OzTREKK Ambassadors: How to ace your multiple mini interviews!

25 May 2020

Hey guys! It’s Brittani, and I’m here today to help you prepare for your MMIs. Multiple mini interviews can be super intimidating, especially when your performance could mean the difference between getting into professional school or not. But, from my experience, if you prepare the right way and be yourself, you should have a great chance for success! So here are my top 5 tips on how to ace your MMIs!

dentistry student
You can ace your MMI!

1. Start. Preparing. Now.

One of the most common mistakes I’ve seen friends of mine do is to not start prepping for their interviews until they receive the invite. Usually when schools send out interview invites, it’s 1–2 weeks before the interview date. This is nowhere near enough time to solidly prepare for such a daunting task. MMIs by nature require lots of knowledge of different topics such as ethics/bioethics, behavioural principles, as well as knowledge about the MMI itself and what kinds of questions you will be asked. On top of that, you need practice! Practice speaking, practice formulating answers, and practice in a formal interview setting. All these things take time, so start preparing for your interview before you even receive the offer! I promise it will pay off. 😊

2. Read up on bioethics

A majority of medical schools and dental schools use bioethical questions in their MMIs. Therefore, it’s a great idea to read up on the principles of bioethics before walking into your MMI. I read a great book that really helped me understand bioethics and gave me a lot of insight into how to think critically about ethical dilemmas. Even if your MMI doesn’t have specific bioethical questions, you’re pretty much guaranteed to have ethical questions of some kind. The principles you will learn from studying bioethics will help you because they are widely applicable across a range of topics.

3. I’d like to phone a friend, please

Grab a friend! Preferably a friend who is also preparing for MMIs, but any friend who you can trust to give constructive feedback will work. Preparing alone can be beneficial and help you remain focused, but preparing with a friend will open your mind to tons of new ideas and ways of thinking that you may never have thought of on your own. They can also do mock interviews with you and then give you feedback on how you can improve.

4. Research your schools!

This is super important. A lot of information can be found online about each school you’re applying to and how their interview process works. Knowing what style of interview (in person, Skype, etc.) and what kind of questions they typically ask (behavioural, ethical, situational, collaborative, etc.) can be a huge advantage. Knowing these things will help you tailor your preparations to focus on certain aspects.

5. It’s not always what you say, but how you say it

This is super important to remember when undergoing MMIs. The interviewers want to not only see if you can answer the questions in a creative, logical, and organized way, but they also are interested in your speaking skills, confidence, body language, and personality. Therefore, how you present yourself and illustrate your answers is just as (if not more) important than the actual answers that you give. It’s key to remember as well, that MMIs are marked independently through multiple stations. So, if you mess up one station, the next station will be completely separate, and the new interviewer has no idea that you didn’t do so well on the last station. So, you have another chance to start over and present yourself in the best way you can!

So those are my top 5 tips! I will also provide some links below with books and resources that I used to help me prepare for my MMI. I hope this helps you on your journey and I hope you find success on the paths you choose. 😊

Good luck, friends!

Griffith Dentistry student Brittani K

Resources to help you prepare for your MMI

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