 What is going on everybody, welcome back to my channel. For those of you who are new around here, my name is Michael AKA Dr. Chalini and I'm a sixth and final year fellow in interventional radiology. Let me first start by saying I am so glad I already went through med school because they keep making it more difficult to get in every single year. And now they've added an additional hurdle to the med school application process. And that's exactly what we're going to talk about today because that new hurdle is called VEDA or VIDA, V-I-T-A. It stands for Video Interview Tool for Admissions and I'm going to tell you everything you need to know about it right now. Luckily, I have great friends over at Motivate MD as you've seen me work with in prior videos and they sent me over a ton of information about this brand new interview hurdle and for that reason they're sponsoring today's video. They are the best in the business when it comes to medical school admissions so you know this information is gold. So let's start by breaking down VIDA or VEDA. I don't know, I'm just going to call it VEDA. So we'll start with some general info about the whole initiative. I'm going to read a little bit here because there's so much to know about this process so just bear with me. VEDA is an online, one-time, one-way recorded video interview. Yep, it's basically just you sitting at your desk in a business attire or interview attire, staring at a camera, answering questions as they pop up and it's kind of like YouTube because nobody's on the other end of that camera, especially like you're having an interview to nobody. Is it a little bit awkward and we'll take some getting used to? Yes, but at least you can just wear like a suit up top and gym shorts below because nobody will see below your shoulders. So I guess there's good things about it. Secondly, it'll be available from August 6th of this year through the 30th of 2021. Surprisingly enough, this is like mind blowing to me. It's actually free. I can't believe they don't make you pay for this thing. I really don't. So the purpose of VEDA as listed on the AAMC website is to provide admissions committee with info about the applicants' journey leading up to med school and five of the 15 core competencies for entering med students, which I will read off here. Here are the five core competencies. Social skills, number one, cultural competence, teamwork, reliability and dependability and resilience and adaptability. So they break down each of the core competency listed on their website. They just basically define each core competency. I think the whole goal is to make sure, you know, your good fit for medicine, which I thought that's what the interview was for, but I guess we'll just add another hurdle to get it into med school. All right, so next let's talk about the meat of it, the interview questions. That's what everybody cares about. So each applicant will have to answer six different questions to assess the five previously mentioned core competencies. These questions are not known prior to the interview. The first question will likely ask the applicant to describe their journey slash experience that led them to pursue a career of medicine. The other five questions will center around the five core competencies. So we're sensing a common theme here and not all the questions will be related to the medical experiences. The applicant will answer six questions in one setting or you can take untimed breaks in between each question and complete the interview in multiple settings, which I would rather just one and done get it done with. All you have to do is submit it before the med school deadline and you're good to go. So they give you a list of question examples on their website and I'll put up a graphic right here, but I'll also touch on one. So for instance, medical school journey questions, which will ask you to describe your journey and or experiences that led you to pursue a career of medicine, which we already touched on. A sample question maybe, why did you decide to pursue a career of medicine? And this is probably the most basic question because anybody applying to med school should have an answer to this question because you will get asked this on your interview. No matter what, every med school will ask you this question. This is really no different, honestly. They can also ask you other questions like past behavior questions. They can ask you to describe previous experiences that demonstrate your level of knowledge and skills related to the core competencies. So everything revolves around those core competencies. Now let's talk about how you should respond to these questions. Well, like I said prior, you use the same approach that you would take to an in-person interview. You provide as much detail as possible, keep responses professional, and if a question has multiple parts, you have to answer each part. For instance, for med school journey questions, you may describe your journey, what you learn from it, and what you would do differently. For past behavior questions, you may describe the situation, action, and outcome. For hypothetical questions, you may describe what you would do in the situation and provide the rationale for that behavior. So there's always, you mention the topic and then touch on it a little more with an example. This is the same way I tell people to interview for med school is whenever they ask you a question, you answer and then provide an example that backs up your answer. If they ask you, are you going to be a good doctor? Don't just say yes, say yes, and then provide an example of why you will become a good doctor. Also, there is no skipping questions. It says here, you must respond to each question presented as failure to provide a response may impact how a med school evaluates your interview. So now let's talk about more general format info. So these are just some simple requirements for the video. I'll read them off to you. The applicant must show their face during the interview and voice must be audible, which means you must have good audio. And I would probably go for like a nice video setup. The last thing you want is to have some garbage quality of your video, which shouldn't impact your application, but I would want some nice crisp video if I were doing this myself. Next, you can use a computer, tablet, or smartphone for the interview. However, if you do use a smartphone, make sure you put it on the do not disturb function because the last thing you want if you're doing an interview is to have multiple text messages from all of