Prompt
Tell me about yourself.
Practice this question
Try answering it yourself first. The answer guide is below.
After you practice: what this question tests and how to approach it
What this question tests
- Communication
- Self-reflection and growth
How to approach this question
This opening question tests whether you can introduce yourself in about two minutes and give the interviewers a reason to want to hear more. Choose three or four points from your life that connect, and tell them in order so the panel can follow the thread. Start with where you are now, go back to the experiences that shaped you, and finish with why those experiences point you toward medicine. Name real places, roles and people rather than listing adjectives about yourself. Leave out your grades and any detail the panel can read on your application unless it carries the story forward. Practice it aloud until it sounds like a conversation rather than a recital.
Answer guide
When a medical school interview opens with "tell me about yourself," answer with a two-minute story that connects who you are, what you've done and why it has led you to medicine. Pick three or four experiences that link together, tell them in order, and end on where you're headed.
What the interviewer is assessing
This question usually comes first, and it sets the tone for the rest of the interview. The interviewer wants to see whether you can organize your thoughts and speak clearly without a script. They also want to learn what you choose to emphasize, because that choice shows what you value. In a panel interview, your answer often supplies the follow-up questions, so you're partly choosing what the next twenty minutes cover. In an MMI, a version of this question can appear as a short warm-up station.
How to structure your answer
- Open with one or two sentences on where you are now, such as what you study or the work you do.
- Describe two or three experiences that shaped you, and say what each one taught you or changed in you.
- Connect those experiences to your interest in medicine without turning the answer into a full "why medicine" response.
- Close with a sentence about what you hope to do next, which hands the conversation back to the interviewer.
Aim for 90 seconds to two minutes. A strong answer to "tell me about yourself" in a medical school interview sounds prepared but not memorized, so practice the order of your points rather than every word.
Common mistakes
- Reciting your resume in date order turns the answer into a list the panel has already read.
- Opening with a story about wanting to be a doctor since age five tells the interviewer little about who you are now.
- Talking for five minutes leaves the interviewer waiting for a gap to interrupt you.
- Listing traits such as "hardworking" and "compassionate" without an example gives the panel no story to remember.
- Sharing personal details you aren't ready to discuss invites follow-up questions you may not want.
Example answer
Here is an example answer from a fictional applicant who studied civil engineering and worked in transit planning before applying.
I'm a transit planner with the city, and I've spent the last three years working out where bus routes should go. Before that, I studied civil engineering, and I expected to spend my career on bridges and roads.
The work changed how I think about people. My first big project was redesigning routes in a neighborhood where many residents were older adults. I held twelve community meetings. At almost every one, somebody told me the new stop would add a fifteen-minute walk to their medical appointments. I'd been looking at ridership numbers, and they were telling me about their week. We moved two stops because of those conversations.
Around the same time, I started volunteering on an overnight crisis line, two shifts a month. That's where I learned to listen without rushing toward a fix. Some callers didn't want advice at all. They wanted somebody to stay on the line with them.
Those two experiences pulled me in the same direction. I enjoy solving problems, but the problems I care about most are the ones a person is living with. Medicine is where I can do that work directly while still thinking about the systems around each patient. Outside work, I play in a recreational soccer league, and I'm slowly learning to cook my grandmother's recipes.
How real applicants answered it
“The answer I prepared most was ‘tell me about yourself.’ It’s the one question where you choose the topics, so I treated it as a way to open doors to the conversations I wanted to have.”
Read how five applicants prepared for their medical school interviews
More on personal qualities
All 15 questions on this topicMock interviews
If you want to practice with a person, we run mock MMI and panel interviews with feedback on every answer.
