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More medical schools, including those at Duke, NYU, University of Massachusetts, and Rutgers, are using the Multiple Mini Interview (MMI) to evaluate applicants. This is because it is an effective way to evaluate an applicant’s ability to process a complex scenario or issue under pressure and use critical thinking, teamwork, and communication skills to provide a response. It also reduces interviewer bias by allowing prospective students the opportunity for numerous interactions, which decreases the relative importance of any one interviewer’s opinion.

Multiple Mini Interviews typically consist of between six and ten interview stations, with some schools including rest stations in between. Interviewees are provided with a question prompt or scenario and are given a short period of time to think, before they are asked to engage with the interviewer for a five- to eight-minute response. The questions may ask the applicant to collaborate with other interviewees, act out a scenario, respond to an ethical dilemma, write an essay, or elaborate on a past clinical experience. Whatever the format, interviewers are looking for applicants to showcase a strong sense of ethics and the ability to see multiple viewpoints.

To prepare for an MMI, you should review dozens of practice prompts. While there is no way to predict the exact questions you will be asked, if you practice, you will gain comfort processing a prompt, assessing a situation quickly, applying one of our many frameworks in your response, and you will come into your MMI interview day feeling confident and prepared.

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Stay informed. Read newspapers and health journals every single day to ensure that you’re up to date on key topics in medical ethics and healthcare policy. Write down the topic areas that you encounter frequently and take an informed position. Practice speaking on your position(s), out loud, with an eight-minute time limit.

Participate in Mock Interviews. Mock MMI interviews will give you a realistic interview experience after which you can gather candid feedback. Record these meetings and critique your responses, focusing on how well you verbalized your thought process and supported your viewpoint. You should also take note of how adequately you made use of the available time.

And on Interview Day…

Use your time carefully. Do not rush. During the two minutes of preparatory time, outline your response and the general timing you’d like to abide by to make each of your key points.
If the question allows you to make a counter-argument, do so, and share why you opted for the conclusion you did. If it is an ethical or values-based question, be sure to point out areas of nuance.
Start fresh. Regardless of how well or poorly you did at the last station, leave it behind and focus entirely on current prompt.

American medical schools have traditionally followed a similar structure: two years of preclinical work followed by two years of clinical rotations. But there is an emerging trend within medical education, which accelerates preclinical studies in order to allow students more time to gain clinical experiences. According to the Liaison Committee on Medical Education, during the 2019-2020 academic year, six percent of medical schools ended pre-clinicals after one year, 29 percent ended them after 1.5 years, and 56 percent retained the traditional two year structure.

Kim Lomis, MD, and Vice President for Undergraduate Medical Education Innovations at the American Medical Association, explains that the reasoning for the curriculum update is so that students are better able to contextualize learning within patient care. “Proponents argue that learners are able to better anchor their learning of foundational sciences in a meaningful context, fostering professional identity formation as well as knowledge base,” she said. Early adopters include the elite medical schools at Harvard, Duke, Vanderbilt, and NYU Grossman. Each of these schools now condense preclinical learning into the first year, with students beginning clinical clerkships at the start of their second year.

Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School recently launched its updated curriculum, which starts the clerkship after 18 months. Carol A. Terregino, MD, and Senior Associate Dean for Education and Academic Affairs at Rutgers, notes that the curriculum change is beneficial because it puts an emphasis on “knowledge for practice.”

“Anything that is going to increase students’ clinical knowledge and ability to apply that knowledge to clinical practice is going to make students stronger as future physicians,” she said. She also noted the presence of unknowns related to the recent pass-fail update of the USMLE Step One exam, which could potentially increase the importance of the Step Two exam. “To make sure my students are able to do well and prepare for the licensing exam, I want a longer launching pad to get them there,” she said.

Others say that looking just at “preclinical” and “clinical” years oversimplifies medical education. Students at Ohio University Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine, for example, follow the traditional two and two calendar, but are exposed to clinical experiences through observations and interactions during the first two preclinical years. “Distilling a college’s program to the length of time in preclinical or clinical curriculum misses all the nuances of what each college does to prepare its students. We emphasize patient-centered care from the first day of medical school, making our students well-rounded when they engage in their clinical rotations,” said Jody M. Gerome, DO, and Heritage College’s Senior Associate Dean for Medical Education.

The Medical School Interview: Preparing for the Multiple Mini Interview (MMI)

Trends in Medicine: Shortening the Preclinical Timeline

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