How to Ace Weird or Intimidating Medical School Interview Questions

Why do interviewers ask weird or intimidating medical school interview questions?

If you’re wondering how to ace weird or intimidating medical school interview questions, it’s important to first understand why interviewers are asking such questions. Medical school interviews, irrespective of the format, are notoriously difficult. Whether it’s a multiple mini interview (MMI), panel/traditional med school interview, or hybrid interview, the ultimate goal is to obtain a holistic picture of you that goes beyond the list of achievements, activities, courses, academic scores, and other quantifiable information related to your application. Via interviews, admissions committees want to evaluate your personality, motivations, and soft skills, and judge how suitable you would be as a future medical student.

One strategy that medical school interviewers often use is to deliberately try and rattle you. By amping up the pressure, they can see how well you react under stressful conditions and how quickly you can adapt to new challenges – both crucial skills for a successful medical professional. To that end, they ask intimidating questions so they can assess your emotional reactions, how well you react under pressure, and how well you can self-regulate. By throwing in a few unexpected and weird questions, they want to test your ability to think quickly and solve problems in stressful, time-sensitive situations.

Interviewers know students practice their answers to commonly asked questions and come prepared with talking points related to common medical school interview topics. That’s part of their expectation! For certain questions, they expect you to expand on the information that’s already in your application, and talk in more detail about relatively “easy” or straightforward topics like why you want to be a doctor, why you applied to this school, etc.

While these types of questions are very important, they don’t always help to reveal the natural personality of the student. Interviewers often expand the scope of the interview to put you on the spot and assess your natural communication style. That’s why, with quirky, unexpected questions, as well as challenging questions, the “content” of your answer is less important as opposed to your overall communication skills and other “soft” skills you can demonstrate. It’s important to understand what the interviewer is trying to assess with these questions so you can try and highlight these qualities in your answer.

What are interviewers assessing in your response to intimidating or weird medical school questions?

Tips to answer weird or intimidating medical school interview questions

#1 Manage your nerves

As we mentioned in our previous section, interviewers use tough questions to analyze your ability to stay calm and adapt under pressure. One of the ways they analyze this is by looking at your communication style. When you’re faced with such tough questions, it’s important to stay cool, calm, and collected, think rationally about what you’re being asked, and answer to the best of your ability without getting too caught up in the details. Remember, with weird questions, there’s no one “right” answer. Your presentation, confidence, and communication style are critical.

That’s why you need to pay attention to your body language and non-verbal communication during interviews. Make sure your body position is comfortable and relaxed, but not sloppy and restless. When you face a challenging question, you may unconsciously clench your hands, start fidgeting, playing with your hair, or cross your arms in front of you. If you can feel this happening, take a breath and still your body, getting back into your “calm” mode. Focus on being alert and maintaining eye contact, and nod to show you understand the question. Keep your voice warm and engaged as you begin your answer. Don’t use too many filler words such as “like” “ummm” and so on to fill the gaps; if you really need time, politely and calmly ask your interviewer for a minute to gather your thoughts before you begin your answer.

This tips might seem difficult for you to implement, especially in the pressure of the moment! It’s true that anxiety is a physiological response and it’s difficult to control it in new and unexpected situations. That is why we can’t emphasize the important of advance interview preparation enough. The best and most effective way to get your interview day nerves in control is to take the time to prepare for your medical school interviews well in advance. You can’t predict each and every question that comes your way but by researching the interview format, practicing interview questions, and participating in mock interviews, you can gain the confidence and skills necessary to ace any question.

A common myth among premed students is that there’s not much they can do to prepare for medical school interviews. This is absolutely untrue – it’s very important to prepare for your medical school interview and there are certain critical interview skills and strategies that you can only learn via practice and preparation. It might also be a good idea to take on the help of medical school advisors or medical school interview consultants. A good consultant will work with you to improve your communication skills and give you proven, expert strategies to tackle a variety of intimidating questions. These skills and strategies are essentially “tools” that will not only help you ace those weird medical school questions (irrespective of the content), but will stay with throughout your professional life, serving you for future interviews and applications.

Make sure the consultants you hire provide mock interviews as part of their interview prep strategy. Participating in mock interviews and receiving customized feedback for your answers helps you target your areas of weakness; it also helps you identify “unconscious” mistakes related to your body language, presentation, and language. Practicing via realistic medical school mock interviews helps you work through your interview nerves and gain confidence in your abilities. This is a key strategy to help you avoid getting that “blank” state of mind when faced with a tough medical school interview question. If you’re able to stay calm and think clearly, you’ll find it much easier to reason out a suitable answer to the weirdest questions!

