University of Michigan Medicine Interview Questions

​Motivation and Insight into Medicine

• How do you think culture affects medical practice and patient interactions?
• What is the difference between a nurse practitioner and a physician?
• What kind of environment do you want to practice medicine in the future?
• Do you think diversity is an important element in medical school?
• What could be potential problems that you face at the onset of your medical education?
• How will your X experience help you be a good doctor?
• What specialty are you interested in and why?
• In your opinion, what qualities should a doctor have? And which ones do you possess?
• Why do you want to study in Michigan?
• Why do you want to pursue medicine?
• If you were the dean of a medical school, what one course would you want to have included in the curriculum?
• Why do you want to be specifically a doctor, not a nurse?
• Tell me how your undergrad major would help you to study medicine?
• Tell me more about your X clinical experience.
• What research experience do you have?
• What is one of the biggest problems in healthcare today?
• Where do you see yourself in 10 years?
• What other fields would you be interested in if you weren’t going to become a doctor?
• Do you think you will be having time for extra-curricular activity while you are in medical school?
• In your opinion, what are possible conflicts might arise in medical school?
• What would you like to do in Michigan?
• What are some challenges in medicine that you saw in your shadowing or volunteer experiences?
• What do you think about the difficulties women face in pursuing medicine?
• What would you do to reform the healthcare sector?
• Which side of practicing medicine are you most interested in: the scientific or the compassionate?
• What would you want to do with your medical degree?
• What was the doctor’s X shadowing experience like?
• What are three drawbacks of practicing medicine?
• Tell me about your experience as an EMT.
• What do you think about Managed Care?
• Do you think training on mannequins detracts from patient contact?
• What are your thoughts about the current health plan?
• How has How has the medical malpractice influenced the healthcare price?
• In your opinion, what responsibilities do physicians have towards the public?
• How would you choose to spend $100,000 in the medical field?
• In your opinion, who provides the greatest benefit to society: the primary care physician, the public health worker, or the entertainer?
• If you have a big budget to spend on AIDS education and research, how would you split it up between them and why?
• In your clinical experience, what did you learn about medicine that you were not aware of earlier?
• What are some problems you think you will go through as a physician on a personal and societal level?
• How would you incorporate your faith with practicing medicine?
• If you could pick a medical figure to meet, who would they be?
• What do you think about a colleague who delivered exceptional medical care 29 days of the month, but gave poor medical care one day a month?
• What are three good thing about HMOs?

Ethical Dilemmas

• What is your opinion about University of Michigan’s most infamous alumnus, Dr. Kevorkian and your thoughts on the physician-assisted suicide?
• What would you do if you had the choice of giving a liver to a 25-year old who could go a year without it, or 55-year old alcoholic who needed it immediately?
• Would you legalize marijuana?
• What is the difference between medical ethics and personal morals?
• If you had a patient in jail who faced the choice of having a kidney transplant or being on dialysis for the rest of his life, what would you do?
• What is your opinion on abortion?
• What do you think about euthanasia?
• What would you do if you could give a small town’s children all immunizations, or give three patients heart transplants or else they would die?
• If you have two patients about to die, and you can only save one of them, how and based on what standards would you choose?

Scientific/Medical Topics

• What is maple syrup disease?
• What did Jonas Salk invent?
• In your opinion, what are the pros and cons of EMRs and what do you think about integrating more technology to the healthcare?
• Explain what apoptosis is, and does it happen in normal cells?
• What do you know about euthanasia and in which states is it legal?
• Pick a medical topic and argue both sides of it.
• What do you know about HIPAA?
• In which European country is physician-assisted suicide legally practiced?

 
Case/Article Reviews

• What are your thoughts on the Terri Schiavo case?
• Do you think distribution of wealth in the metro Detroit community is equitable?
• Did you hear about that surgeon who branded the letters “UK” on a woman’s uterus- the University of Kentucky?
• What are your opinions on the current Iran conflict?

 
Communication Stations​

• How would you plan on telling the families of children with terminal illness that there is nothing that can be done?
• How would you deal with noncooperative patients?
• How would you explain your research to a 12-year old kid?
• As a physician, how will you communicate with patients who you don’t personally like?
• How would you emotionally handle and respond to a woman who blames you for the death of her husband who refused to listen to your medical advice?
• How would you communicate with a patient who refuses to take their prescribed meds due to religious beliefs and what would you do?
• How would you describe the American healthcare system to a foreigner?
• How would you convince someone to invest in X instead of Y?
• How will you communicate death of a patient?
• How would you explain HMO to a non-US resident?

 
Prioritisation Tasks

• What coping mechanisms do you use to relive stress?

 
Teamwork Tasks

• What significant leadership roles you had and what did you learn from them?
• How do you work in a team?

 
General / Personal Statements:

• Do you think the relatively privileged status of Ann Arbor is a problem?
• What book have you read that had an impact on the way you think?
• What is the most human rights issue you feel strongly about?
• Do you consider yourself a risk-taker?
• What are you hobbies?
• How was your undergrad experience?
• What are your strong and weak points?
• If you got to have a superpower, what would it be?
• What did you do over the summer?
• What is the biggest obstacle you encountered in your life and how did you face it?
• Why did not you get a recommendation from your research lab?
• Why do you think attending a big school would be beneficial?
• How come you got X in this section of the MCAT?
• What was hard about your X volunteering work?
• How would your friends describe you in 3 words?
• How you would you define a successful career?
• What is the most significant thing you have done in college?
• What would you like said at your eulogy?
• In your opinion, what should society do about the homeless?