Preparing for Interviews
So tell me about yourself...
Interviews offer professional schools a chance to discover how well you fit their program. They can judge your communication skills and get a sense of whether they would like to have you as a colleague.
You want to prepare for your interviews--not just wing-it. We can help.
We recommend that you start your interview prep by starting online. This provides a number of benefits to you. First, most professional schools are still offering online interviews. Second, you have access to this practice 24/7. Third, it allows you to watch yourself. Being able to evaluate your own performance is a critical tool in improving your interview performance. Fourth, many schools are using CASPer or Kira in combination with their interviews. These products involve an online interview component.
The Center for Career Opportunities has a system called Big Interview.
Starting Point
- Create an account on Big Interview (upper right corner). This is free to you as a Purdue student.
- Choose Practice in the top navigation bar
- Then Admissions
- Within the Admissions tab you can then choose Medical School, Dental School, Optometry School, or Veterinary School or Graduate School. (They are all fairly similar as most schools ask basic questions. Our office can email you more specialized questions upon request.)
- If you have a webcam, use it to record yourself. Only you will see this unless you choose to share it with others.
- It is very useful to watch yourself to see any mannerisms you might not be aware of.
- You can practice any given question as often as you want.
- You can also choose to do specialty questions such as those in the By Competency section which brings up questions in areas such as Organizational Skills, Communication Skills, Calm Under Pressure, and a number of other key areas.
Specialty Areas
- Pre-Professional Advising has added some field specific interview questions for some specific fields.
- Go to the Custom Sets button on the left side and then scroll through the options and look for your field
Self-Assessment
- If you record yourself, spend time taking a critical look at your performance. Did you maintain eye contact? How was your posture? Did you seem engaged throughout? Use our Interview Self-Assessment to evaluate yourself.
- If you will be having an online interview, also think critically about what you are wearing, your lighting, and the back-drop for your interview.
- Want additional lists of questions specific to your field? Email preprofessional@purdue.edu and request a list of interview questions for your field.
After practicing with Big Interview (see previous drop-down section), you may have found that you struggled with answering particular questions. PPA advisors can help you with that.
- Complete interview practice on Big Interview and record yourself.
- Email preprofessional@purdue.edu and request an Interview Debrief appointment
- You will be assigned an advisor and will need to email a link to your Big Interview recording to go over those questions with which you struggled.
Email a pre-professional advisor or preprofessional@purdue.edu to request resources for interviews. We have lists of practice questions including:
- General Health Program Interview Questions (4 pages of them)
- Vet Interview Questions
- Behavioral Interview Questions (Tell me about a time when...)
- Dental Interview Questions
- Optometry Interview Questions
- Physician Assistant Interview Questions
- PT/OT Interview Questions
- MD/PhD Interview Questions
- MMI Interview Questions
- Questions to ask schools
- Brainstorming your interviews
- Prep Tips & more!