We also recommend focusing on both short-term and long-term stress management by maintaining a healthy lifestyle. In the long-term, make sure you maintain a nutritious diet, regular exercise routine, and a consistent sleep schedule. This will keep you cognitively sharp and focused, and much more capable of thinking clearly under pressure. You can also try and incorporate breathing exercises or meditation into your daily life; these are effective techniques to physiologically calm down your parasympathetic nervous system. Quick breathing exercises are an excellent way to clear away your interview day nerves and “re-set” your brain before you face the interviewer.

In the short-term, make sure you have a good night’s sleep before your interview. Plan out your day in advance carefully, keeping buffer time for external factors such as traffic, accidents, and other delays. This ensures that you don’t enter your interview with already elevated stress levels. 

Want to learn more about med school interviews? Check out this video!

#2 Be concise and don’t ramble

First of all, remember that it’s very important to take the time to practice your answer for the “conventional” medical school interview questions, such as “tell me about yourself”, “why do you want to be a doctor”, “what’s your greatest limitation” and so on. If you’ve done your interview prep for these commonly asked questions that you are most likely to face, it’s much easier to deliver a coherent, eloquent, precise answer on interview day.

What are the most commonly asked medical school interview questions? Check out the list below:

Conversely, one of the biggest challenges with weird and intimidating medical school interview questions is that they throw you for a loop and you may even have to come up with an answer on the spot! This often results in students delivering rambling, unstructured answers that don’t show their best self to the interviewers.

The key to overcoming this obstacle is to have a general “road map” or clear strategies to answer different types of questions, which you can then apply to understand and respond to every question.

First, try and identify what kind of question it is, and what the interviewers want to know. Is it a policy-based question – do they want you to deliver a reasonable argument for a sensitive issue? Is it a scenario-based ethical question – do they want you to show your compassion, empathy, and impartiality? Or is it a personal question – do they want to assess your self-confidence and self-knowledge, and judge how well-suited you are for medicine? Practice with all types of different medical school interview questions until this quick analysis of question type becomes natural and easy for you.

Based on this knowledge, you can then develop a central argument for your answer. Make sure you answer the question directly; interviewers can instantly see when someone is evading the question to buy themselves some time! Whatever your central argument or theme, make sure you also defend it rationally, with evidence (as applicable). Finally, deliver a calm, confident response that shows your faith in your judgement and abilities.

Remember that interviews, by their very nature, are “extempore” events. This means you won’t get much time to think and analyze your way to the right answer! These strategies we’ve outlined above will be most useful to you if you practice answering questions with them, until they become part of your natural way of thinking. Once you’ve mastered these interview skills and strategies, no matter what kind of strange, out-of-the-box, complicated, or challenging questions you get, you’ll be ready with a response. 

#3 Always refer to your suitability for medical school

Another common misconception among students is that in a medical school interview “there are no wrong answers”. It’s true that medical school interviews generally focus on testing a students’ soft skills and evaluating their personality and overall suitability for medical school – but that doesn’t mean there are no wrong answers! Interviewers are still employing certain criteria to evaluate you at all times. At a broad level, these are the key evaluation criteria in medical school interviews: communications skills, strengths of argument displayed, and suitability for the profession.

With our last 2 tips, we’ve already covered how to demonstrate the first two when faced with intimidating questions. Remember that you must be strategic to cover the third. You have to be able to think quickly and tie in your answer content with the unique qualities and achievements that make you suitable for medical school.

Some aspects of your suitability for the medical profession can be communicated via your communication style and body language. For example, while asking intimidating MMI questions and traditional interview questions, interviewers sometimes put on a harsh, hostile, or unfriendly demeanor. This part of their strategy to create a high-pressure environment and see how students react. As a practicing physician, you might face aggressive, uncooperative, or argumentative patients, and interviewers want to make sure you have the right skills and personality to handle such situations. By staying professional, polite, calm, and rational at all times, you prove your ability to handle tough questioners and sensitive medical situations.

We also recommend trying to highlight your suitability for medicine by directly referencing relevant supporting experiences, achievements, qualities, and behaviors in your answers, as far as rationally possible. Don’t stretch the boundaries of logic to make these connections – interviewers can tell when you’re trying too hard – but just make sure you’re on the lookout for every opportunity to highlight your unique suitability for the medical profession. In fact, keeping this strategy in mind can help you find inspiration for how to respond to the most intimidating or weird medical school questions!

