 There is really no way to have a scripted, perfect answer to every single interview question. You can look online, you can find all kinds of examples of PA School interview questions, and you can just drive yourself crazy by answering like a thousand of them. I'm Boris. I'm a second year physician assistant student. I just got done with didactic here. We got two weeks off, and I know a lot of you have interviews coming up for PA School. So the first thing I wanted to say is congratulations. It's a huge accomplishment just to get here. PA School is super competitive, and just getting an interview is a really, really big deal. So first off, just wanted to say congratulations to everybody who's got an interview coming up, and just wanted to say that I'm proud of you. So as you can tell from the title of this video, I'm going to talk a little bit about interview prep, mainly how I prepared for the interview that actually got me a spot in the school that I'm going to right now. There's another school I interviewed at that did something called an MMI, a multiple mini interview. And if you want to hear more about that, just comment below, email me, and maybe I'll make a video about that. But this one is not about MMI's. So anyway, we got two weeks off from PA School after didactic years all over, and before we start kind of prepping for our clinical rotations. And I'm taking this online photography class, and I needed a notebook. So I looked through all my stuff, and I find this. And as I'm flipping through it, I realized this is a notebook that I used for my interview prep for the school that I'm going to right now. And I knew I needed to share this with you guys, because I think some of this stuff's really going to help you with your interview prep. And before I get started, I just wanted to say that I made a really informative video where I interviewed the Dean of Admissions from my PA School, and she talked all about all kinds of things about the application, especially interviews. And I actually clipped out the parts that were just about the interview and made it a separate video, which I'm going to link right here, which you should definitely watch after you finish watching this video. All right, so let's get started. So the very first thing I wanted to point out about my interview prep that's in this notebook is I used this notebook as kind of a calendar, as you can see right here. Maybe you can't see, I don't know, but January 8th, 2019. So this was just like my plan of the day for that day, January 8th, 2019. I said bring a laptop to work, go running, I had a meeting, and do two hours of interview prep. So I really wanted to emphasize that. If you really want to be successful in your interview, you have to take it really seriously. Okay, it's not just something that you can do the night before, you know, 20 minutes, or 10 minutes, 20 minutes a night just watching YouTube videos like this, even though it's helpful, it's not enough. You really have to put in some work and some time to give yourself the best shot. And this is for every single interview you do, and I know some of you might be going on like 5, 6, 10 of them, so you're signing up for a lot of hours, but I promise you it's going to pay off. The way I think about it is PA School is super competitive and just getting an interview is competitive, but once you're there, it's still competitive. Not everyone who gets an interview gets a spot in the class, that's just impossible. So you're interviewing for something that's really in demand. And the way I like to think about it is PAs make about $100,000 a year, right? Give or take, maybe we'll make more in the future, who knows? Let's just say we make $100,000 a year. And let's say you graduate when you're like 24, 25, maybe 34, 35, I don't know how old you are, but anyway, let's say you work for like 40 years, you have a 40-year career, well that's $4 million. If you're competing for a job, that's going to pay you $4 million over the course of your life and a lot of other people want that job. Do you think it's worth more than like 30 minutes of prep? I think you'd probably take it really seriously and you'd prepare quite a bit for that job interview. And that's exactly what your PA School interview is. So I don't know if putting it in that perspective is going to help you, but that's just how I thought about it. Basically just telling myself this is a big deal, you should take it seriously. And then of course you should also tell yourself, yes, it's a big deal, but I need to relax. I know. You're walking kind of a fine line there between like anxiety and laziness and too much anxiety and too much laziness and only you can really figure out where you're most effective on that line, but I'm just saying it's important to take it seriously. The next thing I have here is just some basics that I wanted to remind myself because I took this notebook with me when I interviewed and I just jotted down a couple of things I wanted to tell myself over and over again just so I didn't forget because they're super important when you're trying to make a good first impression. So I don't know if you see this, but it says, Shake the interviewer's hands and remember their names and thank them for their time afterwards and also pause, think, then answer. So you might be watching this video in 2020, the age of COVID where most of your interviews are going to be virtual, they're going to be online but one day we might have interviews that are not virtual and not online again. So this thing with shaking people's hands and looking them in the eye and all that stuff that's going to be important again. If you have a virtual interview I guess disregard this one tip but for in-person interviews taking the time to shake your interviewer's hand remember their name and then once you're done with the interview make sure you thank them for their time because they did take a lot of time out of their day to interview you and it just makes a really good first impression anyway. Now this other thing here, pause, think, then answer. I know for me and if you watch my videos you can tell I talk really fast I think really fast and sometimes I overthink and when it's not a YouTube video that I'm able to edit out all the awkward stuff I actually kind of freeze up and I don't know what to say and my mind's just going too fast to be productive and so just remembering this, even reading it a few times during the interview day really helped me. Just to remind myself to pause when you hear a question to pause, take it in, give yourself a few seconds to think about it and then go and you'll just sound more organized, more coherent and I