Dundee Medical School Interview 2023: Survival Guide
Dundee Medical School is highly rated in the UK for Medicine and only has 160 spots available each year. This makes the medical school a great size for socialising and for teaching, but also makes it very competitive at the interview stage. This guide and our expert tutors can help!
Before the Interview
After you send off your UCAS application, the university screens each application with a range of tools. You can read about them here.
The Interview at Dundee: Explained
Based on whether you are a UK student or an international student, you will experience a different style of interview. However, the skills assessed and questions asked are the same in each, despite the different formats.
UK students: MMI – involving different interviewers for each station
International students: Classic panel interview – involving the same interviewers for the entire interview.
Both interview structures will involve five scenarios and you will have a break in between the scenarios to prepare. The interview will last approximately 1 hour in total.
What Questions Will I Be Asked in Dundee’s Medical Interview?
The questions vary each year, but they all revolve around the same topics. Dundee has published the main topics that may be covered in the interview.
Critical Thinking
Communication skills
Teamwork
Personal values
Work experience
Below, I will talk about these topics in some more detail, and discuss how to prepare for questions regarding those topics.
Critical Thinking
Dundee is interested in critical thinking skills, and so they will probably give you a scenario, or a problem-solving question. They will probably be based in a medical setting, but they will not expect you to have any medical/scientific knowledge. They mainly want to assess your ability to think on your feet, and so aim to make stations that are a little different to your everyday scenarios Examples can be theoretical scenarios such as:
“you have 2 patients who require a liver transplant, but only one donor organ – please decide who you would allocate the liver to”,
or you may be given a scenario where you have come across a peer who you have discovered is cheating, and you need to figure out what to do next.
Communication Skills
Communication is a key skill, and the interviewers will be assessing how you communicate, your body language, and how you build a rapport with someone. They will mainly be assessing skills such as empathy along with the good listening skills and good communication skills.
You could also be asked to talk about a task where good communication was essential or about a time when you witnessed good or bad communication skills.
Top tip: this could be communication between a doctor and a patient, or it could be between a doctor and a nurse in an MDT-setting. Always draw on your work experience and make sure to reflect on what you saw!
Teamwork
Teamwork is another important attribute of medical school, and you can be asked about it in different ways! Examples include being asked about “a time you worked in a team and some of the challenges you overcame”. You might also be asked to
“talk through how you would approach a potential scenario”, or you could be asked to “talk about examples of teamwork you have seen during work experience”.
Personal Values
This will involve skills such as empathy, motivation for medicine and awareness of weaknesses and strengths. They will be assessed throughout the interview, but you could be asked to talk about something you consider to be a strength/weakness or to talk about a time when you demonstrated good communication skills.
Work Experience
Work experience is a big topic to talk about as interviewers want to see that you have had exposure to the medical world, but they are also very interested in what you took away from those experiences. You will probably be asked to talk about what work experiences you have done or to talk about a specific situation from your work experience that really stood out to you.
Remember: Reflection is key in medicine! Throughout the interview, make sure you are reflecting on all the experiences you talk about. Interviewers love to see what you learn and how you improve.
Top tip: when talking about what you learned, talk about how you implemented changes and how they helped you overcome future tasks.
Final Thoughts
The interview is a stressful time, but the universities just want to know what type of person you are. Practice example questions with friends and family and make sure you’re happy with the main topics but ultimately, be confident in your abilities! Good luck, you got this!
Key Resources
To test yourself in a simulation of the real thing, book a 1-1 Dundee mock interview with us today. We have built this using the information published by the university online.