Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University

Tell me about yourself.

What were your MCAT, GPA, SAT, etc.

Where do you see yourself in ten years? (Both interviewers asked this. From what I understand after reading other SDN feedback, this is a trick question designed to see if you are planning on a primary care career. If not, they red-flag you as someone not interested in general practice).

Standard, boring closed-file stuff

See above

SDN, re-read AMCAS and 2ndary. I got admitted to UNC (my 1st choice) the night before my ECU interview, so I didn't spend a ton of time preparing.

Very little.

See my summary of the experience for a complete run-down.

This school is not nearly as great a place as it purports to be.

When I left for my ECU interview, I had only been admitted to Tulane (obviously a sketchy choice at this point in time). I wanted to do well at ECU to at least have a school on the plate that wasn't destroyed by a hurricane in the last year. I got the phone call from UNC while I was at the hotel preparing for my ECU interview the next day. UNC was my 1st choice, so I felt I could relax on the interview prep. I still wanted to do well, though, because it's always nice to have choices in the end. I have one friend who attended ECU as an undergrad. He hated it so much he transferred out, and when I told him I was going there for my interview, he offered one piece of advice: "Make sure you lock your hotel door." That didn't bode well. He was right - I took a mini-tour of Greenville by car the night before, and the city is not friendly. It's mostly rural, and the population is seemingly composed entirely of poor minorities. I don't mean to sound elitist, but I felt like I had been dropped in the middle of Harlem, only without the benefits of a large city like NYC. The hospital is similarly disappointing. While the hospital itself is relatively modern, it is surrounded by a whole lot of nothing. It's like the Emerald City from the Wizard of Oz... a big shiny new thing emerging from a rural countryside, and looking totally out of place. From there it got worse... My first interviewer was lovely, I really liked her. She was a young psychology PhD, and made me feel very comfortable. My second interviewer was AWFUL. He was the stereotypical old man concerned primarily with my summary numbers (MCAT, GPA, SAT, etc.) than with my personality. He spent most of my hour with him trying to convince me that ECU was probably the wrong place to be if I wanted to specialize, completely ignoring the other evidence that ECU might be right for me. He sat far away from me, making the situation even more uncomfortable. Each interviewer receives an envelope with your basic biographical info; he didn't even bother opening it when I handed it to him, and therefore most of the questions he asked me were those he could have answered by spending 30 seconds reading the summary sheet. The facilities, while fairly modern, would be hellish to endure. EVERY SINGLE FIRST-YEAR CLASS IS HELD IN THE SAME SMALL ROOM. That means, for an entire year, you'll be spending about 8 hours a day in the same room. Talk about Cabin Fever! The same is true for 2nd-year students. They have a different room, but all their classes are still held in a single room. The school feels like an afterthought to the hospital - it's a big hospital building, and the med school is simply dispersed throughout a number of rooms in the hospital. There's no dedicated med school building, no "college campus" atmosphere around the hospital, or anything else you see at most other med schools. The tour guide seemed neutral, and was evasive when I asked if there was anything she disliked about Brody. The "tour" was pretty much useless; since all classes are held in the same room, she simply showed us that room for a few minutes. Then we went to lunch, which required walking through the hospital to the cafeteria, but she never gave any info about the hospital at ALL. Everything I know about Pitt County Memorial Hospital I learned while trying to find its address on Google. The cafeteria food was OK, but the Admissions Office only gives you a $5 waiver, so be prepared to spend some of your own cash if you want a drink, yogurt, whatever. It's the only lunch facility in the building, and our tour guide said it gets old after a semester. There are no other restaurants within walking distance of the hospital. Overall I was wholly unimpressed with Brody. The interviews were bland due to their closed-file nature, the facilities are not good, and the students are unenthusiastic. ECU would be a last-resort option for me, and given that over 50% of their students are re-applicants, it would seem that most of the students are people who couldn't manage to get in anywhere the first time around. Not the place for me.