actually remember in part of my interview where it was just me and two other people I remember actually asking the interviewer hey I just need a few seconds to think about this I have a good story I'm trying to remember and the interviewers were totally cool about it they totally understood, they're just like yeah take your time, do what you need to do before you answer, we're completely fine with that don't take like two minutes while everyone's just sitting there twiddling their thumbs and you're making it awkward by taking too long but just know that it's okay to take a few seconds to think of a good response the next thing I have here is questions to ask your interviewers so I know I talk a lot about this really common interview question that's do you have any questions for us which is usually at the end of your interview and this is really good for that but it's also really good to ask a follow on question so let's say your interviewer asks you about I don't know, an experience you had or a grade you got or something else from your application and you answer that well you could just sit there kind of awkwardly and wait for them to ask you another question or you could ask a related follow on question which will make it seem less like an interview and more like a conversation and make it just more comfortable and pleasant for everybody and leave a good impression of you in the interviewer's mind and give you a better chance of having a positive evaluation and then ultimately acceptance to that PA school so it's really good to just have a short list of questions you can ask your interviewers a couple that I wrote down are does your school have any international rotations not that I'm necessarily interested in doing that but either way it's just a good thing to talk about and maybe get a conversation going about rotations in general which I know you're really interested in anyway so it's just a good question to ask I think and then the other question I have here is what do students say they wish they had done to prepare for the rigorous curriculum of didactic year so I know it's kind of a mouthful but what this question does basically what I'm asking is what are some things that help students be successful in didactic year and remember I'm asking this as an interviewee I wasn't even in the school yet and what this basically communicates is that I know I'm interviewing but I already see myself where I want to be I already see myself as a PA student I'm already thinking next level I'm already thinking what am I going to do once this interview goes well once I get offered a spot and once I become a student what am I going to do to set myself up for success and hey by the way you're a professor hey what do you think can you tell me some things that are helpful I think it's a really good question because it just makes you seem confident and organized and just says good things about you so obviously you can use this question word for word it might be a little awkward of a bunch of people did so maybe kind of put it in your own words or think of different questions but either way I think it's good to ask like a specific question about didactic year about clinical year whatever just ask specific questions about the school the next thing I have here is stories just a handful of stories from my own life and my own clinical experience no they're not like multiple paragraphs and everything but it's just like names and places that I've worked and things like that that just kind of bring things up in my head oh yeah I want to talk about that so for instance I have Mr. T Jim Mr. M these are patients that I took care of as a CNA and I definitely have lots and lots of good stories about every one of them but I just wanted to jot them down to make sure I don't forget and then as I've told you in other videos if you're interviewing for PA school it's really important that you know your application from start to finish you can talk about every single thing in your application because the people interviewing you they actually have your application right in front of them so they can just be flipping through it and ask you oh yeah by the way you said this this and that in your essay tell me more about that or how did that go or something like that and the worst thing you can do is be like I said that? yeah you don't want to do that you want to be able to talk about it passionately enthusiastically know your application so the next few things I wrote down here are actually from my essay for instance is this Russian quote from this Russian song that I started my essay with and honestly it was probably the most interesting part of my essay so if an interviewer brought that up it would be really awkward if I didn't just know the quote right on the top of my head and was able to talk about it and what that song means to me so I definitely wrote that down another thing I have jotted down here from my essay is this quote from Martin Luther King that I I don't think I ended the essay with but it was somewhere towards the end it's only through the bringing together of head and heart intelligence and goodness shall man rise to the fulfillment of his true nature and if somebody asked me in the interview that was a really great quote I love that quote what does that mean to you I really want it to be ready to talk about it and so I jotted that down just so as I'm going through the interview day I'm looking at it and thinking about it and then a few other things here are just basic PA stuff this isn't really for the place I interviewed specifically but it's like the history of the PA profession like when was the PA profession created 1945 Dr. Eugene Stead at Duke University when did the first PA school class graduate 1947 Duke University what are the differences between PA and NP PAs are educated on the medical model NPs on the nursing model and then it's good to know the differences between those two models which I have right here as well so just some very basic PA school interview kind of trivia questions that everybody should know and then last but not least another really common interview question not just for PA school but in general for jobs and all kinds of stuff is something like tell me about your weakness or tell me how you messed up something one time and you fixed it or tell me about the worst day of your life or something like that basically what they're asking is can you be self-critical can you see things that you do wrong and accept that they're wrong and take responsibility and fix them instead of having a big ego and blaming other people or blaming the circumstances or blaming whatever it's just a really important