This aspect of answering medical school interview questions requires a certain amount of advance preparation. If you’re applying to medical schools in the US, familiarize yourself with AAMC’s 15 core competencies for the medical profession. If you’re applying to medical schools in Canada, you should know all about the CANmeds roles and frameworks. In fact, irrespective of where you’re applying to medical school, we recommend going through both these resources to fully understand what soft skills and personal attributes medical school admissions committees are looking for.

Check out the key CANmeds roles:

Next, go back to your application and go through all of your various application components. Read your medical school personal statement, medical school secondary essays, and activity descriptions. Go over your medical school resume to refresh your memory about your key achievements, experiences, and extracurriculars. Analyze your life, your experiences, your strengths and weaknesses, and compare them to the competencies for the medical professions so you can identify what your key talking points should be for the interview. You might already have done some of this work during your personal statement and essay prep, so use whatever notes, rough drafts, and logs you have.

If you take the time to do this type of work, you’ll have a ready bank of “rough answer materials” to tap into when faced with intimidating questions, and you’re less likely to feel panicked and lost in response to them.

#4 Stay up to date on medical news, developments, and research

Many of the most intimidating questions that students face in medical school interviews are related to the latest medical developments, research breakthroughs, on-going studies, and pressing issues in the healthcare industry. The medical profession intersects with many other disciplines including psychology, sociology, religion, and politics, which is why many policy-based questions bring up “sensitive” topics that make students uncomfortable. With such questions, it’s important to have a clearly reasoned, logical answer, but also to avoid taking an extremist or overtly aggressive stance.

That’s why, as part of your interview prep, you should keep reading the latest medical journals and newspapers and stay abreast of the latest developments and most pressing issues of the day. This will help you expand your own perspective on these types of issues. Most importantly, you’ll be able to answer such intimidating questions in an intelligent, coherent manner, taking a well-reasoned stand while providing plenty of support for your arguments. Your ability to answer such questions with your own broader knowledge of the issue proves that you have a curious mind and an enlightened perspective on medicine, which would make you an excellent future physician.

Check out this video about the 5 hardest medical school interview questions:

Different Types of Weird and Intimidating Interview Questions and Sample Answers

For most students, all medical school interview questions are intimidating to some degree! Whether it’s the MMI interview format involving challenging stations that throw you for a loop, or traditional interviewers grilling you about the minutest details of your application – medical school interviews aren’t easy! As we discussed previously, interview prep is the key to unlocking your confidence and gaining interview mastery. Though you can’t predict exactly which weird questions you might get, you can practice answering such questions from previous years. This will help you develop the skills and strategies you need to handle whatever questions come your way in the final interview.

Here, we’ve compiled a list of weird and unexpected medical school interview questions that students have actually faced in the past. We’ve also outlined a few broad categories that these questions fit into, and provided strategies to help you tackle each category, as well as sample answers for your benefit.

Difficult questions about you or your personal experiences

Personal questions are never easy to answer, especially if you’re not comfortable talking about yourself! In some ways, however, they are easier to “prep” for, since many personal questions are also very well-known and commonly asked. Interviews know that students come in with prepared “narratives” for the most common personal questions such as “tell me about yourself”, “why do you want to be doctor”, and “what’s your greatest limitation”. To disrupt this comfort level, interviewers often mix in a couple of intimidating, unexpected personal questions. That allows them to see how you can discuss your life and your experiences without preparation, and how well you know yourself and your strengths.

How to answer:

• When answering such questions, always try to provide your personal context so that the interviewer can understand where you’re coming from.
• Avoid dealing in cliches and generalities, and instead discuss specific actions, behaviors, tasks, or experiences.
• If you’re discussing your negative traits, failures, and personal obstacles, focus on taking responsibility for your actions and highlight the ultimate lessons learned.

Sample questions:

• What is the most morally ambiguous thing that you have ever done?
• Are you happy with your MCAT/GPA?
• Which other schools have you applied to?
• How would someone who doesn’t like you describe you?
• Describe the worst day of your life.
• What was your most traumatic personal experience?
• Why are three reasons I should NOT recommend you for admission?

Sample answer:

Question: What is the most morally ambiguous thing that you have ever done?

