How to answer “Tell me something not in your application” in a medical school interview

A strong answer to "tell me something not in your application" offers one specific detail about your life that the panel couldn't have read, and explains why it matters to you. The detail should show a quality the rest of your file doesn't prove, and the best answers do exactly that.

What the interviewer is assessing

• Self-reflection and growth
• Communication

Interviewers ask this after reading many applications that describe the same volunteering, research and shadowing. They want to find out what you chose to leave out, whether you can talk about yourself without a prepared script, and whether there's more to you than the activities list. The question tests self-reflection, since you have to judge what's worth telling, and communication, since you have to tell it in under two minutes with no written version to rely on.

In a panel interview, it often arrives late, when the interviewer wants a lighter moment or a last impression. In a multiple mini interview (MMI), a personal station can use the same prompt, with less time and no file in front of the interviewer.

How to structure your answer

1. Decide before the interview on two or three details you left out, so you aren't choosing in the moment.
2. Pick the one that shows a quality your application doesn't already prove, such as patience, humor, persistence or a skill from outside medicine.
3. Tell it with enough detail that it could only be yours: a place, a person, a habit or a thing you made.
4. Say what it means to you, or what it taught you, in one or two sentences.
5. Connect it to medicine only if the connection is real, because a forced link undoes the point of the question.

A hobby, a family role, a job you held at sixteen, a language you're learning, a failure you're not proud of and a project that never finished are all good choices. The test is whether the detail is true, specific and new to the panel. You can share a difficulty you've lived through, but choose one you're ready to discuss further, because the interviewer may ask. Keep it under two minutes, which leaves time for the follow-up question it usually prompts.

Common mistakes

• Repeating an activity that is in the application, with more detail, tells the panel you had nothing else to say.
• Choosing a detail designed to impress, such as a second research project, turns the answer back into the resume the panel was trying to leave.
• Saying "nothing comes to mind" leaves the interviewer with a blank where your personality was supposed to be.
• Sharing a private matter you haven't resolved can leave you upset in the middle of an interview, and the follow-up questions will stay on it.
• Forcing the detail into a lesson about medicine makes it sound invented for the purpose.

Follow-up questions to prepare for

• Why did you leave that out of your application?
• What does that tell me about how you'd be as a medical student?
• What else would surprise me about you?
• Is there anything in your application you'd change now?
• How do you make time for that during a heavy semester?