After five months of patiently waiting, I received my first medical school interview invitation in mid January 2016. There was a lot of excitement that came with the idea that a school hand-picked me for an interview. Not long after the initial excitement, a wave of anxiety suddenly hit me. Although the interview brought me one step closer to entering the medical profession, it was also the last hurdle that kept me from becoming a medical student. My mind was racing. What if after 6 years of school, dozens of papers, sleepless nights, and the occasional crying session, I blundered my interview and my chance of one day becoming a physician? This was the only interview I had been offered, and I didn’t know if I’d have a second chance. It didn’t take much time online to realize just how important the medical school interview is to getting accepted into medical school.

I spent a lot of time researching and reading books about medical school interviews. However, the best advice I got was from friends who had previously interviewed at medical and dental schools. They told me that the interview would be casual and less stressful than I was expecting. Most importantly, they told me to be true to myself and my values, be able to articulate why I want to be a physician, and why I chose to attend their program. A week before the interview, I reviewed the medical school’s website, the mission statement, and the student handbook while making a list of all the important facets of their program that resonated with me. I wrote down a list of questions based on my review of their program so that I could ask students and faculty while I was visiting. I also reviewed my personal statement, secondary essays, and a list of common medical school interview questions. Self-reflection was important to me during this period, and I asked friends to choose words that described me and asked them why they chose them. I never came up with definitive answers to the questions I had reviewed, but I had an idea of what I could talk about should a topic come up. The night before the interview, I reviewed all the notes I had taken during the previous week, sat in front of the hotel mirror, and practiced talking out loud like I was in an interview.

The day of the interview the admissions committee reiterated that the interview would be stress free, and it really was. I had two one on one interviews and they were casual conversations. Both faculty members seemed genuinely interested in who I was. Surprisingly, I didn’t get any questions I thought would get which was a consistent theme with the three other interviews I would later have. Not once did anyone ask about why I wanted to be a physician or my greatest strengths and weaknesses. Most of the time was spent talking about what I do in my free time and what I learned from my experience at Virginia Tech and Eastern Mennonite University.

I was privileged to be offered two acceptances, and I was waitlisted at two other schools. Choosing a school was not an easy process. I talked with my family and friends, made pros and cons lists, and continued to think about my values and career goals. Finally I chose the University of Pikeville in eastern Kentucky. I visited the school while a student at EMU and was impressed by their rural medicine program which was important to me because I want to work in rural communities as an advocate for equitable health care. They had strong rotation sites and they were an outstanding option financially as the third most economical private medical school in the country. The students and faculty were welcoming, and the setup of the curriculum was closer to how I hoped to study medicine.