The next week after, I had interviews in New York: NYU and Columbia P&S. Here follows my reviews of both schools, as well as UVa (note that these are inevitably biased by my personal experiences and impressions):
UVa: I had a nice time here. I first drove to my student host's place and settled in. She was maybe a tad awkward but generally very nice and generous. She lives with her BF, who was quite friendly. After asking her where I could eat, I found myself at a hipster-type fast casual place with a Chipotle set-up that serves sandwiches and salads. Ate my dinner, went back, and called it an early night.
After my student host showed me to the admissions office, we parted ways, and I waited in the library reviewing my notes on UVa for a while before the office opened. The administrative staff was very gracious and hospitable, showcasing Southern charm. My fellow interviewees were either still in college or maybe one to two years out -- quite young, all either from the South or the West Coast, and all fine and friendly. There were about eight of us or so. We went filled out some paperwork and then sat in and had one of the admissions faculty come and give us a presentation. I liked her a lot -- very charming, she had memorized all our backgrounds and recited each of these to introduce us to one another. I enjoyed the presentation -- it just felt generally pleasant, with the school selling its 1.5 year pre-clinical curriculum (imitated by others across the country) to give students some clinical exposure and reinforce material before Step 1, giving a boost to scores. I also remember this explicitly: "The philosophy of UVa is to nurture students and let them decide what kind of physicians they want to be." Okay, not verbatim, but essentially what she said. I liked that, and I liked the personal touch lent to the talk and the prospects of personal mentorship. Research opportunities were discussed, though I don't remember my interest being particularly piqued at anything.
Afterward, a couple of MS4 students came to take us on a campus tour. UVa is a beautiful school (though I suppose I knew this since I had visited CC before). The lecture halls and auditoriums were nicely constructed, all consistent with the architectural style of the rest of the university. The hospital looked like a nice, standard hospital. After a fellow interviewee chatted me up enough, I was compelled to reveal my "story" as to how I eventually came to choose to apply to medical school, and certainly got a lot of "oohs" and "ahhs" about my medical accident. I was used to this at this point.
Lunch was great! Buffet style, with plenty of Southern type food and other types. I honestly don't remember exactly what I ate, but I just remember it being very good and with good dessert (important, obviously).
After lunch, we went back to the admissions office to wait for our interviews. Essentially, a couple of faculty and a student were conducting the interviews, and each interviewee had two half-hour interviews, all kind of dispersed over the course of a few hours in the afternoon or so. My first interview was with a faculty who found my story really intriguing and was glad I seemed to be fine and healthy. Honestly, I felt like this interview was fairly easy and relaxed -- I honestly felt like he wanted to just admit me. It was a nice feeling. Still kept my guard up though with the student interviewer, though she was also warm and relaxed. She asked fair questions about whether medicine was what I really wanted to do, particularly from a financial, practical standpoint, and was also curious about my Alternative Spring Break experience in Chicago.
That was it. We were all pretty much finished at that point, so we all took leave and said our goodbyes. I texted friend JX, an MD/PhD student here, and hung out at a coffee shop for a couple of hours, just chatting about Charlottesville and UVa and medicine and life in general. It was cool -- I honestly hadn't known him that well, mostly through VL, but I had a good time.
And then that was it! Three hour drive back home that night. Email the very next day told me I had been admitted! (I kind of knew it was coming after my faculty interviewer responded to my thank you email extremely positively.)
NYU: the first New York interview, a few days after my UVa admission. I took the bus and walked over to the school campus, where my student host lives. The dorms at NYU are literally just that -- dorms. Not much space, common rooms and kitchens, apparently a gym. Frankly I didn't like it. But at least each apartment had a bathroom, and admittedly, I wasn't really used to life in Manhattan.
Host was a nice guy, though not the most active. Kind of just took me in and then went off to study and left me to my own devices. Can't blame him for needing to study though. And we did have a nice pizza dinner together. He told me to consider where I'd be "most happy" as I went through the interview process. Wise words, though I do wonder if that's how he rationalizes his admission to NYU versus his rejection at Hopkins, his original top choice.
Went to the admissions office in the morning. After packing away my stuff in a closet (along with everyone else's), we sat and waited until one of the admission staff came and briefed us on how the day was supposed to go. We were to listen to one of the admissions faculty deliver a presentation on the school, then be split into two groups: one would take a tour of the hospital and then do the interviews, while the other would do these in reverse order. In between, there was to be a lunch with current students.
I was in the group that toured the hospital first. I'll be honest: even at this point in only my second interview, hospital tours were beginning to blur. We toured three hospitals if I remember correctly: a public hospital, a private hospital, and a VA hospital. I was impressed by the public hospital, Bellevue -- beautiful lobby and perhaps the widest range of patients I'd ever heard (foreign royalty, a poor guy from Brooklyn, etc.).
The lunch went just fine. The meal was okay, and the current students seemed happy to answer questions, talk about their lives at NYU, etc. Shortly after, we organized for our interviews...
These were a little weird. The way Multi Mini Interviews (MMIs) work are that basically there several stations where we each rotate. At each station, you stand outside the room and read a prompt on the door for two minutes, then go inside and discuss the prompt with an interviewer. The prompts ranged in topic. A few in my own words, as best as I can remember:
- If you had to make a documentary, what would you focus on?
- Imagine a friend asks you for help on her or his college personal statement. How much help is it okay to provide?
- There was a free station where you sat there for eight minutes.
- There was also station that was meant to be a "traditional" interview. Lasted about 15-20 minutes, with questions such as "How would you friends describe you?" and "Why medicine?" Fairly typical questions, but what made it unnerving was that the interviewer showed absolutely no emotion, which made it awkward, particularly when I meant to inject humor into some of my answers.
I can't remember any more questions. Right after the last station, we quickly convened, were told some instructions by the staff on thank you notes and updates and that sort of thing, and... that's it! I peaced out pretty quickly into the rain and called for an Uber to Washington Heights, to meet my host at Columbia P&S... the subject of the next post!
