So my mom and dad drove me to Kingston yesterday afternoon, and we stayed in a hotel overnight. I had to be there at Queen’s at about 10:45am this morning, and our hotel was just a 5 minute drive away from the place. I’m not much of a morning person, but didn’t want to have to spend the whole day anxious for an afternoon interview – so that’s why I picked a late morning interview.

I went to bed at around 12 am, but I just couldn’t sleep. I’m pretty sure it was partly because I was quite anxious/excited/nervous. But it was also because the air conditioning or heater or something kept making a sound every half hour. Plus, someone was snoring super loud – I think it was my dad, but he vehemently denies it, and says he’s sure it was my mom.

In any case, I maybe got a few hours of sleep max. I mean, it’s not like I’ve never been on little or no sleep before, but I would say these these interviews are much more important than any exam or test I’ve had to miss sleep before =)

But in my experience, I have always had adrenaline rushes during interviews or something, so I’ve never had problems staying awake during one. My parents and I both figured the same would happen this time.

When I got to the actual building, I checked in, and took a seat in the waiting room with the other students waiting to be interviewed, as well as some first year medical students. I sat down next to a guy from Saskatchewan, talked for maybe five minutes, before I was called for the 15 minute writing assignment.

I signed a confidentiality form, so not only am I legally bound to not give any details away, but I don’t think it’s ethically right to be sharing the details – it’s also counterproductive for myself, given that it is a competitive process, and it’s not very smart to be giving out information that could cause me a relative disadvantage. I will say that I wasn’t surprised by the writing assignment, and while I don’t think I did fantastic (I am a much better typer than hand-writer), I think I did okay. I’m not really sure what the admissions committee is looking for, but I have some varying ideas about possible reasons for introducing this writing assignment for the first time this year.

After the writing assignment, I went back down to the interview waiting room. I met two other candidates from Alberta, and chatted a bit with a first year medical student. I had no idea she was a medical student at first, though I should’ve guessed by her very casual look with Jeans and cowboyish boots =P

My in-person interview was scheduled for 11:40am, and I wasn’t sure exactly when I was called in, I think it was maybe a little before that, though I’m not really sure. The person who took me to my room actually turned out to be my medical school interviewer (the other being a physician), so I’m glad I spoke to her on the way – if I didn’t, I might have come off as super anti-social or something. Somehow I mentioned I went to York, and so I told her a bit about my experience with the strike.

Again, I won’t give any details about the questions, but I will say that it was a pretty pleasant experience. My interviewers were kind and warm individuals. The med student kept smiling as I spoke, and nodding as I said things, so I’m hoping that means she was listening and finding what I said interesting as opposed to just being nice =P

The physician was actually pretty cool. He often commented on or joked about what I said and asked a few follow-up questions, which is a really good sign, because it means that he was listening to me and didn’t find what I said boring (and thus zone out). For example, I brought up the fact that I have sung in some choirs, and he joked that they would have me sing at the end of the interview. Of course, I told him that I would definitely do it if they asked, but I hadn’t prepared anything in particular – but if I had to, I think I would’ve gone with Seal’s Kiss from a Rose because I’ve really liked that song lately. lol. I definitely think anytime your interviewers are relaxed and engaged enough that they make comments or jokes, it’s a good sign. I mean, I’d like to think of it as a good sign, but considering that there are going to be 760 students interviewed for 100 spots at Queen’s… there’s only so much wishful thinking I can do =)

I actually learned a lot from this experience, and there are definitely some interview concepts that I had thought about previously, that today’s experience seemingly helped confirm. One thing I will say is that all of my preparation helped a lot – not because a lot of what I reflected on our studied was used (because most things weren’t), but it’s sort of like any test that you prepare for. By studying everything possible, you don’t get surprised. I feel like I was only surprised once in the entire interview today, and that was because I had spent a lot of time reflecting throughout the week.

With my Toronto interview coming up in about a week, I think today’s experience, plus all of the preparation I did this past week, means that I don’t have too much homework to do for that next week. I feel really good with where my mind is at – I would have no trouble walking into that interview tomorrow if I had to.

