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Synopsis
So this is the episode we’ve been getting asked to make for ages — what does it actually take to get into medical school in Singapore? We sat down and went through everything, from the grades you realistically need for NUS Medicine (spoiler: Faith didn’t get straight A’s), to how completely different the postgrad route through Duke-NUS looks if you’re coming from a totally unrelated degree like Isaac, a law grad.
We go deep on the stuff nobody really explains clearly — how the portfolio and personal statement actually get weighed against your grades, whether you really need job shadowing, MCAT vs GAMSAT, and what “clinician plus” even means at Duke-NUS. Faith walks Isaac through what a group interview station looks like: being handed a pile of straws and told to build the tallest tower possible with zero instructions (yes, that’s a real thing that happens).
If you’re a JC or poly student wondering if your grades are good enough, a working adult wondering if it’s too late to pivot into medicine, or just nosy about how two very different admissions processes actually work — this one’s for you. And stick around, because next episode we’re getting into what life is actually like once you’re in.
For more details on undergraduate medical school admissions in Singapore, check out Faith’s blogpost here:
Episode Transcript
Isaac
So I’m Isaac
Faith
And I’m Faith, and welcome to the We Didn’t Plan This podcast. Ever wanted to know about undergraduate and postgraduate medicine admissions in Singapore?
Isaac
In this video, we’re going to dive into who should apply, what are the admission requirements and what it takes to eventually get into medical school.
Faith
Okay, Isaac, let’s dive right in.
Isaac
So let’s start off chronologically with undergraduate Medicine, a time that is very long away for both of us but thankfully not that long. So, Faith, let’s start with the thing that all Singaporeans want to ask, which is what grades does NUS Medicine actually require?
Faith
Okay, so some brief background about me. I graduated from NUS Medicine in 2021. So that’s one of the two undergraduate medicine schools in Singapore, one being National University of Singapore NUS and NTU, Nanyang Technological University’s Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine. So I joined right after A-levels and now I work as a locum GP and a blogger.
So what grades in US medicine actually requires? Things have changed a little bit, but not too much since the time that I applied, which was in 2016.
So back then, the UAS, the university admission score was calculated upon 90, but now they’ve changed it as of 2026 to be out of 70. it basically counts I think three H2 content-based subjects and general paper versus last time when it was four H2s and one H1 but in general the indicative grade profile for the 90th and 10th percentile for NUS Medicine is still AAA and A so it hasn’t changed much in that you still need pretty good grades to get in but that’s not to say that you can’t get in if like maybe you have one or two Bs. So I will confess that I actually did not get straight A’s. I got a B in H2 chemistry and a B in project work. But okay, project work no longer counted from the 2026 cohort onwards, which is a good thing. But I managed to make it to the cutoff because I did higher mother tongue at A level so that bumped my university admission score up by a little bit, which I suspect was just enough to, you know, make it to the interview round. Yeah. But grades wise, even if you don’t is, I would definitely recommend applying by the EBAS route, which is not fully performance-based.
It sees your portfolio. It sees how well you’ve done in other aspects like leadership, competitions, maybe research publications, volunteering. Just anything to showcase your personality as a whole, who you are outside just your grades.
So once you get in by either grades or the EBAS, which is the special admissions route, it actually doesn’t matter because at the interview stage, the slate is wiped clean. Yeah.
Isaac
Great. And a lot of people might not be from the A-level route as well. So we have IB students, polytechnic students, students potentially with international qualifications. What do you think of their chances?
Faith
So in my cohort, a vast majority were from either junior college IB and polytechnic routes. So I will comment on those. So for the IB folks, it’s pretty much the same as the A-level folks.
They all scored rather high and a lot came in with perfect scores. But if you are an IB student who’s submitting your application like a bit before your actual results come out, like just based on the predicted results, then you might need to also present your UCAT and SATS results, which are some additional standardized tests that you can also take just for fun, but you don’t have to. And then for polytechnic students, I think it’s based on GPA and your portfolio and which course you came from.
A lot seem to have come from biomedical sciences, I think. That was where the vast majority of the poly students in my batch came from. I think maybe up to 5-10% of the population might have been from poly.
