Our clients are already getting interview offers from combined medical programs at places like Drexel and even from traditional college programs, like Princeton University! We thought it would be helpful to share a few secrets to ace the interview!

When you're preparing for your interview, come up with a list of questions that they could ask you. While we provide a list of questions on this website and even more in the BS/MD book, there are an abundance of questions interviewers like to throw at you sometimes. The interviewers can choose to spend the entire interview (at least at the undergrad level), talking to you about fruit. Yes, fruit. What's your favorite kind of fruit? Why? How do you associate yourself with that fruit? The list can go on and on. And while it is fun perhaps preparing yourself for these random questions, don't spend too much time on them as the potential to land one of these questions is far too slim while the variation of questions they can ask is far too wide. Imagine spending a half hour perfecting your response to the "fruit" question when they instead ask you about vegetables...

Know who you are and focus on that. Come up with a few specific and unique descriptions of yourself, and find an example in your life that attests to that description. One of the famous questions that throw students for a loop is "Tell me about yourself." This question warrants a brief description of your family life, where and how you were raised, any background information about yourself that you want to give such as what you like to do, and closing off with how you're excited to be there interviewing. Most people try to immediately contort the question and answer the question "Why do you want to be a doctor?" Don't do this. Slow yourself down, take your time answering the "tell me about yourself" question briefly without giving them too much information about things that they will certainly ask you more about, in more detail, later.

Make sure to look at your resume and know it inside and out - not just what the experience is called but what you did and specific examples in a few of them that you may have to talk about. If you were in the Red Cross Club in high school, don't just say you were. Tell them what you did in that club, generally, but have specific examples (i.e. organizing a specific blood drive) that you will be ready to talk about if the opportunity presents itself. They love asking about times you've had a specific problem and how you resolved that problem - so have an answer ready for that one too.

The one thing about practicing your answers is that you should practice them to an optimal level. The more you practice the better you get - certainly. But excessive practicing leads to responses that sound "rehearsed" and unnatural. This is not what you want. You want to sound as though you have thought about the topic before but not that you have a response memorized. While you're preparing yourself for the questions that could be asked, jotting down bullet points of ideas you want to mention is more helpful than writing out sentences for your responses.

Of course, always have your clothes ready the night before the interview. Make sure to know exactly where you are going and be on time. If you're serious about the BS/MD path, punctuality shouldn't be new to you. Always give a firm handshake. Smile a lot. Be genuine. There's nothing wrong with taking several seconds to pause and reflect on a question before answering. Just don't fill that time with "umms" and "uhhs."

At Direct BS/MD, we of course have a panel of experts with their own experiences interviewing at dozens of guaranteed medical programs across the country. Our mock interview and coaching sessions take a little over an hour, but it provides you with so much helpful information that you can use to ace your interview. It is our most widely appreciated service by all of our clients! Let us help you.

The direct medical program application process is definitely a challenging one. At Direct BS/MD, our advisory board has gone through the process by getting some of the best interview offers as well as some remarkable program acceptances! We're strong believers that the more you play the game, the better you get at it - and we've been playing for a long time. We decided to start this blog to disseminate key information to our daily readers as the application cycle progresses.

Times are changing and the combined BS/MD applicant pool is getting more competitive. Students are presenting with better SAT scores and more volunteer hours. So what sets you apart?

The acceptance criteria are dynamic. Something that was true last year may not be this year because of the increasing applicant competitiveness. Students are going above and beyond requirements (high SAT/GPA/volunteer hours) such as becoming EMT trained or starting their own non-profit organizations. Don't be alarmed, however. These are just extreme examples of ways students are setting themselves apart. You could do anything that makes you stand out from among the cookie-cutter applicants. Do something unique that interests you, while helping others.

Whatever you do, make sure you have a great, continuous experience that you can talk about in your essays and at interviews. Your essays are so incredibly important in order to get an invitation for a guaranteed admission program out of high school. These essays will allow you to "show" and not "tell" the application committee about your experiences, and how it has impacted your life. We've seen dozens of essays that definitely would not have passed the application committee, and we have helped our clients transform them into winning essays. Once interview season rolls around, we specialize in providing a mock interview that has been proven to help every student. The interview is the last straw in the haystack, and it is the most important part. We'll talk more about this next week!

In starting this website (and this blog), we are trying to help applicants like you to gain admission into these highly competitive direct BS/MD & BA/MD programs. At Direct BSMD, we're not salespeople but we are BS/MD experts who are in the business of helping. With a 100% success rate of 2012-13 cycle applicants gaining admission into a guaranteed med program, we believe we're doing it well. 

Visit this blog weekly for tips and advice from our BS/MD experts who know the field inside and out.