Unfortunately, I still have my molecular biology exam tomorrow evening. It’s 7:53pm, and I still haven’t started studying yet. All of today’s excitement, plus exhaustion from little sleep, has really reduced my motivation to pick up my notes.

Despite the fact that I ended up over-preparing for my interview (at the cost of not preparing for my exam yet), I think that over-preparation not only made me ready for answering 99% of what was thrown at me, but gave me a ton of confidence walking in there. Instead of worrying about having missed some random health care issue or forgotten experience from my life, I was able to walk in there with a mind brimming with ideas and concepts from the past week that I was able to instantly draw from when needed.

Okay no more procrastinating – time to hit the books!

I know I’ve been super quiet the past week or two. Ever since school started, I’ve just been very busy catching back up with things. And although my exam period started last Friday (and I only have one exam this Saturday on the 28th), I’ve been pretty busy preparing for my Queen’s interview tomorrow. I also have my University of Toronto interview in about a week on March 8, and this is actually great timing for me, because both have traditional type interviews, so a lot of the ideas and preparatory work that I’ve been doing will still be fresh in my head for my Toronto interview.

Although I have a fair bit of interview experience from my high school days, I’m still not the greatest interviewer by any means. I still have the occasional goof ups and brain freezes that anyone else might have. And like anyone, my practice sessions always go much more smoothly than the real thing =) I do think my interview experience has made me more comfortable with the overall situation of being evaluated by people I have never met, and that I have developed pretty good insight about approaching interviews based on this experience. That being said, this actually is my very first interview in about three years I believe – I do have some butterflies as I sit here typing it, but nothing major or anything.

A few days ago, I actually did a video conference session to help a friend of mine also preparing for interviews. I have my own personal philosophy on preparing for interviews, which focuses less on doing mock interviews, and more on helping people to better reflect on their experiences and motivations, and how to then use those reflections to best market themselves in the interview. I really enjoyed the experience, and doing some sort of interview consulting in the future is something I’d definitely be interested in.

In terms of how I’ve been preparing, I would say it’s been three-fold. First, I made a document with what I believed to be the most important questions/themes about myself that I could be asked to talk about (e.g. Why medicine?). I reflected on these themes and jotted down my thoughts, and then went through them with my father to make sure they were clear and solid. Then I went through some run through’s of these main ideas, not necessarily trying to memorize my answer, but making sure I was able to remember my main ideas and am able to clearly communicate them most of the time.

The last two days, I have focused on improving my understanding of Canada’s health care system and basic medical ethics. Based on his experience, my brother was pretty adamant that I had to know next to little about health care or medical ethics for the Queen’s and Toronto interviews, but I’d rather be safe than sorry, and also, given that Queen’s is interviewing almost double the number of interviewees than previously, I thought there was a very good chance they would adjust their interview procedure to include more critical thinking questions (possibly focused one ethics or health care).

Learning about the health care system was initially very confusing as some of the information out there is quite confusing and requires prior knowledge, but after a lot of Google searching and looking up anything I didn’t understand, I finally felt I had a decent grasp on the system and some key issues of concern right now. It was quite mentally taxing for me, but I at least feel decently comfortable discussing it.

I’ve been reading a pretty well known medical ethics book called “Doing Right” – unfortunately, as is standard for me, I am not finished it yet =) But I will probably finish it by tonight.

I’m leaving for Kingston in a few hours with my parents and staying over night. My interview is at 11:40am tomorrow, but I need to be there 45 minutes earlier to do a 15 minute written assignment – curious about what that will be, given that it’s the first time Queen’s has done this, so we’ll see.

Will let everyone know how things go when I get back tomorrow. Wish me luck! =)

This week has been pretty crazy. I stayed up till 5:15 am to write an essay for my philosophy course on Wednesday. I actually could have handed it in as late as Sunday, but I knew if I didn’t hand it in on Wednesday (during my last philosophy lecture), I would procrastinate it till Sunday, and waste a lot of the time I could have spent preparing for my upcoming Queen’s interview (which is a week from tomorrow).

I just had my last class of first semester yesterday, and our exam period started today and runs until March 3 (because of the strike). Fortunately, I only have one exam on the 28th, and because I aced my tests during the semester, an 80+ on the exam secures me an A+ in the course – which is really good for me considering that my interview is on the 27th, and so I won’t have to care too much about being ridiculously ready for the exam.

