Getting a Med School Interview | Little Wallet Big Dreams

Alright so an update on my medical school journey …. like three months later.

First off school was insanely busy the past two month so I didn’t get around to posting an update while this was actually happening but I thought I would post about it now that I’m almost done with midterms.

So as the title says I got an invite to interview for medical school, actually as of now I have three interviews to some of the medical school I applied to in the UK!

I am honestly amazed and so grateful, there was a point where I thought that I wasn’t going to get any invites and was super nervous.

Before I get into all that I want to talk a little be about motivation and expectations. The original post I had planed to write after my last one was going to talk a bit more about the application process (which I will still write about) and about how to manage your expectations when it comes to applying to medicine. This is something I have heard a lot during my application process from various people. “Medicine is competitive, so don’t get your hopes up”. And although this is true and you do need to have realistic expectations, I feel this can also be a very discouraging mindset. My mom was actually the first person who pointed this out to me. She told me that the way I was talking it sounded like I didn’t think I was going to get it, and although I wouldn’t admit it at the time (I felt I was just being realistic) she was right. Now that I have some interviews coming up it feels like if regained some of the conviction that I had lost. The problem with not letting yourself get you hopes up is that you can lose some of your motivation. If your too realistic, you stop dreaming. So, while it is important to be realistic and consider your plan B, if medicine (or whatever you want to do with you life) is truly something you want to do, don’t let yourself be discouraged.

Ok, enough of that from me onto talking about interviews.

The first invite came a lot sooner than I was expecting, right at the beginning of finals in December. It was almost 2am and I had been up late studying and was getting into bed when I got the email. I was shocked and so excited, everyone in my house was already asleep but I immediately texted my best friend. Then I of course couldn’t fall asleep after that.

They gave my a selection of dates in February to choose from and luckily also gave me the option to have the interview conducted remotely (my wallet was grateful).

So my January was full of both course work and preparing for my first interview.

Previously I had been forcing myself not to think about my applications. They had been submitted and there was nothing left for me to do but wait, so there was no point in me worrying about them. But as I got closer to the interview I couldn’t push the other applications from my mind, I wanted to know!

The next school I heard back from told me that unfortunately I had not received and interview. It was disappointing but it was also one of the most competitive schools I had applied to so I wasn’t that surprised.

When it came to my next two schools I did start to get a little impatient I have to admit. I was on different forums for the schools and other people were posting about getting their invites and I was starting to get really stressed. I told myself no news was good news but I was still checking my email everyday. I may have even complained to my mom, which was apparently the push the universe needed lol because I got an invite from the school I was waiting for the next day. Bad news for my wallet however… this one requires me to attend in person. On the flip side I’m going to England next week and I’m very excited/nervous!

The third invite I got just last week. For this one I knew that I wouldn’t be hearing back until after the end of January so I was a little less impatient. I woke up in the morning and there it was in my email! I got ready for school and went out into the living room and handed my phone to my mom (with a little bit of a grin on my face). She was like “what?, what’s going on? why are you handing me your phone?”, so I just told her that I had gotten an invite from my final university. Her response was “oh no” lol.

She is happy for me but she is not looking forward to the prospect of me moving away, and was definitely cringing at the thought of me having to fly back to England for another interview.

Thankfully I knew when I started my applications that there was a good chance I would have to fly over there for at least some of my interviews so I began setting some money aside for that in the summer.

Well that is all from me for now, I will post another update after my interview to talk about how it went and hopefully a little bit about my time in England!