Isaac
I think it’s a pretty encouraging statistic as well because I’m not going to say back in our day, but a while ago, there was a stereotype going around that it’s very difficult for you to get in via polytechnic, but it seems to be changing increasingly. And a lot of the students and a lot of the people I’ve seen, juniors, seem to have come from the polytechnic route. And many times, if anything, they’re very, very competitive because they go through a biomed diploma.
A lot of them are aiming for medicine from the start. And that’s sort of a cost, as well as the opportunities that come with it give them a lot of chances to create these very exceptional portfolios. So if you’re a polytechnic student and thinking about medicine, don’t count it out at all.
But back to the exams idea, I heard the AAAA, right? So you also mentioned additional tests and doctors are stereotyped to be studying a lot. So do you need a supplementary test like the UCAT, like SATS, things like that? Where do these stand?
Faith
Overall, so if you’re applying by JC Polytechnic, NUS High and the IB, once you’ve gotten your final results, like after the exams are over, you don’t need your UCAT and you don’t need SATs, thankfully. But if you’re submitting predicted IB results instead of the actual grades or if you’re an international student with other qualifications that are not among those what’s listed on the NUS website, then you definitely should check whether you need to submit these extra tests.
Isaac
yeah and I think it’s also it’s also you realize that a lot of them will apply to multiple medical schools at once never keep all eggs in one basket and in the process you would also find that there are other many other medical schools that do need the UCAT so if you do have a UCAT score on hand am I correct to say that it can be beneficial if you have a strong score?
Faith
I mean there’s no harm submitting. We never know exactly what goes on behind the scenes. So the more things you have to put on your portfolio, the better.
Isaac
And ultimately, there’s the big question of how competitive is NUS Medicine?
Faith
Honestly, it’s fairly competitive with around maybe a 10% acceptance rate. So in my batch, I heard there were approximately maybe 3,000 people who applied and then maybe about 1,002 got into the interview rounds and then from there it was slashed to about 300. So currently NUS has downsized the batch a little bit to about 280, 286 spots. So I assume with a 10% acceptance rate it’s still as competitive as ever.
Isaac
Wow, that’s a pretty low statistic. So I think if I was an A-level student there’s no way I’d be making it in but…
Faith
So on to the admission requirements postgrad medicine, could you tell me what that’s like? What’s the baseline requirement to even apply for Duke NUS?
Isaac
Yeah, so that’s a question I get asked a lot when I was in school and people are asking me what I’m doing because they’ll ask, oh, you didn’t do a science degree. And the requirement for Duke NUS is actually just two things. University degree completed and a good score on the MCAT, which is the test that they do for postgrad admissions.
We’ll talk about that a little bit later on. But essentially, you can get into Duke NUS or most postgraduate medical degrees in the world with any sort of undergraduate degree. So to introduce a little bit my background, I did law in the UK three years.
I applied for Duke NUS in my last year of study, did my test, spent a bit of time exploring. and right now I’m a postgraduate year two medical officer serving in the public healthcare system. So for the postgraduate application requirements, basically finish your degree, then apply.
Faith
So, I mean, do your grades matter? Like, did you have to submit your grades from all your years of university to prove that you were a good student? Were there references and anything else that you had to submit?
Isaac
Short and long answer. So short answer is yes. they do look at your undergraduate honours or your second upper, you know, first upper, things like that.
But most importantly, you just need to show a proven track record of being able to do well academically. Why that matters is that some people are out of school for a little bit longer. The more years you’re out of school, I suppose the less relevant whether you are on the dean’s list or not on the dean’s list matters.
And on top of that, you also would want to keep in mind that people apply from, I think compared to NUS, they apply from a much broader range of backgrounds. So there can be, I’ve got a lot of classmates who apply in from international universities, completely different systems. So the scoring in terms of what grades you need is a little bit more murky.
And I think what you would want to do if your grades are, you know, you’re not too sure whether your university is considered good in their eyes, whether your grades are considered good in their eyes, is to score well on the MCAT.
Faith
Yeah, so what’s the general profile of students in your cohort like? What undergrad degrees did they come from? Or how old were they? How many years out of university? Did any of them come from working adult life?