Answer:

When I was in my junior year of high school, a classmate invited me and a few others from our class to spend the weekend with her family at their lake-side cabin, located close to a dense forest area. I was very excited for this trip not only because it was a chance to spend time with my friends, but also because my friends’ family were influential business owners in our small town, and I was hoping to get an internship at their offices for that summer. I thought this trip could be my chance to impress her father and boost my chances of landing that prestigious internship.

It was only once we got to our destination and my friend revealed the planned activities for the weekend to me, that I realized that a key item on the agenda was hunting. Her family had owned the nearby land for many years, and had all the required permissions to hunt for deer during the season. I am a vegetarian and animal-lover, and as such, I am ethically opposed to the practice of hunting for pleasure. I was deeply uncomfortable with the planned activities, yet conflicted about not participating, because I didn’t want to lose my chance to network and try and get that job I wanted.

Ultimately, I chose to hide my discomfort and ignore my moral stance, and participate in the hunting activities. I thought it would make me stand out in a negative way if I was the only person there to morally “object” to hunting. Though I was able to go through with it, I felt terrible all the time, and I knew I would never forgive myself for my actions that day.

This experience actually proved valuable to me in the long-term, because it made me realize the importance of integrity not only in our professional but also our personal lives. I realized that I had let my personal ambitions get in the way of following my moral compass, and that could never have a happy ending. Though I was offered the summer job, the guilt resulting from that experience prevented me from taking on the summer job. Instead, I actually chose to spend that summer working at our local animal shelter, helping to find new homes for rescued animals, and providing basic treatment to injured animals who came our way. I think I came away from the experience a wiser, stronger person, with a clearer idea of what kind of human being I wanted to be. 

Hypothetical “if-what” questions

The “if-what” questions are amongst the weirdest, most confusing questions you’ll face in a medical school interview. They generally follow the template of setting out a generally improbable, fantasy scenario, and asking you what you would accomplish in these scenarios. These questions can even be kind of fun to answer in a general conversational setting, but in the context of your interview, can throw you for a loop. The biggest worry is wondering if there’s a single “ideal” answer they’re looking for – let me reassure you, there isn’t! These questions are designed to test your creativity, your ethics-based reasoning, and reveal how you engage with the broader issues of the world we live in. 

How to answer:

• Focus on the positive – these questions generally have a very broad scope, so you have many avenues open to you.
• Don’t waste too much time overthinking your main theme – here, the reasoning to support your answer is more important than the actual answer.
• Keeping the “competencies” for the medical profession in mind, think about your own motivations to be a doctor and use these points to flesh out the “why” or the supporting arguments for your answer.
• Try and deliver a well-supported, reasonable, ethical answer that correlates to pressing issues of the day, especially those related to health care.
• Don’t indulge the “fantasy” element too much – you aren’t interviewing to be a fiction writer!

Sample questions:

• If you can create another planet, what would it look like?
• If you could remove any existing state/province/region, which would it be?
• If you could cure any disease which would it be and why?
• If a genie granted you three wishes, but you could only benefit others, what would you wish for?
• If you could, with a snap of a finger, gain a superpower, what would it be? Would you be a superhero or supervillain? 

Sample answer:

Question: If you could, with a snap of a finger, gain a superpower, what would it be?

Answer:

What a fun question! As a Marvel fan, I’ve definitely thought about which superpower I would like to have. After going back and forth, I settled on the power to travel anywhere I want in a moment, and take others along with me, no matter how far it is. To begin with, I would never have to deal with traffic again in my life! With so many tasks on my “to-do” list, I would love to eliminate the hours spent in traffic.

But on a more serious note, this was also a power I often wished for in my time as a volunteer at the Red Cross Medical Camp in Ghana. Every day we faced a lack of basic supplies and resources, and observed how that impacted our ability to provide high quality healthcare for the local communities. We spent so much of our time and effort in simply organizing the logistics of getting specialists and experts to treat specific, but rare, illnesses and injuries. At such times, I really wished the boundaries of time and space could simply disappear so we could provide the necessary healthcare to those who needed it, at the moment they asked for it!

Of course, I’d also make sure I use this power only ethically, to help people who needed it. So, I’d like to think I’d be a superhero! But I might be considered a supervillain in the eyes of those who currently make a lot of money by price gouging medical supplies and resources in developing countries. I guess it all depends on the perspective.

Quirky personal analysis questions

Though the format of these questions is often similar to the “if-then” questions, the key difference is that these questions are aimed at self-analysis and reflection, rather than understanding larger questions of the world. Interviewers want to see how well you know yourself and your confidence in your own abilities and skills. These questions can be confusing on the surface, but they actually present an excellent opportunity to expand on your strengths and emphasize again your suitability for medical school.

