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 University of Leicester Medical School interview Explained
Interview invitations from Leicester will be sent out from late November to mid-February. Interviews themselves will be in December, January and February. Dates can be found here. Leicester follow an MMI format for their interviews. There are 8 stations at 7 minutes each. This includes a minute of reading time between each station. The interview should last about an hour.
What Questions Will I Be Asked in the University of Leicester Medical School Interview?
The questions vary each year, but they all revolve around the same topics. Leicester has published the main themes that come up in the interview, and below we go through what they are and how you could be asked about them.
Motivation to study medicine and genuine interest in the medical profession
This is a very important question to master! You will likely be asked to talk about what made you apply to medicine over other healthcare professions, or to talk about your experiences with the profession. It’s a great time to talk about your work experience.
Top tip: When talking about your work experience, always talk about what you learnt, as well as what you saw!
Insight into your own strengths and weaknesses + Ability to take responsibility for your own actions
Knowing your strengths and weaknesses is an important tool in life, and so interviewers want to see that you are aware of your own abilities. Top tip: don’t be too over-confident, but also don’t be too critical! Interviewers don’t like hearing you put yourself down!
Ability to reflect on your own work + Conscientiousness
Reflection is key in medicine! Throughout the interview, make sure you are reflecting on all the experiences you talk about. Interviewers would love to see what you have learned and how you have improved.
Top tip: when talking about what you learned, talk about how you implemented changes and how they helped you overcome future tasks.
Personal organisation + Insight into your own health
This is another trait many universities look for in a medical student. You could be asked about your work-life balance, and how you stay organised and look after yourself. This is a good time to talk about your hobbies!
Academic Ability + Problem-Solving
You will likely have a data interpretation station where you will be asked to do some calculations and interpret some data and connect it to a clinical situation. The level of calculations will be GCSE maths, so don’t worry too much about it!
The ability to deal with uncertainty + Ability to manage risk and deal effectively with problems
This can be approached in several ways. You may be asked to talk about personal experiences, or you may be shown a video and asked to discuss what you saw, what risks there were, and how they were solved/could have been solved.
Communication skills, including reading, writing, listening and speaking
You will likely have a role-play station where they will assess how you communicate, your body language, and how you build a rapport with someone. They could also ask you to talk about a time you witnessed good or bad communication skills.
Teamwork Abilities
Teamwork and leadership are very important attributes of a medical student and a doctor. You can be assessed for this by being asked about the time you worked in a team and some challenges you overcame.
Resilience and the ability to deal with difficult situations
Medicine is a difficult career, and the university wants to see that you will power through! They may ask you to talk about a difficult situation you have been in or to talk about why resilience is such an important quality in medicine.
Emotional intelligence + Empathy and the ability to care for others
Empathy is a very important quality to have as a doctor, and the interviewers will want to make sure you understand its importance.
They could ask you how you would approach a difficult situation, e.g., a patient being cautious about a treatment. They could also ask you about an ethical scenario and ask your views on a difficult topic such as euthanasia or abortion.
Top tip: remember to link back to the 4 pillars of medical ethics.
Honesty + Ability to treat people with compassion, respect and dignity
You could be asked to work through a hypothetical scenario of unprofessionalism or to talk about a personal experience where you may have come across unprofessional behaviour.
Top tip: the GMC guidelines are key here! Make sure you are aware of what the guidelines say and link them back to your own experiences!
Ethical judgement
Make sure you are comfortable with the 4 pillars of medical ethics. If you know those, you will talk about any ethical scenario with ease!
Final Thoughts
The interview is a stressful time, but the universities just want to know what type of person you are. Practice key topics with friends and family and make sure you’re confident with acting in role-play stations, but ultimately, be confident in your abilities! Good luck, you’ve got this!
To further strengthen your application book interview tutoring with us to make your application the strongest it can be. To test yourself in a simulation of the real thing, book a 1-1 Leicester Medical School mock interview with us today. We have built this using the information published by the university online.
Key Resources