A tale of two interviews

If you read my older posts, you would know that I failed the USyd interview quite badly. Even with my GAMSAT score of 83, my interview score was 84/180, so even if I applied to BMP I wouldn't get in. However, I did get into Melbourne, even though I was disadvantaged due to the Melbourne weighting of GAMSAT sections (down to 77) and my GPA was not perfect (about 6.8; unlike USyd, GPA is not just a hurdle at Melbourne). I got a CSP non-bonded place, and in the clinical allocation I wanted.

There were quite a few different reasons for the different outcome:

1. Because the Melbourne interview is weighted less, so maybe I needed less score in Melbourne to get a CSP, but my ranking before interview would have been better in USyd due to the normal GAMSAT weighting and not using GPA to rank.

2. For the USyd one, my preparation effort mainly was one week of going in an interview practice group and working out answers to all questions. However, I had no practice in actually answering them face to face, and because I booked an interview on the first Monday, I had no time to memorize the answers. For Melbourne, I started in a group (often with just one other person, but sometimes a few people) and worked out answers throughout most of the semester before the interview. I had time to memorize all the answers we came up with, and 100% of the questions for Melbourne this year in the interview were repeats. I recited some of my answers in front of the mirror to try to make it more fluent. I had real talking practice during the week just before the interviews. I also had practice with Des O'Neill (I decided that $150 wasn't too much compared to missing out on Melbourne, although I don't know whether it added that much really compared to memorizing answers for Melbourne and practicing with friends, because Melbourne didn't change questions).

3. I'm not sure how much this helped, but before the Melbourne interview in the semester, I made special effort to give people eye contact when I was talking to them, even if normally I wouldn't bother. I also decided to try to increase my attention span by staying awake more than normal during lectures, and looking at lecturer's eyes during lectures just for practice to get used to it (I don't try to fall asleep during lectures, but sometimes I'm a bit tired).

4. I was more serious in general for Melbourne. I went on a road trip with 2 other family members to USyd and booked on the first day when I had a choice, even though I knew it probably wouldn't help my performance, since it was a practice round (although I would take a USyd CSP if I got that and didn't get any other offers). We booked some cheap hotel in Sydney, which actually stuffed up our accommodation and it was very stressful, especially because we didn't really arrive early in Sydney in the first place.

5. As with all interviews, there was luck involved. In USyd, the first few interviewers didn't shake my hand, and while I didn't really know why, I was nervous for the first few stations. Then one shook my hand, and I was much more at ease at that station, and then I thought the others not shaking my hand contributed to my nervousness. A few interviewers were antagonistic. There was also a "personal station" in USyd which not everyone got but I got, and I didn't prepare for it for USyd. In contrast, in Melbourne, all my interviewers I had were very friendly and the one who I had twice seemed to agree with everything I said.

So that's a list of reasons why I got into Melbourne in an unbonded CSP but not USyd first round.