How to answer “How do you define success?” in a medical school interview

A strong answer to "how do you define success" states a definition plainly, grounds it in an experience where you met or missed that standard, and shows what it means for how you'd practice medicine. Interviewers want a definition you've tested against your own life, and they can tell when an applicant has borrowed one.

What the interviewer is assessing

• Self-reflection and growth

Medical schools ask this because your definition of success predicts how you'll behave when the work is hard and nobody is watching. An applicant who defines success as grades and titles may struggle in a career where outcomes depend on patients, teams and chance. An applicant who defines it only as helping others may have trouble naming what they themselves need in order to keep going. The interviewer listens for a definition with room for both, and for evidence that you've thought about it before today.

In a panel interview, this question often follows one about your accomplishments, and the panel checks whether the two answers agree. In an MMI, it appears at a personal station or inside a scenario about a colleague whose idea of success differs from yours.

How to structure your answer

1. State your definition in one or two plain sentences, before any story.
2. Describe one experience where you met that standard, and say what meeting it changed for you or for somebody else.
3. Describe one experience where you fell short by that standard, or where an outside measure called it a success and your own definition didn't.
4. Explain how the definition changed, if it did, and what the gap taught you about yourself.
5. Close by saying how that definition will guide the decisions you make as a medical student and physician.

Choose experiences that show the definition in action rather than experiences that sound impressive on their own. A publication or an award says little about success unless you can say what the work meant to you and what it cost. The practice box gives you three minutes, which is enough for the definition in the first 15 seconds and the two experiences in the rest.

Common mistakes

• Defining success as getting into medical school tells the interviewer your motivation ends on the day you're admitted.
• Giving a definition with no example leaves the panel with a sentence any applicant could have said.
• Defining success entirely in terms of other people, with nothing about your own growth or wellbeing, sounds rehearsed and raises a question about how you'll sustain yourself through training.
• Naming money, rank or recognition as your measure tells the panel you'll judge your career by what patients never see.
• Changing your definition halfway through the answer to fit the story you're telling shows the interviewer you had no definition when you started.

Follow-up questions to prepare for

• Can you tell me about a time you succeeded by other people's standards but not by your own?
• How will you know whether your first year of medical school was a success?
• Who do you consider successful, and why?
• Has your definition of success changed in the last five years?
• How do you respond when a goal you set turns out to be out of reach?