University of Miami Miller School of Medicine

Tell me about your volunteer experiences. What did you learn from each one? How did those experiences prepare you to be a doctor? What do you think is the biggest challenge facing medicine today? Medical school will be stressful, how do you relax? Why do you think you'd be a good doctor? What are your strengths? What are your weaknesses? If you didn't get into med school this year, what would you do?

Tell me about yourself.

Why specifically do you want to attend the University of Miami?

If you were working with a group of people and they all had one point of view but you had a different view that you felt was right, how would you go about convincing the others to accept your point of view?

The question above.

SDN, UM website.

The WHOLE medical campus is wireless, including the lecture hall! If you can't make it to class, lectures are streamed live on the internet and then stored on the web for access whenever you want. The lecture hall actually has a small television like control room at the back of the room to carry that all out, I didn't expect it to be that high tech. Very nice surprise. The whole UM/Jackson campus was very nice and well maintained, you can really tell that people are proud of their school.

I found out from one of the med students that UM's grading system actually uses numbers and pass/fail together. So unlike most med schools and their straight pass/fail/honors systems, UM records your numerical average for a course on your transcript as well as whether that number was good enough to pass or fail that certain class. For example, your final grade in Pathology may be recorded as something like this: P/85. I personally think this will just make the class more competitive but its supposed to help the students land good residencies because it shows how much they truly learned.

I found out from my interviewer that the admissions committee REALLY likes to see that you've shadowed a physician. My interviewer said that it shows dedication to the study of medicine. If you haven't shadowed anyone and your interview is still some time in the future, try to find a doctor to shadow, even if only for one day. This seemed to be very important, if you've volunteered at a clinic/hospital, they still want you to shadow someone. If you haven't shadowed anyone and your interview is tomorrow, dont worry. My clinical experiences were limited to having been a volunteer, I hadn't shadowed anyone and I still got accepted a few weeks later. Its just that it seems like a major point to them so if you still have time to do it, do it. After my interview, I just felt that not having shadowed was the biggest negative on my application.

The day starts off with all the interviewees meeting in the admissions office between 8:30-9:00AM. The day of my interview the size of the interview group was about 10-15 people. The secretaries hand out folders to everyone as they come in, inside is your personal schedule for the day, a few other papers about UM and your name tag. After you get your folder, you just sit down and chat with the other interviewees over some dunkin donuts and coffee. A few med students had also dropped by so you could also start asking them about the school if you wanted too. At 9:00AM, Dr.Hinkley (the dean of admissions) comes in and takes you into a conference room next door. He presents a good informational slide show about UM and talks about all the key points of the school. At 9:30AM, the director of research comes in and gives a 30 minute talk about the importance of research in medicine and how all medical students should try to find time to get involved with a research project while in med school because research is the future of medicine. At 10:00AM, medical students then lead you on a tour of the school and its grounds. The school is VERY nice, inside and out. The highlight of the tour is that they take you up to the helipad on the roof of Jackson Memorial Hospital. My group lucked out though and we couldn't see the helipad because there was some maintenance or something going on that day on the roof. The tour lasted an hour and afterwards I had my interview. The interview wasn't as laid back as I've had at others schools but it certainly wasn't the worst either. I didn't get any ethics questions but my interviewer did ask me what I would do in certain situations, i.e. how would I convince others who had a different point of view than I did. Some schools I've interviewed at the interview was more like a conversation than anything else, at Miami the interview did have conversational elements to it but it was also more probing than most of my other interviews. Just relax, smile and answer honestly and you should be fine. After the interview there is a lunch with all the other interviewees and a big group of med students. The lunch was awesome, pasta, bread sticks, cookies, sodas... lol. We got to ask the med students anything we wanted and they were all very honest and direct. After lunch there's a 10 minute talk from the financial aid office and then Dr.Hinkley comes into the room to give the group a closing talk where he tells you by when you should find out the committee decision and answers any questions we still might have. Overall, you should be done by about 1:30PM. They try to get you out early so that you can beat the traffic home or back to your hotel. All and all I think the day was great, I was very happy to be accepted a few weeks later and will definitely be attending UM this fall!