Questions to ask your medical school interviewers

The best questions to ask medical school interviewers are open questions about their own experience of the school, which no website can answer. Prepare three or four, ask one or two, and listen closely to the answers.

What the interviewer is assessing

Most panel interviews end with "Do you have any questions for us?", and saying no can suggest a lack of interest. The interviewer is looking for curiosity and for evidence that you've thought about where you'll spend the next several years. Good questions also give the panel one last impression of how you communicate. MMI stations rarely leave time for questions, so this applies mainly to panel and one-on-one interviews.

How to structure your answer

1. Thank the interviewer and say you do have a question.
2. Ask one open question that invites them to share their own experience.
3. Listen to the answer and respond with a short comment or a brief follow-up.
4. If time remains, ask a second question, then thank them again.

Have more questions ready than you need, because your interviewers may answer some of them during the conversation. The strongest questions to ask medical school interviewers fit the person in front of you. For a student interviewer, questions about daily life work well, such as how they balance study with time outside school. For a faculty member, questions about teaching and the program's direction usually lead to a better conversation.

Common mistakes

• Asking a question the website answers on its front page shows that you didn't prepare.
• Asking how you did, or what your chances are, puts the interviewer in an awkward position.
• Leading with questions about vacation time, grading or how hard the program is can sound like you're looking for the easy path.
• Reading a long list of questions from your notes turns the end of the interview into a survey.
• Asking about a controversy at the school can come across as a challenge, even when you mean it as curiosity.

Questions to ask

Choose the ones that fit the person and the school, and adapt the wording so they sound like your own.

• What do you enjoy most about teaching students here?
• What kind of student tends to thrive in this program?
• How do students here usually get involved with the local community?
• What has changed in the curriculum since you started working here, and what prompted the change?
• How do students support each other through the harder parts of training?
• What do you wish you had known before you started medical school?
• How do students here find mentors, and how do those relationships usually form?
• What opportunities do students have to take part in research or community projects early in the program?
• If you could change one feature of the program, what would it be?
• What do graduates of this program say they valued most once they started residency?
• What does a typical week look like for a first-year student outside of scheduled classes?
• How does the school gather feedback from students, and what has changed because of it?
• What made you decide to interview applicants, and what do you hope to see in a future student?