UAB Interview

I woke up and started my routine: showering, making coffee, and getting dressed. When I got to the dressing part of my routine I was still on time, but I realized that I had brought a shirt that was too small for me. I spent twenty minutes struggling with the top button of my shirt. My fingers were sore, and my neck looked like I had just survived a strangulation attempt from an assassin wielding piano wire.

I made it to the interview building feeling a little rushed and very cold. As soon as I made it to the room for the orientation I was pulled aside and photographed for use by the admissions committee. I don’t know what you look like when you’re trying to recover from the lowest temperatures of the year and a struggle with a shirt hell-bent on throttling you to death, but I’m pretty sure that my smile would have looked at home of the face of a serial killer.

At orientation we got a brief overview of the day and this interesting little tidbit: Immediately after all of the day’s interviews, the admissions committee would meet and share their opinion of each applicant. Then each member would fill out a report on the applicant which would be used to come up with scores for each applicant in various categories. Then the kicker: if each of your scores was above a predetermined threshold, they would send you notification of your acceptance on the very next day.

Armed with this knowledge (and the added incentive/pressure that went along with it), I rushed from the orientation to my first of three twenty-five minute interviews.

I was ushered into a decent sized office by my first member of the committee, and what followed was an amazingly laid back chat about my extracurricular activities. In what seemed like a blink of the eye, the interview concluded .We had gone slightly over the time limit as the interviewer pitched the reasons why I should come to UAB, but that was fine, as I had a break before my next interview.  There was a room designated for the applicants who had a break, complete with bagels, chewy bars, and orange juice, where we gathered and discussed what we had experienced with our interviewers. No one had had my second interviewer, but one guy had my last interviewer.

“Yeah, he basically just had me tell him what I did each year. I wish I had reviewed my AMCAS more so I didn’t make as many mistakes as I did.”

I had not reviewed the timeline of all of the things I had done, so I was a little nervous, wondering if this was a test to see how well I knew my history or to see if I was lying about anything. But, the time came for my second interview and I tried to wash those doubts away. I knocked on the door of my second interviewer’s office and was greeted by a middle aged woman who sat me down and gave me a warm greeting.

“Hey Jonathan! Now, you’re the one from Palm Beach, right?”

Me: Yeah, that’s where I was born.

Her: My husband is from there and we go down there all the time and I of course get plenty of shopping done.

Me: Wow, what a coincidence! (Internally: Yay! We’re friends now! And friends accept their friends into their medical school, right?)

But something went immediately wrong.  She asked me about my research, so I launched into the explanation of the projects I had been involved in. As I was speaking, I started listening to myself, and to my horror I realized that I sounded robotic and disinterested. As I began to realize what I sounded like my confidence drained from me and my voice became more and more faint and shaky. Finally I finished my account and tried to regroup before the next question, which was: what do you think you have gained from your research that you can take with you in your career in medicine? It was a simple question, nothing too difficult, but my mind snapped. All that came out of my mouth was work vomit. I was saying words, and they were somewhat linked to the question that had been asked, but it was just a string of items connected by ummms, therefores, and I believes.  Not long after I forced myself to stop speaking and the interview moved on, she asked if I had any questions for her. I glanced at my watch and realized that the interview had only lasted ten minutes. Ten minutes! Ten minutes? My last one went over twenty-five. What happened? Oh my goodness, she’s going to recommend that they throw my file away and pretend like I never came here.

I managed to ask my questions and then she thanked me, and showed me to the door. There was no attempt to convince me that I should come to UAB, just a goodbye, which in my state of frailty I even managed to mess up. My brain was so astounded with how poorly I thought I had performed that I could only parrot her as we said goodbye.

Her: Thank you for coming in.

Me: Thank you.

Her: It’s been my pleasure.

Me: My pleasure.

When I reached the waiting room, there were a few questions about why my interview had been so short, which I managed to dismiss with the coy statement, “well, I guess she got everything that she wanted.”

I managed to relax a little in the waiting room, until I remembered that my last interviewer would be grilling me on the specifics of my AMCAS application, which I didn’t have access to at the moment. After thirty minutes of raking my brain for everything that I put on the application, I walked to my final interview, prepared to accept my fate.

A nice older man greeted me and offered to take my coat as I entered his office. We sat down and it began.

Him: So, remind me what all you did in highschool…

The interview continued in that fashion until we finished my third year at UGA.

Him: So that does it for college. You graduated early and took a year off. So what did you do?

Me: Ummm, actually I spent four years in college.

Him: I thought it was only three. You came in with a year’s worth of AP credits.

Me: Yes, but then I decided to do two majors and a minor, so I stayed for the whole four years.

Him: But you graduated in 2010 right?

Me: Yes, but I started in 2006.

Him: Right, three years.

At this point I was getting worried. I didn’t want to argue with or embarrass the person who had the power to decide my future, but I also wanted the opportunity to talk about all that I did in my fourth year. I opted to lay out the years that corresponded with my years at UGA and hope I didn’t come across as condescending.

Me: Okay, 06-07 was Freshman year, 07-08 was Sophomore, 08-09 was Junior, 09-10 was Senior, and now I’m taking a year off and working in a lab. (Then I took a deep breath and hoped for the best)

Him: Oh… That’s right, so what happened Senior year?

Hooray! The day was saved. The rest of the interview went off without a hitch and in no time I was enjoying lunch and the campus tour (and hoping against hope that I would get an email from them the next day).