How to Ace MD-PhD Interviews 

In my experience, the MD/PhD committee interview is usually a quick 10-15 minute interview with a director/associate director meets with you 1:1 to get to know you. Because they're so short, the questions don't get too creative. Usually I was asked for an elevator pitch of my research, why I wanted to do MD/PhD, and why I wanted to go to their school specifically. After that, it's usually just small talk and banter. I would say that the hard part of this interview is efficiently using the 10-15 minutes to make a solid, lasting impression on the director.

Practice! Especially because the interview process is pretty predictable for MD-PhD applicants, practice your responses to some common questions with a partner, friend, or co-applicant. This also means practicing your interview routine off-screen during your mock interviews as well. For example, I tried to practice the interviews in the morning when they typically occurred, and also had the same night routine before morning mock interviews that I wanted before my actual interviews as well: face mask for relaxation, no electronics an hour before bedtime, and eat an apple in the morning. Get your body familiar with a routine that works best for you!

Sure thing! Long comment incoming apologies in advance. re (1), tl;dr: Attend as many interviews as you can (all if possible!) Because I didn't get accepted anywhere before completing all my interviews, my goal was to complete as many interviews as I could. That being said, eventually later in the cycle I got very burnt out and just decided to take the risk and not attend some interviews at schools I wasn't crazy about. It was definitely risky and I don't recommend this until you have at least 1 acceptance, but I just got so tired at one point with the virtual format and school and everything I just gave up haha. The virtual interview format last year was nice because I didn't have to worry about paying for travel costs for interviews or anything - I know this would also be another thing to have to factor in once interviews go back to in-person. I don't think being prepared for interviews factored into my personal decision making that much frankly - although I don't recommend it, it got to the point later in the term where I would spend 10-15 min the morning of researching the school and winging it otherwise. In my experience they didn't really ask a lot of "school-specific" questions, so a lot of my overall interview prep throughout the cycle was reusable. re (2), I definitely did (and would recommend everyone to do so as well!). I remember using a spreadsheet template from online although I don't remember the link unfortunately. I kept track of (1) when I received secondaries, (2) when I submitted, (3) date of II, (3) date of actual interview, (4) whether and when I wrote thank you emails, (5) date decision was received, and (6) any update letters I sent (this was very rare). I think secondary submissions specifically are always relative to when you receive them - I always tried to submit them within two weeks. If you don't get a secondary invite until later in the cycle that's no problem, as long as you submit ASAP I think (?) it should be fine.

@@dotMDlive Wow, Michael, thank you so much for taking the time to write back in so much detail and with so much thought! It’s great to know the ideal approach to interviews as well as the realities- I know I’ve been feeling a little burnt out and behind schedule on my last few secondaries, so I’ll think about better time and stress management strategies when my interviews begin so that I can attend all of them. I was surprised that most schools didn’t ask you that many school-specific questions- how did you demonstrate fit? Or did you find that in the process of choosing which medical schools you wanted to apply to, you had already weeded out the ones that weren’t a natural fit for your interests? Finally, I noticed you mentioned thank-you emails- I’m used to writing them out of habit, but I’ve heard some medical schools don’t want to be bothered with them. How did you decide whether to send one or not? Do schools specify? I just received my first interview invitation from UChicago this evening, so your advice is so timely and appreciated. Thanks a million!

@@zhangangela In a way I think for the MD/PhD programs I interviewed with, I don't think they were particularly worried about asking questions like "Why do you want to go to our school?" since many of them were T20 programs - at the risk of sounding arrogant, I think almost all applicants would accept a position at these schools simple from their ranking. I think the main things that they did ask in regards to fit were (1) what were my research interests (the only school that did not accept me post-interview did not have a very strong engineering program, and I identified myself very clearly as an engineering researcher), and (2) why would I move from the west coast (I lived there my entire life) to some other part of the country (this was probably one of the most common questions I got, especially since the vast majority of MD/PhD applicants stay in the same area of undergrad/hometown in my experience). With regards to thank-you emails, usually a large majority of MD/PhD interviewers often come from the grad school, and so imo it's usually a lot more laid back (many of my interviewers volunteered their contact information) in my experience. I don't recall having a school personally that said "please don't contact your interviewers post-interview" although I am aware those exist - definitely good to double check that before sending any thank you's. They usually make it pretty explicit from what I've heard! Hope this helps! And congrats on the II from UChicago!! 🎉

@@dotMDlive Thank you so much, Michael!!! I’ve moved around a lot in my life, so maybe they won’t ask me too much about geographic affinity, but I definitely will brush up on my research and be prepared to talk about what I have learned and accomplished (though I reckon they might expect less rigor from MD applicants compared to MD/PhD). I really appreciate how accessible you are- you have been a big help to me, and I’m sure even more so to students who are applying MD/PhD! Best of luck with your first year at UPenn, maybe if I hear back from them, we’ll get to be future peers!

Sorry about the confusion! My choice of words was poor, in reality MMIs currently do exist for MD-PhD interviews (such as Duke at 5:10), but in my experience, they're just uncommon. Hope this helps clear things up!

@@dotMDlive I see. I understand that for your case most if not all programs didn't do MMI. Still, I imagine a good handful of programs still do MMI for MD/PhD.