quality for a healthcare provider to be constantly ready to improve and not have an ego about it so I knew I was probably gonna get a question something like that so I jotted down a quick story of the biggest thing I ever messed up in my entire life this didn't make it into my essay or at least I don't think it did but I knew I was gonna get a question like this so I was ready to talk about it so mine for instance is messing up this joint service ceremony at the Pentagon when I was still in the Navy and almost getting kicked out of the ceremony planning office for that we called it details and basically how I had to learn attention to detail really quickly and before that I was kind of more laxadaisical about my work but from then on I became really meticulous because it really mattered so anyway everybody's got a story like that everybody's messed something up if you haven't you need to go find your halo and go back up in heaven with all the other angels because I guarantee you if you're human you messed something up you probably messed up something big so be ready to talk about it and be ready to talk about what you learned from it and how you're a better person and eventually a better clinician because of that one mistake in your life and so a couple of things in here that are more school specific and you should look into for every school that you interview at it's the mission and vision statement of each of your PA schools you want to write those down and just be ready to say a few words about what they mean to you and how you embody those values and then also why you're choosing the school because of those values it might be the case that this is the only interview you got so naturally you're going on the only interview you got but still you have to act as if you're choosing the school willingly you have a million other offers and you really want to go to this school particularly because of the values that they say they hold in their mission and vision statements so get those from the school's websites write them down and then write down a few words about what those mean to you and how you relate to those values so that's exactly what I did here so for instance the mission statement from my school is to educate competent, caring, compassionate and ethical clinicians who have a lifetime commitment to excellent patient care and continual self-assessment and advancement in their medical skills and knowledge so I think that's a really good mission statement and I really resonated with it and what I kind of jotted down here is that medicine and science are always ever changing and this is what I love about medicine is because it forces you to grow and become better every single day because people count on it so you have to become a better person every single day and I just think that's an amazing thing about working in medicine in general so I really love that that is what the school's mission statement is and I communicated that in my interview and then I did the same thing with their vision statement and just one more very school specific thing I know not everybody's going to be able to do this like the vision and the mission statement you can get it right off the school's website you don't have to know anyone or have any connections you can just find that anybody can find that but for this you kind of have to know people who already go to the school and this is something I did because I did know people who go to the school that I was interviewing at and I asked them first off how's the interview day organized what should I expect do they give us breakfast should I come with food how long should I expect to be there am I going to write something is it an individual interview is it a group interview like what should I expect and just knowing how the day is going to go really reduces your stress and your anxiety level and just helps you be your best self in the interview now before your interview the school's usually going to send you a schedule and they're going to tell you exactly what to expect you know your individual interview is at 8.30 a.m your group interview is at 11.30 your writing interview is at 1.00 p.m your MMI is at 3.00 whatever the school does they're going to tell you exactly what to expect so just one last thing I really wanted to say about prepping for your interview there is really no way to have a scripted perfect answer to every single interview question you can look online you can find all kinds of examples of PA School interview questions and you can just drive yourself crazy by answering like a thousand of them and just being ready for everyone but I'm telling you that is the wrong way to go you're going to drive yourself nuts you're going to stress yourself out and I also guarantee you some of those questions will not be on your interview and your interviewers are just going to make some stuff up as they go and there is just no way to have a perfect scripted answer for every single question please don't try to do that the much better thing to do is just to know your basics like the history of the PA profession the mission and vision statements of the school you're applying to and be ready to talk about all those things you know PA versus NP why do you want to be a PA is the biggest question you'll be asked things like that so definitely have good answers ready for those basic questions but for everything else I really think it's much better to just have a handful of stories that are really good and really descriptive of your experience and you as a person and just be ready to apply those to any question and also just have a few tricks up your sleeve like being able to ask a follow on question and keep a conversation going instead of just letting your interviewers fire off question after question after question it's much better to try to make it more pleasant and more conversational and ask the interviewers some questions as well so with that said I'm going to wrap up the video thank you for watching I really hope this helped some of you folks that are getting ready for your interviews right now don't be nervous if they offered you an interview spot that means you do have a chance at getting into that PA school you did it congratulations you're awesome just for getting this far most people don't if you haven't gotten an interview or you haven't gotten one yet hang in there your day will come okay I'm really proud of all of you and I just wanted to say thank you for watching my content thank you for subscribing to my channel if you know anyone who's applying to PA school who has an interview coming up share this video share my channel with them and I'll see you in the next one