Northern Ontario School of Medicine

How relaxed the whole interview day would be, and how different MMIs can be from school to school.

A lot of interviews (400) for only 56 seats.

The enthusiasm of the students, faculty, administration

read the school website, read up on Northern health issues, improved familiarity with initiatives in Ontario health care system and how they pertain to rural/remote regions, read "Doing Right" by Hebert.

I was SUPER stressed before hand, but once you get going the time just flies by.

I was unaware before the interview that they throw out your worst answer...apparently they said it in the room, but I didn't hear it. Having that knowledge would have allowed me to ''shake off'' my one bad station a little easier.

That they interviewed 415 people for 56 spots....why the extra 15??

how organized the whole process was. Everything was on time.

Read ''Doing Right''...a medical ethics book, read thestar.com daily, reflected at why I wanted to be an MD.

Those applying/accepting offers at NOSM must carefully consider the environment as well as the school itself.

How degraded the city was and how a significant part of the community is underprivileged/disenfranchised.

Although I respect their efforts to promote medicine in Northern Ontario, Thunder Bay is likely the most abysmal city I have visited. Friends comment on how dangerous the city is and how they don't go to campus at night because the campus is surrounded by bush, thus making rapes not uncommon. A gentleman told me to watch my back in fear of getting stabbed by locals. The general environment seemed unwelcoming. One restaurant owner didn't even know Thunder Bay was host to a new medical school!

CMAJ's Bioethics for Clinicians

Excellent... (advice) If you make it to the interview it is safe to assume you are smart enough to be there. Just relax and go with the flow. Dont be fake, be real, and honest...

Nothing, i'm awesome and prepared ahead of time...hahaha

The monologue, as opposed to dialogue of the MMI. Would prefer actual conversation.

The school, staff, volunteers, they all were inviting and comforting...

Prepared a series of questions and ethical concepts oriented to medicine, culture, sociology, politics, etc etc...

It's too bad that the Q&A session with the students wasn't before the interviews. It seems like anything (introductions, chit-chat) that is not part of your official answer is not part of the scoring of the interview. You have two minutes to read a senario/question on the door before entering the room to talk at the interviewer. The interviewers are instructed to give almost no feedback. They do have some follow up questions that they may or may not ask you depending on time, you would like to answer follow-up questions or if you had already addressed them in your answer. Eight minutes seems really long for one question, but in practice, it seemed really short and I had no problem talking for almost that lenght of time.

You can't ask the interviewer any questions/they can't answer any questions about themselves. I wish I could have known what their role/position was (student, resident, community member, staff, faculty). Not new to me, but maybe of note to others: you are not allowed to bring ANYTHING into the interviews with you (no pens, no paper, no water). They provide you with water to bring to the interview with you. If you arrive too early you just end up sitting in a room talking with other nervous interviewees.