So while I will spend maybe an hour or two a day leading up to the exam, most of my time will be spent getting into interview mode for Queen’s.

Pretty much I have a bunch of interview questions/areas that I am reflecting on, and jotting down notes on my ideas. I’m not trying to memorize answers to interview questions, as much as I am trying to get my ideas hammered down and my approach to the questions becoming second nature – so that no matter what I’m asked, I will be able to produce a solid answer.

I also need to spend some time going over medical ethics/professionalism, as well as reviewing Canada’s health care system and issues related to that. I might also spend some time catching up on current events because I am pretty awful when it comes to stuff like that =)

One of the concepts I wanted to touch a bit on today is prioritizing. I think it’s something that I do particularly well, and something that I think a lot of perfectionists tend to struggle with.

For example, I would rather spend 100% of my time preparing for an interview and 0% studying for an upcoming exam if I knew I needed to all of my time on the interview preparation to even have a shot at getting in (that’s an exaggeration, but you get the point). I know a lot of perfectionists who struggle with the possibility at not succeeding at everything they do, so they would end up spending 50% of their time preparing for the interview, and 50% studying, essentially keeping the dream of acing both alive. However, in some cases, you might then end up falling short at both.

Sure it’s possible to do both well – I’m sure some people have the work ethic and drive to do it. Personally, I don’t. I know where my limits are in terms of work ethic. If I need to fail at something to maximize my chances at succeeding at something I think is way more important, I will definitely do it.

It’s all about prioritizing, and recognizing what’s really important to you. Sometimes you just can’t do everything well.

Over the weekend, York’s exam schedule came out and my only exam (Molecular Biology 1) ended up being on the evening of Saturday, February 28th. I was really hoping that the exam would occur earlier so I could get it over with and focus on preparing for my interviews, but alas, it was not meant to be. Because I don’t want the exhaustion from an exam pouring into my interview, I decided to sign up for an 11:40 am Queen’s interview on Friday, February 27th. That way, I can focus on the interview and get it out of the way, and if I do end up being tired/stressed/exhausted, all of that pours into the next day’s exam, which I am okay with (since it’s better than the other way around!).

So now that I have all of these interview things settled, my interview schedule looks like this:

I haven’t had much time to post on the blog lately because of school. It has just been way too busy ever since I started back at York last Monday after the strike finally ended.

I’m back to my old pathetic ways… I am super tired right now because I stayed up till 3:30 am studying for today’s molecular biology test. I think I did pretty well, but I feel awful at the moment. I have another test on Thursday (Evolution), as well as a Geography assignment and Philosophy essay due next Wednesday. I’m hoping to finish those assignments next weekend, so I can dedicate all of next week to preparing for the upcoming Queen’s and UofT interviews.

I wish I could write some really cool articles, but I haven’t been hit with any inspiration recently, and everything just seems so darn busy, it’s hard to sit down and write something without feeling like I should be studying, preparing for interviews, or anything else.

I heard invites started going out yesterday, and I honestly wasn’t expecting to hear anything so soon (if at all)…

February 4, 2009

Dear Joshua,

I am writing to inform you that the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto has selected you for an interview.

Your interview will be held on Saturday, February 21st, 2009..

… but I’ll take good news any time! =)

Still a bit concerned as that falls in my exam period, but hopefully I get lucky and the two don’t conflict. I’m also going to see if I can find out about my exam dates a bit earlier.

I guess I’d better start doing some homework and interview prep stuff now!

Update:

So when I told my dad about half an hour ago about the good news, he suggested that I ask to see if maybe I could move my interview to the next interview weekend – since only the first group of invites has been sent out, there’s a good chance that the next interview weekend is still empty and could accommodate me. So I figured, why not? So I asked, and got a really quick reply:

You are confirmed for Sunday, March 8th. All other information in the original e-mail remains the same. Please ensure that your photographs have your name on the back, prior to arrival. If you have any dietary restrictions, please let me know by return e-mail.