How to answer:

• Remember, the actual answer does not matter – you can say anything you like – it’s the reasoning that is being evaluated. So, make sure you support your answer with strong reasons corroborated by personal experiences or achievements.
• Think about your strengths, achievements, and what makes you stand out from the crowd. Try and highlight these points in your answer. Don’t be humble!
• Don’t take your answer too seriously, but always be professional. These “fun” questions do give you the scope to incorporate a little humor into your answer, but at the same time, it’s important to not get too informal as this is still your medical school interview that is going on!

Sample questions:

• Out of your 5 senses, which one would you be willing to give up and why?
• If you could eat one meal for the rest of your life, what would it be?
• If you were a cereal, which cereal would you be? What cereal would your friends think you are?
• Which shape do you think you’re most like?
• If you were a body part, what body part would you be and why?
• If you could be any vegetable, what vegetable would you be and why?

Sample answer:

Question: Which shape do you think you’re most like?

Answer:

I think I’m most like a circle. I’m well-rounded with a broad range and depth of interests. Professionally, I enjoy research and have completed advanced research projects under the guidance of my faculty supervisor, as well as clinical work at a surgical hospital, and volunteer experience at the St. Martin vaccination-drive for underprivileged communities in my town. Personally, I am proficient in piano, was the team captain of my high school soccer team and continue to play at amateur soccer leagues during my weekends, and enjoy playing chess with my grandfather.

A circle also reminds me of the sun and the moon, the bright, positive forces in our life that emanate light. I am a very positive person and I enjoy helping people and spending time making others happy. From all my extracurriculars, I found my volunteer experience to be the most inspiring. All my mentors and supervisors have commented on my ability to use my empathy and understanding to connect with others.

Challenging policy-based questions

Policy-based questions can be of all different types, and some are easier to prepare for than others. If you’ve taken the time to stay informed about current affairs in healthcare, then you won’t find it too difficult to coherently discuss policy-based questions related to pressing issues in healthcare today. However, some policy-based questions often veer into sensitive territory, asking students to comment on issues like religion and politics, or providing a difficult moral conundrum related to a complicated healthcare policy for them to solve. These questions can naturally intimidate students!

How to answer:

• Prepare in advance for such questions by staying informed about the pressing issues in medical care. Even if the questions are challenging or intimidating, having this knowledge will be a great boon to help you flesh out your answer and find relevant evidence for your points.
• When faced with a tricky question with complicated and opposing viewpoints, if you can’t figure out the “right” solution, refocus your analysis and try to identify the most patient-centered solution. Your answer should demonstrate your commitment to the policy of “do no harm”, as well as fair, unbiased medical practice, and empathy-based patient care.
• Structure your answer: provide the pros and cons of the situation, develop a rational argument with clear evidence, and if possible, try and include your own solution to the presented problem. 

Sample questions:

• It is estimated people spend X amount of time in traffic every year costing Y billion dollars. Discuss what you believe to be a physicians’ role in traffic jams.
• Do you believe physician-assisted suicide is ethical?
• Do you believe healthcare should be publicly funded? Can you argue against public healthcare?
• You're a pediatric oncologist and you have a new patient that has aggressively anti-vax parents. Do you admit them to your service and risk your immunocompromised patients or not?
• You’re driving and you hit me with your car. I’m stuck with this huge ambulance/hospital bill that I have to pay for. Why does America penalize the victim?

Sample answer:

Question: You're a pediatric oncologist and you have a new patient that has aggressively anti-vax parents. Do you admit them to your service and risk your immunocompromised patients or not?

Answer:

My first action would be to discuss the vaccination issue with the parents in question and provide them with literature, testimonials, and other supporting evidence about the effectiveness of the vaccines. In the meantime, I would also confirm the hospital policy as well as legal obligations in this situation, as some states do have specific laws related to how anti-vax individuals can be treated. Next, if the parents remain anti-vax, I will explain to them the tremendous risk to other patients if I admit their child to my service and ask them to re-consider their stance based on this evidence. Ultimately, if they remain staunchly anti-vax, I will place the good of the many above the good of the one, and not admit the new patient. At the same time, I would try and provide the parents with all the information about the possible treatments open to them, alternative care centers, home care, and so on, so the child can be treated despite their anti-vax position.

Want to know how to prepare for your medical school interviews? Check out our video below:

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To your success,

Your friends at BeMo

BeMo Academic Consulting 

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