#4: What is your main strength?

Medical school interviews

Hello everyone!

I hope you’re all having a great weekend. Today we’re discussing another question commonly asked in medical school interviews: “what is your main strength?”.

When answering this question, it is important to be concise and structured. You want to be able to provide sufficient detail to back up your point, and structure it in a way that makes complete sense to the interviewer.

The first part of your answer should clearly outline what your strength is. You can choose whatever quality you like. However, you must ensure that this is an appropriate quality that relates to being a good doctor. A few examples could be teamwork, leadership, empathy, or problem solving.

After this, you must then provide an example of when you demonstrated this strength. An appropriate way of communicating an example like this would be to utilise the STAR method:

Situation - Set the scene to provide context

Task - Describe what had to be done and why

Action - What did YOU do in this situation?

Result - How did this situation resolve and what feedback did you receive?

Once this example is fully explained, you must then never forget to reflect on how you know that this quality will make you a good medical student/doctor. Did you observe another doctor demonstrate this quality while on work experience? Was this quality mentioned in a medical-related book? This provides a relevant cadence to your answer and allows the interviewer to be certain that you understand the relevance of these qualities.

If you would like us to cover any particular topic in the next newsletter, please feel free to contact us! Enjoy the rest of your weekend and best of luck in your med school interviews!

Chris from ApplyMedic.