Mini-Interviews For Med School Applicants Focus On Social Skills
Recently the Times ran a leading story on a new med school admission process, with multiple, mini-interviews, like speed dating. The idea is to assess applicants’ social, communication and ethical thinking (?) skills:
…It is called the multiple mini interview, or M.M.I., and its use is spreading. At least eight medical schools in the United States — including those at Stanford, the University of California, Los Angeles, and the University of Cincinnati — and 13 in Canada are using it.
At Virginia Tech Carilion, 26 candidates showed up on a Saturday in March and stood with their backs to the doors of 26 small rooms. When a bell sounded, the applicants spun around and read a sheet of paper taped to the door that described an ethical conundrum. Two minutes later, the bell sounded again and the applicants charged into the small rooms and found an interviewer waiting. A chorus of cheerful greetings rang out, and the doors shut. The candidates had eight minutes to discuss that room’s situation. Then they moved to the next room, the next surprise conundrum…
This sounds great, at first glance. We all want friendly doctors who get along. It might even be fun, kind of like a game. (Sorry for the cynicism, injected in here, but it’s needed.) I’d even bet that the interviewers and successful interviewees would emerge feeling good about the process and themselves.
But don’t you think most premed students, who get through college, and numerous letters of recommendation, take the MCATS and achieve scores high enough to get an interview, are smart enough to get through this social test without failing? It’s what these young men and women are thinking, internally, that matters. According to the same article, the country’s 134 medical schools have long relied almost entirely on grades and the MCAT to sort through over 42,000 applicants for nearly 19,000 slots.
My math: that means nearly 19 out of 42 (almost half!) of med school applicants get in, here in the U.S.
If we want future doctors who are smart enough to guide patients through tough, data-loaded, evidence-based and ethically-complex decisions, we should make the academic requirements for entry more rigorous, especially in the areas of science, math and analytical thinking.
*This blog post was originally published at Medical Lessons*
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