Oh wow, didn’t expect that so soon! Good to know that I don’t have to worry about having an exam at the same time now =)

As many of you know, I have been worried a bit about how the strike at York might affect my medical school eligibility if my final transcripts cannot be sent on time (in the event that I do get in). Fortunately, I got a nice response the other day:

“Hi Josh,

An email just came in from the Registrar – they expect final transcripts to be ready by mid June, so you should be fine. Please pass on the word.

I mean there’s no guarantee things will work out, but at this point, this is the best I could have expected.

I am still a bit worried about my Queen’s interview – we can start signing up for interview dates on Feb. 9, but I hear my exam schedule won’t be ready by then (and the first interview weekend is during my exam period).

The good news though is that I will only have one exam coming up during the period (the rest of my courses are full year, or don’t have a final exam), so at least there’s no way I would have to miss all of the first set of interview dates.

Thanks again for everyone’s support – I really appreciate it!

Although the title of this post sort of spills the beans, I still think the story of how I found out about the news is still pretty interesting. I heard that Queen’s had tried to send out all interview invites as well as rejections last Friday, but many people (including myself) didn’t receive one. So I was expecting Queen’s to go ahead and re-send a bunch of those emails today.

This morning, while sitting in my Social and Political Philosophy class, I got an email from my dad who had read online that students who had emailed or called Queen’s this morning got a quick response about their interview status. So I quickly sent off an email to them, hoping to hear back soon.

After that class, I headed over to a dining hall to meet up and have lunch with some friends. After not hearing back for about an hour, I figured the admissions committee was probably out for lunch, plus they were probably having to deal with a gazillion emails and phone calls about the same topic. But then, about a half hour before I had to leave for my philosophy tutorial, I got this email:

Thank you for your application to the Doctor of Medicine program of the Faculty of Medicine, University of Ottawa. The Admissions Committee will review 3,839 applications this year for the 156 positions available and will interview approximately 550 candidates.

This year, in our admission policies, academic excellence remains the first criterion used by the Admissions Committee for selecting candidates for interviews, followed by an evaluation that takes into consideration the detailed autobiographical sketch.

Your application was carefully reviewed and although your academic performance did meet the required level, we regret that the evaluation of your detailed autobiographical sketch does not permit your application to advance further in the selection process. This decision is final and cannot be appealed. We are governed by an internal policy which does not allow us to provide feedback on the assessment completed by the Sub-Committee.

Because I skimmed through this email very quickly, and had been expecting an email from Queen’s, I immediately assumed this was from Queen’s and that I didn’t make the interview stage. But then I re-read the email, and it didn’t make sense, because Queen’s only uses academic cutoffs before offering interviews, and here the email was talking about how my autobiographical sketch was not good enough. That’s when I looked back at the top, and realized this email was a rejection from Ottawa.

I mean I had heard that Ottawa was probably going to send interview invites/rejections early this week, but it completely left my mind because I was so focused on Queen’s during my lunch break. It was kind of a weird feeling – I mean, even looking at the numbers, it’s obvious that the process is extremely competitive, but rejection in general always feels pretty sad.

I wasn’t extremely upset or anything, but it was still somewhat of a sad feeling. By the time I had to leave for my philosophy tutorial, I still hadn’t received anything from Queen’s, so I just got up and left.

Obviously, being the neurotic person that I am, I instantly logged onto my laptop as soon as I got to the tutorial room. At first, nothing still. But just a few minutes before my tutorial was about to start, I suddenly see a new email in my inbox titled: “Resent Queen’s School of Medicine Application”

Which kind of scared me, because in my experience, emails with general titles tend to be bad news – I think the main reason is that it’s kind of depressing to open your email account and see the word “Rejected” as a title in your inbox. For example, my McMaster interview invite was titled “Invitation to Interview at McMaster University MD Program”, and I think such good news emails are generally titled in a similar way.

Of course, you have to open the email anyways…

Dear Mr Liu

On behalf of the Queen’s School of Medicine Admissions Committee, I am pleased to invite you to an admissions interview.

So that was quite the change in emotions within that span of maybe half an hour.

I mean I did think my MCAT score and GPA was probably good enough for Queen’s cutoffs, but the cutoffs change every year, and it’s not like my MCAT was so ridiculously high that I would be guaranteed an interview no matter what.

