Medical How do I prepare for the following interview questions?

[Mr.Smile12]

Thanks again for helping me with my naiveness about the medical school application process. I have yet another question. I am attending an interview at a school with a mission heavily focused on primary care, and 95% of my shadowing hours are specailties (300+ hours to 9 hours in primary care). The school is a good fit since it is very close to my home and have good match stats, but who knows before I attend the interview. I also have 10+ hours in non-clinical volunteering compared to 125+ hours in the hospital. It is also noted that I work a lot and have leadership experiences since undergrad. Also, although I am interested in surgery, radiology, and physical med, I am open to any specialty I see fit.

I don’t want to disclose too much information, but what would be the best strategies to overcome these weak points, which are more specailty shadowing hours, and few non-clinical volunteering hours. My plan is to incorporate what I said in the aforementioned paragraph. Any tips are appreciated. Thank you!

What resources are available to you on mock interviews? What is the school's interview day and question format? You should be practicing. Without more specific information, the usefulness of any advice given is very limited.

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[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

Honestly, the best way to overcome the issues with the low hours of non-clinical volunteering would be to start some more volunteering. Unless you have an acceptance in hand, you should always be preparing to reapply. If you already have something in mind that you're going to do or can start something up, you can address it by pointing that out.

As for having more specialty hours, I had the same issue. I had an interview at a school that focused on primary care, and I just told them flat out that I shadowed where I could but that I was keeping an open mind and was open to all specialties, including primary care. I got accepted.

As above, the format of the interview will determine sort of exactly how you can address these things, but keeping those things in mind will help.