How to answer “What makes you unique?” in a medical school interview

A strong answer to "what makes you unique" names one or two specific experiences, perspectives or combinations of skills that few other applicants share, and explains what each one lets you bring to a medical school class. Interviewers are asking what you'll add to the class, and the honest answer is usually a combination of ordinary experiences rather than one extraordinary one.

What the interviewer is assessing

• Self-reflection and growth
• Communication

Medical schools build a class, and they want students whose backgrounds and skills differ from each other. The interviewer is checking whether you understand what you offer and whether you can say it without boasting or shrinking. They listen for self-knowledge, which shows when an applicant names a genuine difference such as a first career, a language, a community they belong to or a way of working. They also listen for whether you connect that difference to patients, classmates or the profession, because a difference with no use to any of them gives the panel no reason to want it in the class.

In a panel interview, this question often follows "tell me about yourself", and the panel compares the two answers for consistency. In an MMI, a version of it appears at a personal station, where the rater scores insight and communication rather than how rare your story is.

How to structure your answer

1. Name the quality, experience or combination you'll talk about in your first sentence.
2. Describe where it came from, with enough detail that the story could only be yours.
3. Say how it has already changed the way you work, study or treat people, with one concrete instance.
4. Explain what it will let you contribute to your classmates and, later, to patients.
5. If you have a second point, give it the same treatment in half the time, and then stop.

Look for the combination rather than the single feature. A sport, a first career or a second language is common on its own, and two of them together, applied in a community you've served, is what sets an applicant apart. Keep the setup brief, since the practice box gives you three minutes and a panel expects about two, and spend the time on what the difference lets you do.

Common mistakes

• Claiming a quality every applicant claims, such as empathy or work ethic, answers a different question and adds no information for the panel.
• Answering that nothing makes you unique, or apologizing for an ordinary background, gives the interviewer a reason to agree.
• Naming a difference without saying what it lets you do leaves the panel with a fact and no reason to care.
• Choosing a trait your application can't support invites a follow-up that exposes the gap.
• Spending the whole answer on how hard your path was turns a question about contribution into a request for sympathy.

Follow-up questions to prepare for

• How will that help you as a medical student?
• What would your classmates learn from you that they couldn't learn from a textbook?
• Has that difference ever made it harder for you to work in a team?
• Which part of your application do you think is most ordinary?
• Is there a group of patients you expect to understand better because of that background?