your friends popping up, popping up, and you have to keep swiping up, swiping up, and your grandma calling you from another state and just bothering you during this interview. That's the last thing you need. You want to stay focused and not have all these distractions popping up on your phone. So do not disturb if you use your smartphone. You have 60 seconds to read and reflect on the given question in three minutes to respond. So they basically flash up a question. You have 60 seconds to ponder about it. So if they ask you why you pursued medicine, you sit there for 60 seconds and gather your thoughts, and then I assume you like click a button within speed for a maximum of three minutes about it. There is no pause option. You read the question and you have 60 seconds to answer it. After the applicant records their response, they can either go to the next question or take an untimed break. One thing that is interesting to me is that you won't be able to see your responses. So there is no playback feature. Once you submit it, it's gone, you never see it again. You don't even know if your audio works, your video works. So it just adds a nice extra layer of stress to the already stressful process. So the total interview will take about 35 to 40 minutes. I'll put up this little chart right here. It's kind of an outline of the day. It kind of breaks down how long it'll take. Next up, the evaluation process. So the Association for American Medical Colleges or the AAMC does not evaluate the VEDA interview because each VEDA interview is evaluated by the med school who offered it to you. You may or may not receive feedback about your VEDA interview and that is entirely up to the institution who offered you the interview. So when do you take the VEDA interview? Well, so participating programs will start selecting applicants as of now, July, 2020. And I'll put up a little list of all the programs or current med schools that are offering the VEDA application process. It may not all fit up here, but I'll put a link in the description of this video so you can see the list, the full list of med schools participating. So I guess there's a program called HireVue, which will start sending out invitations for the VEDA interview weekly every Thursday starting August, 2020 through August 30th next year, 2021. The applicants will only take the VEDA interview one time. So you'll send that VEDA interview into your program. And if another med school further down the road offers you an interview or a VEDA interview, the WMC will send them the video that you already did. The key here is that you cannot retake the VEDA interview process. Once it's done, that's it. Unless there's some technical difficulty somewhere, maybe you'll be able to take it, but I wouldn't count on that. Okay, so that is a ton of information to take in, especially if you are a current applicant who has already stressed out about this weird interview process this year. But luckily, my friends over at MotivateMD have your back as per usual and have an entire VEDA prep course. So MotivateMD has an entire team of doctors and med students who will help you identify experiences in each of the five core competencies. They do this to ensure that your VEDA interview is well-rounded. And just to touch on those five core competencies again, it's social skills, cultural competence, teamwork, reliability and dependability, resilience and adaptability. After MotivateMD's team has helped you identify these experiences, they will help coach you on how to effectively articulate these experiences by using the star method of answering the interview questions. Now, what's the star method? Well, it's the recommended format to help you answer these interview questions based on the AAMC. So the star method stands for situation or task, action and result. So it's essentially like anything, like an essay, a personal statement, it's the intro, the body paragraph and conclusion. So MotivateMD will help provide you with the best tips on how to answer these medical school journey questions and past behavior questions and also situational questions during your interview. The last part of the MotivateMD prep course is probably the best thing about this course. Upon completion of this course, they will provide a mock VEDA interview with you. So following your mock VEDA interview with MotivateMD, a member of the team will reach out to you, provide feedback and offer you ways to improve going forward. Yeah, that's what's up. The MotivateMD team has also created an entire bank of questions that could be used in your VEDA interview. If you sign up for this prep course, you will have access to all of these mock questions and be able to practice and prepare for your VEDA interview. And I promise the more you practice, you'll be able to handle anything they throw at you on interview day. Also, one thing to remember is that the VEDA is not replacing the interview process, it's just a supplement, like primary or secondary essays. VEDA is just thrown into that mix before interviewing. And since VEDA is brand new this year, no one's done it before, I wouldn't take any chances. So do yourself a favor and sign up for the MotivateMD VEDA prep course and crush that interview. Use my code cheleney15 to get 15% off. Also, if you haven't even thought about your interviews and are still stuck on those secondary essays, MotivateMD has your back on those as well. Don't sleep on the highly rated team of med students and doctors who will help you crap the perfect essay and help land you that golden interview to med school. All you have to do is at least check the website link in my description and look at all of the amazing reviews everybody has given them already. Okay, so I know that was a lot of information and I hope you all have a better idea of the whole VEDA interview process. Now you can officially crush your VEDA interview, go check out my friends MotivateMD, all the links in the description, use my code cheleney15 to get 15% off. Subscribe to me on YouTube, follow me on Instagram. Otherwise, I'll see you all on the next video. Which stands for the video interview? God, why can't I talk? It stands for video, again. And it stands for video admission tool for, scratch that. It stands for video interview admission. I can't say it right. All right, so now let's talk about some more. I can't even get the first sentence out without making a mistake. Sorry, so now let's talk. It stands for video interview tool. God, this is a struggle bus today I swear. Which is why they are the todays. Why can't I talk today?