Interview questions

I was just wondeirng, besides the "why orthopaedics" question, what other key interview questions shoule we be prepared to answer?

based on my experience last year, i got the "why orthopaedics" a few times, so it's definitely one you need to be prepared to answer effectively.

Alot of questions will focus on your application, esp in terms of research or activities that you have been involved with. Some places will pimp you (ie AGH and LIJ (the latter is based on my friends' experiences) ; at AGH at least the questioning was not malignant in the least, just more to get a sense of your thought process.

In terms of personality probing questions, I got asked about "which superhero i wanted to be", "name three people I would go to dinner with and why", "where do you see yourself in 10 years" , "what do you do in your spare time", "what do you do for hand eye coordination", "why did you apply to our program" and so on.

It's definitely a mosaic of questions and will vary from program to program.

Some places had a couple of panel interviews, and others had multiple rooms through which you had to progress through.

Good luck and I hope this helps

OG2008

great, thanks!

When I interviewed applicants as a chief, I did the following:

- review their numbers and verify that things seemed "normal" for the group that had been selected for interviews. If there was a glaring discrepancy, such as an unusually low board score, I would make a note of that and ask the faculty about it later.

- focused on all awards, activities, etc. listed on the application. I figured if they listed it, they want to talk about it - IN DETAIL. If someone put down something strange or unique, I found that either they were really passionate about it or shouldn't have put it on there. One guy didn't know the meaning of a word contained in the name of an award he received.

- if someone wasn't easy to talk to and I was out of ideas, instead of asking the mundane "desert island" questions, I asked them to agree or disagree with a statement like, "health care is a right". Not to see whether they agreed with me, but just to get inside their mind to see how they reasoned.

- be passionate about something - the more unique, the better! I talked with one guy for the whole 20 minutes about his online course/degree/certification in refrigerator maintenance.

Any three people dead, or alive, with who you would like to have dinner...
What a dumb question