So that was my day. I honestly had not felt this nervous since waiting to hear about my Loran interview results three years ago. Maybe it was because this was my first day back at school in three months and I was a bit anxious.

For the Queen’s interview, the possible interview dates we can pick from are February 27/28, and March 1/27/28. However, my first term exam period is going to run for February 20 – March 3. Also, I already have my McMaster interview scheduled for March 27, and well, I don’t really want to have to go to the Queen’s one the day after that.

So I’m hoping my exam schedule is released soon (like this week or something), and since I will only have 1 or 2 exams this semester, I think there’s a good chance my exams will be over early and I can select one of the earliest Queen’s interview dates, while still having an extra week off beforehand to prepare.

After yesterday’s very exciting email from McMaster, I received another email from them today:

Hello Joshua – I am following up on my message yesterday regarding your invitation to interview at McMaster. You have been invited to interview based on the information provided at the time of application (in terms of meeting the minimum academic requirements). With the ongoing labour dispute at York University however, it may well be that you will not be able to meet these requirements, unless you have made alternate plans or if York University comes up with a plan that will allow students to complete their credits by the end of the regular term.

Our requirements, which remain unchanged, are that you have completed at least 30 half-year credits and that these are graded, on a transcript and that transcript is in our hands by June 30th.

We wanted you to be aware of this issue prior to accepting the invitation to interview. You are certainly welcome to accept the interview, but we wanted you to be aware that, if successful, you may not be in a position to accept an offer of admission.

Kind of a similar message that Queen’s gave me several weeks ago. I understand this is a policy, and I am not mad at the medical schools for this. It’s not their fault, and this is just an unfortunate situation for students in my situation.

Unfortunately for me, York’s new post-strike schedule proposes that final exams will end on June 2. That doesn’t leave much time for exams to be graded, final grades to be compiled, and official final grades to be posted – plus the time it takes to get the transcript in the hands of the medical school. I’m not sure how long it normally takes to do this, but it could definitely be a bit tight.

So I emailed someone I know at York today about the situation, and she said it’s going to be looked into. She said York is serious about ensuring that students are not disadvantaged in any way because of the strike. Hopefully that’s a good sign. I’ll keep everyone posted.

In other news, I got my McMaster Interview package in the mail today. My interview is going to take place on Saturday, March 28. For those of you who don’t know, McMaster’s interview format is something called Multiple Mini Interviews (MMI) – a type of interview format where there are say 10 stations, and you spend 7-10 minutes at each station doing a different task, such as answering a question, analyzing a situation, role playing, etc. Definitely Google MMI if you are interested.

It seems quite interesting, and I’m not exactly sure if this format plays to my strengths. My gut feeling is that it doesn’t (I think a more traditional interview tends to work to my strengths), but I’m going to come up with a plan for preparing, so we’ll see how that goes.

That’s all for today. Thanks again for everyone’s support along the way!

As you guys know, I recently wrote an article questioning the importance motivations should play in the medical school admissions process.

I wrote that article because it’s one of those issues that is often very one-sided, and I think there are definitely some valid points to the perspective I tried to share. I think the issue is way more complicated than it’s often made out to be.

I knew that article was going to rile some people up, and I’m glad it did. I like hearing other perspectives, and I like debate. I feel like discussing and debating ideas with other people is how I learn best. Being able to understand different sides of an issue is invaluable because then you’re able to see a much larger part of the picture.

For those of you who have been involved in debate, you know that often times you have to argue for a side that you won’t necessarily agree with. Yet, most of the time, the reason you are even debating the issue in the first place is because the issue simply isn’t clear cut. Because, if the truth was obvious, where is the debate?

I think some people might read my articles and think that I’m right a lot of the time just because I wrote it. On the contrary, I think you should question what I write. That’s where the real learning comes in.

I like to write a lot about personal experience and advice. But I also want to write things that challenge you to stop and spend some serious time thinking. I think stuff like that might be even more cool and more valuable than plain old advice (which of course, might be wrong!)

So if you think I’m wrong about something, or if there’s another side to the coin I haven’t shared, let me know!