How to answer “What is your favorite book?” in a medical school interview

A strong answer to "what is your favorite book" names one book you have actually read, explains in specific terms why it stayed with you, and shows the interviewer how you think about ideas outside your coursework. The title matters less than the reason, and an interviewer can tell a real reason from a rehearsed one.

What the interviewer is assessing

• Self-reflection and growth
• Communication

Interviewers ask this to find out whether you read for your own reasons, whether you can explain why a book affected you, and whether you can discuss a subject outside medicine with ease. A physician spends much of every day explaining ideas and listening to people's stories, and how you talk about a book shows how you handle both. The panel also learns about your interests and your judgment from what you choose, though they score the explanation rather than the title.

In a panel interview, this question often arrives after a run of harder ones, and a flat answer wastes the easiest minute of the interview. In an MMI, it rarely gets its own station, but a version appears as a warm-up or as a follow-up when a rater asks about your life outside school.

How to structure your answer

1. Name the book and its author in your first sentence, and say in a phrase what kind of book it is.
2. Describe what it is about in two or three sentences, for an interviewer who may not have read it.
3. Explain why it mattered to you, with one specific idea, scene or argument from the book rather than a general impression.
4. Say what it changed in how you think, what you noticed afterward, or what you did because of it.
5. Close in one sentence, without forcing a connection to medicine unless the book genuinely has one.

Choose a book you read recently enough to discuss in detail, because the follow-up will test whether you did. Fiction, nonfiction, memoir, poetry and a book from your own field all work, and a book about medicine works only if your reason for choosing it goes beyond wanting to look like a future physician. The practice box gives you three minutes, and this answer rarely needs more than one, so skip any preamble about how hard it is to choose.

Common mistakes

• Naming a book you haven't finished, or read years ago and half remember, leaves you unable to answer the first question about it.
• Choosing a book because it's about medicine, with no other reason, reads as a bid to impress the panel rather than an honest answer.
• Summarizing the plot for two minutes and giving the reason in one sentence inverts what the interviewer asked for.
• Saying you don't have time to read tells the panel that four years of medical school will leave you with no interests at all.
• Picking a title you think the interviewer wants to hear risks a conversation with somebody who knows the book better than you do.

Follow-up questions to prepare for

• What is the last book you read?
• Was there an argument in it you disagreed with?
• Would you recommend it to somebody who never reads, and why?
• What do you usually read, and how do you choose?
• Is there a book you expected to like and didn't?