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Auckland OLY1 chat - archive

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Goddamn that went fast. I had a very personal interview; they started with "If there is one thing you would like to tell us in this interview what would it be?", and it went from there. It was more of a conversation than an interview, with no clear boundaries between questions, all of which were open ended. It is all a bit of a blur, but here are some of the areas I got asked on:

1) "Tell us about Yourself"
2) "If there is one thing you would like to tell us in this interview what would it be?"
From here I told them about overseas travel I did and how that led me into medicine. That took up the majority of the interview, which I don't think was planned. From this another couple of questions (paraphrased) were:
3) "What would you do if in 5 years time you found yourself having doubts about being a doctor because you thought all doctors are arrogant?"
4) "How do you manage stress?"
5) "What would you do if a supervisor made a negative comment about a patient?"

Then the interview got abruptly cut short, which really annoyed me. One second I was in the middle of answering a question, the next they were showing me the door without asking "is there anything else you would like to say?". The interview before mine ran overtime, so they seemed to take the time out of my interview.

Overall I think the interview went very well. They asked me questions that were deeply personal, and I was nothing less than completely open and frank. I did have to stop in the middle of a sentence to take a deep breath and have a drink because I was so nervous, but the interviewers were very understanding.

Things I did not like about the interview were that I wasn't really given a chance to plainly state why I want to do medicine. The interview was focused on my life experience, so I hope that my motivations were clear to them and did not get lost in the mix.

My friend who had an interview at the same time as me said that she had a very generic interview, with all the expected questions. Just goes to show how different each set of interviewers are. I had two Scottish women who played the good cop/bad cop routine, whereas my friend had two bad cops...

Good luck everyone who has their interview next week. Just forget about everything that has happened this year, you've made it through the hard part.
 
Hi AlteredState, I would suggest that you remove your post until after the interviews have completed so that everyone is going in with the same knowledge - you are only disadvantaging yourself at this point by being so generous with all your questions in the interview, and that others avoid posting anything more than how they personally felt about how their interview went.
 
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@AlteredState I've temporarily deleted your excellent post out of respect for preserving the fairness of the interview process. This is an MSO forum policy and we do it to any post that shares interview content before interviews are over. If someone could let me know when the Auckland interviews are due to finish I'll be all too happy to reinstate the post then, so that future interview candidates can benefit.
 
Ok that's cool I understand, but you guys realize that there is plenty of other content that covers people's experience of interviews on this website right? Since previous posters have been so helpful sharing their experiences around the interview period in previous years I wanted to do the same.

Could you please give me a link of other forum policies that I need to be aware of in the future.
 
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AlteredState1 said:
Ok that's cool I understand, but you guys realize that there is plenty of other content that covers people's experience of interviews on this website right? Since previous posters have been so helpful sharing their experiences around the interview period in previous years I wanted to do the same.

Could you please give me a link of other forum policies that I need to be aware of in the future.
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The site rules are here, but they aren't comprehensive: MSO Rules - Med Students Online

Unfortunately we don't really have a clear list of forum policies - this is a recognised problem on the site.

We do strongly encourage sharing of interview experiences, as they are very helpful, and your post was excellent. The catch is that we don't allow sharing of interview questions while there are still applicants who are yet to sit the same set of interviews. You guys can share as much as you like about what happened in your interviews after Wednesday afternoon, and I'd love it if you did so - but until then, in the interest of fairness, it'd be great if you could limit yourself to general comments about how your interview went. I hope this seems reasonable.
 
I was thinking of setting up mentoring sessions over the year for people that might want to go over interview stuff, but I don't know if there would be enough people interested to start up a group at Auckland. I know some first years get mentoring if they have received a scholarship etc, but I think that should be available to everyone
Any thoughts?
 
[MENTION=12709]AlteredState1[/MENTION] I've undeleted your post now.

If any more interviewees want to be kind enough to share what happened in their interviews and some of the questions asked, now is the time - and it would be highly appreciated!
 
Alrighty, I'll talk about my interview experience a bit now :)

First of all, the interviewers were very nice (one of them even went so far as to say that this was a conversation in an explicit manner). This greatly helped to put me at ease.

From what I remember, and this is out of order, I got asked on several things:

- The all-important "why do you want to do medicine?" question.
- Quite personal questions on one of my family member's health, and my childhood.
- Who I thought was one of NZ's leaders, and reasons why.
- What I thought I could be able to contribute to the medical school.
- My weaknesses.
- Hobbies and how I thought they could relate to medicine. (EDIT: actually, it was something along the lines of "what do you do to unwind after a long day?" or something like that :p)
- What job(s) I had done and follow up questions like "xxx job doesn't seem to have much interaction with people - so what good did it do for you?" (paraphrased)
- Disparities in health, etc.
- Leadership and the healthcare system/balance between primary care and something else (I forgot :/ ).

There may have been more, and I'll add if I remember some later on. (In retrospect, I feel that they asked me a significant number of questions and topics!) (No ethical questions, funnily enough!)

They kindly finished off with "do you have any questions?". I was surprised to hear that @AlteredState1 didn't even get that opportunity to ask :O
Though I was the last interviewee for that day, so they could spare me a few extra minutes.

I have to say that all in all, the experience wasn't as daunting as I made it up to be in my head and from the blown up information floating around when everyone is anxious before the interviewing period.

However, I did feel that my performance was kind of lacklustre, and that I didn't get my point across the way I had wanted to >_<.

As for the time allocated to your interview, really, people shouldn't stress when they have had either a short (>15-20 mins) or particularly long interview time (<25 mins), of which mine was in the latter. People could argue it both ways, and just end up stressing overly much about their interview afterwards, when it is done and you can't change it anyway. For me, mine was ~30 mins long, and I felt that it had been much, much less!

[OFFTOPIC]Haha, one of my interviewers was doodling a shell during one stage of the interview xD[/OFFTOPIC]
 
Half Pulse said:
I know I would love something like that for 2013 OLY1! It's hard not knowing anyone doing med.
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Oh that is great, good to know that there are some keen people out there :) I know how it feels to not know anyone doing med and coming from a low decile school where there wasn't much guidance, I believe with some extra help my first year could have been totally different.
I will try to set something up next year, if anyone else is interested, you could message me on this
@ Tonykim (Err I have no idea how to quote 2 people in one post ><) I'm not sure what you mean by your post.
I assume you meant if you could do biomed after doing HSFY (and being unsuccessful in Otago) i.e trying out for med again by doing the overlapping first year at Auckland.
I think that is possible but you would have to check with the science faculty at UoA
 
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