Health Professions

Sample Interview Questions

Why do you want to be a doctor? Describe yourself for me.
What will you do if you don’t get into med school?
Were your college courses challenging?
Tell me about your community service experiences.
Do you feel your grades reflect your ability? Your MCAT’s?
What do you do for fun?
What’s your worst quality, what’s your best?
How did you get interested in medicine?
What alternative careers have you investigated?
Is there anything weak in your record? Why?
What has been the most difficult challenge in your life?
How do you plan to combine the responsibilities of a family and a medical career?
What were your favorite courses? Least favorite?
Tell me about your most influential professor.

If you had a choice between one liver transplant or a thousand vaccinations which would you choose and why?
If you could find a cure for AIDS or for cancer, which would you choose and why?
What do you think about condoms being distributed in high schools?
Should people have the right to sell their own organs?
Do you think it’s ethical to take the life of a fetus for a cell line to save the life of a sibling with cancer?
You have to amputate one of the legs of an eight-year-old child. How would you tell them?
Would you give a transfusion to a child whose parents were Jehovah’s Witnesses?
What are your views on euthanasia?
What do you think about euthenics (not euthanasia)?
How do you feel about animal research?
Should we spend so much time and effort trying to keep premature infants alive?

What do you think is the primary reason people don’t get into med school?
What one characteristic must a doctor possess?
If you were called to congress to come up with the perfect healthcare system what exactly would it be?
Do you actually know what a doctor’s day is like?
Why would someone from Canada come to the U.S. to receive healthcare and why would somebody from the U.S. go to Canada for health care?
What have you recently read in the media about medical issues?
What is the greatest problem facing medicine today?
What would you do about the alcoholism problem in this country?
Is health care a right or a privilege?
How would you organize health care in a perfect world?
What do you think should be done with patients who can’t pay for treatment?
As a physician, would you perform abortions? Under what conditions?
What should a physician’s role be in the politics of abortion
What is the difference between Medicare and Medicaid?
What is the biggest problem family practitioners face?
What do you consider the most important thing medicine has done for humanity?

Source: Stoll, M. (2007). Best 168 medical schools (2007 ed.). New York: Random House