Oregon Health & Sciences University School of Medicine

🙂

How did the interview impress you?

Positively 🙂

What was the stress level of the interview?

3 / 10

0 = Low Stress, 10 = High Stress

How you think you did?

8 / 10

0 = Bad, 10 = Great

What are your general comments?

This was my first interview so I went into it feeling fairly nervous, but was quickly put at ease by the friendliness of the staff, the interviewers, and my fellow interviewees. The interview day was well organized, although there can be a lot of waiting around (my interviews were 4 hours apart, with the luncheon and tour in between). Both of my interviews were friendly and conversational, no difficult or unexpected questions came up and they genuinely seemed to want to get to know me as a person. Although I felt like my interviews went well, both of my interviwers seemed like very nice people who probably wouldn't have let on if they didn't like me, so it's hard to say. The students who conducted the lunch and tour seemed to feel that they had a lot of free time and were very happy to be there. I had never really been up on the campus before, and I was impressed with how nice most of the buildings are and with the planned developments for the waterfront--I knew about the sky tram, but they are also building a new hospital, research center, and housing unit that will be connected to the main campus by the tram. OHSU was one of my top choices before the interview, and after going there I really felt like if I get accepted I would probably go--the curriculum and atmosphere are a good match for my goals and personality. I could really see myself as a student there.

Interview questions they asked

Why medicine, and specifically why medicine instead of NP or social work

I was asked this too

What was the most interesting question?

Nothing too surprising came up--I had an interesting conversation with my last interviewer about Oregon' Death with Dignity Act and abortion (I work in a clinic that provides them, he had experience performing them, so it was a pretty friendly conversation and not a debate)

I was asked this too

What was the most difficult question?

I really wasn't asked anything too difficult

I was asked this too

How did you prepare for the interview?

mock interview, read over OHSU's website and AMCAS, read up on the oregon health plan

What impressed you positively?

friendly, laid-back atmosphere; happy students; the planned waterfront development projects

What impressed you negatively?

the high cost of attendance and lack of grant/scholarship money to help with this; the fact that out of ~20 people in my interview group, only 3 were OR residents; that only a small number of people are accepted outright so that most of us will end up on a hold list and could potentially be waiting well into the spring to find out if we are in or not

What did you wish you had known ahead of time?

How low-stress of an experience it was going to be, so I could have relaxed more