Apart from the ridiculous journey, Hull went okay. Ish. For an interview, anyway.
HYMS interviews are a pretty set procedure for everybody - seven questions on very set topics, plus your opinion of an article you've just read. I'm not allowed to discuss what was asked - but HYMS very helpfully provide a list of 'example' questions on their website, which are conveniently very similar to many of the questions I was asked.
Unlike anywhere else I've been, HYMS include a tour of their campus as part of your interview - the campus is really lovely, and the accomodation is as well. The student house we looked around backed directly on to the campus and housed five people with all bills included as well as a cleaner. An extra large room here (which was pretty enormous) cost £72 per week; which I thought was pretty fair! Even my taxis around Hull were cheap, so I do think it would make a perfect student-budget city.
After our interviews we were shown a presentation 'persuading' us to choose HYMS, should we receive more than one offer. Interestingly from the 1100 applicants, 800 passed the academic criteria (meaning 300 applied to a Uni they couldn't get in to?!). 450 were invited to interview on of these 290 of us will be offered a place. This means that my chance of success now is around the 2/3 mark. Which is reassuring, particularly compared to somewhere like Leeds where my chances are around 1/16.
(Also, we were told that each year around 50% of applicants to Medical School in the UK don't receive any offers - so now I don't feel too bad about my rejections last year.)
The reflex question for everybody to ask is 'so how do you think you did?' It's a really hard call; I felt I answered all the questions reasonably well, and had very few 'Doh!' moments. However, you come out and everybody seems to have given the same answers to the questions! A couple of questions were reiterated to me, as I hadn't fully addressed all aspects that they had asked for, but for others I tried to give a very balanced, full answer which often ended with 'however I feel your question is too broad to give you a specific answer'. I know that, despite my 'ultra-cool' demeanour in the holding room, I become very nervous and can appear quite flustered and edgy. I guess they know you're nervous. The one question I can say I answered really well was based around the standard 'Why do you want to study here?' and this is where my interview prep really paid off.
Each interview has to be prepped for differently - at HYMS your interview is completely seperate to your personal statement score, so there's no need to analyse your statement and second guess what's going to be asked. Like all interviews, I expected the 'Why do you want to come here?' and the general probing of my awareness of current medical issues; but they're hardly expecting you to be familiar with every piece of research. I keep up-to-date by reading the NHS' Behind the Headlines website every so often and listening to the news occasionally. In terms of HYMS specific prep, I spent an hour or so each night for a week reading and poking around on the Medical Schools' website.
But that's it. I find out at the end of February. As a very pleasant surprise, I received an invite for interview at Cardiff next month (the email arrived the day before Hull, so was a good nerve-settler). Cardiff is very different in terms of interview technique and requires lots of prep... so that's my holiday homework (although at least I'm not revising for January exams!!)
Hope you've had a good Christmas!
