OSU ASDA

Interview

Interview is an very important part of the application. So make sure you are super prepared before you go into the interview room.So why dental school interview candidate? Interview is a way to filter candidates that the dental school don’t like. They are looking for sociability (how you interact with other students, faculties, professors and patients).Important link: SDN interview feedback. you can find what is the schools' interview types and what are possible questions.

Interview types

MMI(Multiple Mini interviews, OSU, and UM have this)

Short and fast, like fast dating
Allow interviewer to know you in a short amount of time
8-10min answer questions
switch seat

MMI is not intimidating. The most important thing is to keep your answer concise. You do not have time to say too many descriptive sentence. By the way, you should speaking loudly because there will be many candidate speak at the same time.

Group interview(USC have this)

Basically, a group of candidates will be given a few questions; thencandadites will give their own answer.Dental school want to know how students behave in a group

One to One interview(most common)

This type interview is like having a conversation with interviewee. It usually take 30-40min. During the interview, just carm down and imagine that you are speaking to your classmate.

What should I do after receiving interview?

Celebrate! No... it is too early, celebrate after you get into dental school. The following is what you should do.

Check SDN

Look at the stress level and common type questions and students’ feedback.
Search what type interview the school use.

Research the school

Make sure you take MANY notes
- Clinic education
- Curriculum
- Research
- Class size
Check their social media
- Take note about what they are sharing
- Look at the innovation and special events that the school wants others to know
- Know what their students are doing
Talk to a current dental student (if you can find one)
- Talk to a current student is really important! Don’t be shy, dental students like speak to prospective students
- Not too long, 10-20min

Prepare specific question

There are many ways to prepare and organize the interview questions, but here I recommend to use a spread sheet(either electronical or on paper) to build an inventory of interview questions. There is an example of my spread sheet. Note: for question type, you do not need to use the type names that used there. You could define the types by yourself

Example

School	Question	Question type	Why they ask this question	Response
OSU	Why you choose OSU	School Specific	They want to know your intention and how much do you know about this school.	Facilities DDS/PhD dual degree ...

Question types:

Behavior: tell us what about yourself, Why dentistry
School specific: Why xxx School
Ethnic: How do you deal with this dilemma
Extracurricular activities: Research, shadowing, club and volunteering

How to build your story bank

Before preparing for specific questions, you should build an inventory of your story. A story do not need to be too long; you only need to use a few sentences to summarize your stories. Under each story, write down which question the stories corresponding to. Following are examples of the story bank.

I am an international student and I have hard time in communicating in English. I overcame the language barrier by joining clubs and repetitively practicing.
- Tell me about yourself
- Tell me how do you overcome difficulties
That one time I note cheating between my students. To comply with intergrity policy, I report that COAM case.
- Tell me a situation when you faced an ethical dilemma and how you handle it

After finishing your story bank, now it is time to learn how to use the stories. Stories are imporant, but more important is how you narrate your stories. There are many ways to frame a story; one of the most common and efficient ways is STAR (Situation Task Action Result).

Situation: Describe the situation that you were in or the task that you needed to accomplish. This situation can be from a shadowing, from a volunteer experience, or any relevant event.

Task: What goal were you working toward? What problem are you facing in that situation?

Action: Describe the actions you took to address the situation with an appropriate amount of detail and keep the focus on YOU. What specific steps did you take and what was your particular contribution?

Result: Describe the outcome of your actions and don’t be shy about taking credit for your behavior.

Now let's use an example to show how to apply STAR method.

Situation

During my third year of college, I was elected Vice President for Professional Programs for my student association. The duties of the position included securing speakers for our meetings, advertising the programs to the campus community, introducing speakers, and evaluating each program.

Task

Previous attendance at meetings had decreased substantially due to a decrease in the overall student population. The goal was to implement programs to address the professional development of our association and increase attendance by 25% compared to the prior year's figures.

Solution

I assembled a team to help with the program design and speaker selection. I developed a survey to determine the members' professional interests and ideas for possible speakers and topics. My team and I had each member complete the survey. Then we randomly selected members for a focus group interview. I had learned about this research technique in my marketing class and thought it would help us identify why attendance had dropped.

Result

Because of the information we gathered from the surveys and interviews, we selected speakers for the entire year, produced a brochure describing each program and the featured speaker. Under my leadership, attendance increased 150% over the previous year.

Interview tips