University of California Davis School of Medicine

Tell me about this one reagent you used in your research.

Tell me about yourself.

What is one experience where you did not get along with someone else?

What is your favorite band?

How do the meds you have taken function biochemically in your body?

Read about the school, spoke with students, SDN, practice interview.

I was very impressed by the school's hospital and facilities. Very beautiful place

Where to begin?

The campus and hospital are about 30 minutes apart. It takes a very long time to travel between the two. And they will not necessarily provide you with means of transportation between them.

I noticed most of the interview feedback posts for Davis are very positive ones. Maybe your experience will be positive too--if so, that's awesome. My experience was a very negative one. I had seven interviews, and this was by far the worst. It made me wonder why they bothered to call me up there to begin with. The day began with a meeting at a coffee shop, which my student host had a hard time finding. When I arrived there, there were no markings or indications tht the meeting was to be held in a back room of the shop, and I had a hard time locating it. When I got to the meeting, there was a stack of papers on the table and I noticed the applicants who were there each had one, so I was going to pick one up, and the person hosting the interview glared at me and quite rudely said, "WAIT." Embarrassed, I sat down and waited to be handed one. After the meeting, we had a tour of the hospital which went well. the student hosting the tour was very friendly and I was impressed by the hospital. After that, each interviewee had a different schedule because different people had interviews at different times. My two interviews were to take place on the campus, which is in a different location from the hospital. We were supposed to find means on our own to get from the hospital to the campus, and not being from the area (and already being somewhat nervous as it was interview day) I was rather confused about how to get to the campus. Luckily, another interviewee in my group was going there and her mom was driving her, so they were kind enough to offer me a ride. The drive from the hospital to the campus was literally at least 30 minutes on the freeway, and I was not prepared for it to take that long. After that we were to get lunch individually, which was fine. When it was time for my interview, I went to the office of the person who was supposed to interview me, which is the location my agenda said I was supposed to go to. Her office was locked. I waited five minutes. She did not show up. I turned to the woman in the lab across the way and asked if she would know where the lady was, and the woman said that she thought she isn't coming in today. I located the administrative office on the floor and asked if they knew where the lady was; the receptionist did not know; we tried paging and calling her; she did not call back. She finally showed up 15 minutes late. At which point the very first question she asked me was "you know, I'm really very curious--you say you're fascinated by neuroscience but you got a C+ in this one neuroscience class...?" Which I thought was pretty crappy. My overall GPA was high and this was maybe the one low grade I had ever gotten--I had gotten high grades on many neuroscience classes, and I repeated the class I had a C+ in, earning a higher grade. When I said I repeated it and that the higher grade is in my AMCAS application and transcript, she said she can't find it. She spent a long time attacking that one grade, and when we finally moved on to something else--my research--she spent like 10 minutes talking to me about this one reagent I used in my research. I could talk about it as much as she wanted, but frankly I believe I had much more interesting things to talk about during the time we had together. I tried my hardest to maintain a positive attitude throughout the interview, but she made it very challenging. Because she was 15 min late, she went 15 minutes overtime despite the fact that I told her I had another interview immediately following this one--so I was late to my second interview. That one went well. My student interviewer was very nice, not to mention an incredibly hot guy, and I felt that he went out of his way to try to be nice and not make me stressed out (I'm not just saying that because he was hot). Unfortunately, because I started my interview with him late, we finished late, so I missed the last shuttle of the day and my student host had to pick me up (I had no other means of getting back)--she seemed pissed off about having to come all the way to the campus to pick me up, but I really felt like I didn't know what else to do. I flew back home in tears, feeling like I wonder why Davis asked me to fly all the way there, only to treat me rudely and pick on the one C+ I ever got for 20 minutes (and after their brutal secondary, too). After all this, I felt really crappy about the whole thing but was secretly hoping that maybe it was just "all in my mind" and that in the end maybe davis didn't hate me as much as it seemed--but I wasn't even waitlisted--I was outright rejected. Honestly, I think my experience was probably a unique one and yours will most likely be better. I do not mean to sound excessively bitter--it just felt awful for me.