they are hoping to get from it:

1. Why medicine? - When someone is asking this question, they want to understand your personal journey to medicine and how you decided that medicine is the career path for you. They want to know what your initial and subsequent influences were for you to choose medicine.
2. What motivates you? - They also want to know your inner motivation for pursuing a career in medicine, and that these motivations are appropriate or suitable for a career in medicine. Also, what impact do you wish to make in the field?
3. Why do you deserve to be here? - Do these influences and inner motivations for pursuing a career in medicine come across as genuine or are they cliché and don’t seem authentic?

I kept all these considerations in mind when coming up with my answer for this interview question. Truthfully, it took writing my personal statement and a lot of internal self-reflection to be able to answer this question well. You will really need to dig deep and provide an answer that goes beyond the desire to help others or pursue a career that is seen as meaningful. Medical school interviewers are not asking you the "why do you want to become a doctor" question idly or lightly, and your answer needs to be suitably reflective, serious and deeply personal.

Why Do You Want to Become a Doctor? How to Brainstorm Your Answer

Your reason for wanting to become a doctor may jump out at you right away, crystal clear. Or maybe it was a series of choices or events in your life which led you to an interest in medicine. Regardless of where you fall, if you don’t have a ready answer, it’s time to dig deep and start asking yourself some self-reflective questions.

Here are some questions you can ask yourself to get started on creating your personal narrative:

• What were the defining moments in your life?
• What were your early experiences with the medical profession? Which ones made an impression on you?
• When was the moment you decided to apply to medical school? What spurred your decision?
• Is there someone in your life who inspires you? Why?
• What qualities do you have that you think would make a good doctor?
• What started your curiosity or interest in medicine?
• What experiences do you have that have grown your interest in medicine?
• What about the medical profession most appeals to you? Why do you want to become a doctor over another related profession?

Take some time to reflect on these questions and write down some bullet point notes or try some brainstorming exercises. Once the key events and motivating factors behind your decision emerge, you can start formulating your answer.

"Tell me about yourself" is another med school interview question you must prepare for!

How to Answer to “Why Do You Want to Become a Doctor?” Interview Question

1. Share Your Early Influences Towards Medicine

Step 1: Share in 2-3 sentences what first interested you in medicine. Start building a narrative of what you experienced and what impact these early forays had on you.

For some it can be early exposure to family members in the field or medicine, or it could be that you or a family member having gone through an illness and seeing how a physician helped them navigate this. For others, it could be an interest in the sciences or the human body. Identify what this early first push towards medicine was for you. I want you to ask yourself, what sparked your journey to medicine? What were those early or initial influences for you?

I had to personally start from the beginning at what was my early inspiration for medicine. I created a timeline of my early inspiration and then asked myself: what is the thread that led me to the next experience? What did I learn from that experience? Which of these experiences contributed the most in my journey toward medicine? I drafted little stories after each clinical, volunteer and research experience in my CV to see if there were some underlying threads and themes I could use for my interview answer or personal statement.

2. Discuss How Your Interest in Becoming a Doctor Evolved

Step 2: Continue the narrative to discuss how this initial curiosity in medicine evolved over time. Talk about the actions you took to deepen your knowledge of medicine, or what subsequent experiences you had that made you seriously consider a career in healthcare.

I was young when I was first exposed to healthcare, since many of my family members being doctors, and while this was the initial draw to me to pursue a career in medicine, I needed to figure out my path on my own. To show that in my interview answer, I discussed what major I pursued in college (neuroscience) and my interest in public health because I wanted to see how physicians can impact communities and populations, too. I noted how my interest in community engagement led me to serve in free clinics. These experiences underscored the need of physicians to cater to marginalized populations and made me culturally sensitive and equipped me to understand and advocate for people from different backgrounds than me.

I then briefly touched on my additional master’s degree in physiology and my gap years before medical school, and most importantly why I did it: to gain further exposure to the rigors of medical school. During those gap years, I mentioned that I had some very impactful experiences in health policy that motivated me to focus on systemic issues in healthcare.

I wrapped up my answer by explaining how I deepened my clinical experiences by working as a medical scribe and volunteering at a pediatrics clinic. I then focused in on one clinical experience (I had a few, but chose one):

This is what I wanted to hone in on in my career. Experiences like this solidified that medicine was the path I wanted to pursue, which I shared in my interview.

3. Conclude with Your Mission Statement for Wanting to Become a Doctor

Step 3: End with a conclusion on why becoming a doctor is so important to you.

Then finally, I would encourage you to end your answer to this interview question with a mission statement of sorts about what your impact in the field of medicine will be. This can be your take-home message to the interviewer about what sort of role you might fulfill in their medical school, or even in the medical community at large. Try to do this in 1 to 2 sentences as concisely as possible.

Want more tips on how to answer this question? Watch this!

How NOT to Answer “Why Do You Want to Become a Doctor”

Let’s also go over how NOT to answer this question, or what to avoid when answering this question.

Don’t Read From Your CV

The first thing I would avoid is to regurgitate your entire medical school resume or CV. Be selective about which experiences were impactful to you in deciding you wanted to go into medicine.

A way you can determine which experiences to include in your answer is: have one that is the initial influence, then have 2 or 3 experiences that show how that influence evolved. It can be an impactful course, tutoring job, research project, volunteer experience or clinical experience. It can be any of the extracurriculars you’ve spent significant time in. Then try to end with something that solidified your interest in pursuing the career and your overall mission statement.

Don’t Let Your Motivation for Becoming a Doctor be About External Factors

The next thing I would avoid in your answer is anything along the lines of pursuing medicine because you want to carry on a legacy, or because your parents told you to. It’s okay to say that your parents were an initial influence, but it’s important to convey how you arrived at this decision for yourself through your own personal exploration.

Similarly, I would avoid making the reason you want to become a doctor about external motivators, such as prestige, the ability to have a steady, well-paying career, or the inherent respect and admirability of becoming a doctor. These may come across as superficial reasons to interviewers or come across as red flags in your interview.

Don’t Start with a Cliche

Another thing you want to avoid are cliché’s like “I want to go into medicine to help people.” The reason this is cliché is because people in many professions “help people” including teachers, financial consultants, engineers etc. Plus, it goes without saying that you are interested in helping others as a doctor, and medical school interviewers will view this response as completely unoriginal. You want your response to be unique to YOU.

Distinguish why YOU want to be a doctor specifically. Somethings that doctors do that some of these other professions don’t is have a DIRECT impact on someone’s health and a deep knowledge about the human body. I would weave this in your answer, especially if you are making the jump from another health profession such as nurse to doctor or PA to MD. 

Here's how mock medical school interviews can enhance your prep:

"Why Do You Want to Become a Doctor?" Interview Question Sample Answers

Click through the tabs to read some sample answers for MD, DO, non-traditional and other types of medical school applicants!

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