Isaac
So I love to introduce this whenever people ask me about post-grad medicine because I am by far not the most colourful out of them. I would say, so I have a statistic for this, about 60% of Duke NUS students are from life science or other sort of biology, similar kinds of backgrounds. A remaining 40% comes from a broad range of degrees from the physical sciences such as engineering, computer science, as well as the humanities like law, accounting, political sciences.
Age range widely varies. the median or the median age would be around mid to late 20s. So you see a few different batches or groups. So a big group of them would be like me, who went in straight from my undergrad degree.
There is a slightly smaller but quite sizable majority or sizable minority who worked in one first job for maybe two to four years before coming in. And then at the outliers, you do see people who are career changers in their mid-30s, mid-40s. In our list of alumni, we have former bank VPs, management consultants. One of my classmates, shout out to you, Faith, used to be a model maker and she worked for about, I think, 20 plus years. She has a kid and she managed medical school excellently.
Faith
20 plus years, so she must have been in her 40s?
Isaac
Yes.
Faith
So do you think that age plays a factor in applying?
Isaac
So I’m not going to discount that it doesn’t matter. I obviously don’t speak from first-hand lived experience yet, but for a lot of my classmates, I’m very in awe of how they’re able to manage things because a lot of them have real family commitments. Things like having a child who’s already going to school, things like, you know, there’s a very big group of my classmates who got married in medical school, got married before medical school, moved into their first house. And I think that age does physically make the demands of the profession a little bit more exacting. But age doesn’t ever count anyone out.
Faith
Fair enough. So speaking of admission tests, so I saw on the website that you can either do a GAMSAT or the MCAT. Could you tell me more about that? And can applicants choose either?
Isaac
Applicants can choose from both. The MCAT is the US test for postgraduate entry medicine and GAMSAT comes from Australia. I had a long time making up my mind between these two because there’s some pros and cons to both.
I will say the majority of people do the MCAT, the reason being that it’s a much more broadly, or rather I would say a much larger number of people take it every single year. So simply because it’s the US, right? So you have millions of people taking it every year, more available resources, more tips available online, and easier to find test dates, things like that.
However, the MCAT is a more science-heavy test. So it’s approximately a six-hour test with breaks. That whole period you’re locked up in the room is about seven hours.
And you do a lot of science content. So you do a lot of things like biochemistry, chemistry, a bit of psychology you have to learn as well. I could go and study the Freudian stages of development.
There’s some sucking the thumb stage and something like that. But basically, it’s a little bit heavier in terms of content. The GAMSAT, however, has an essay and it’s slightly shorter.
So some applicants choose it because it’s a little bit less demanding, but it’s a little bit harder to find right materials. And in the context of a working adult or a university student who’s going at this alone, it might be a little bit harder to find yourself in a routine that you know is going to work.
Faith
Fair enough. I mean, you’ve given your law background and having been away from science for so long, do you feel like it was easy to prep for the test and get up to speed? And how long would you recommend that an applicant prepares beforehand? Like one year or is three months enough?
Isaac
I would say about three to four months of dedicated study time is a good ballpark. But the biggest difficulty is getting back into it. And I think the same applies even for NS men who are taking UCAT for the first time after two years.
They figured out you want to be a doctor during NS or something like that. It’s the same thing, right? I applied in 2021.
The last time I did biology in school was 2011. We were learning about photosynthesis and in which there’s a xylem and a phloem. And one of them brings water and one of them brings food.
That was biology for me. The last time I did chemistry was 2013. So secondary four, after I became a humanities student for good.
So there were many years in between, but that number is to help assure people that it is indeed possible, but you do need to set aside a little bit of time for dedicated study and do lots of past questions and be able to get used to how the questions are being asked.
Faith
Fair enough.
Isaac
And I guess let’s then move on to enough talk about grades and all that. So this is the big nitty part, the portfolio, and what you actually need to do to stand out. So what does your… First off, what does the NUS medical application consist of?
Faith
So based on my memory and also what’s on the NUS website currently, there was a personal statement. So it’s just about 500 words. So it’s not long, but not short.
So you’ve got to let them know about yourself, what you’ve done, why you want to do medicine and like what relevant maybe job shadowing or clinic work, clinic adjacent work that you’ve done over the years and why you stand out more than your other applicants. You’ve got to sell yourself in some way within 500 words and also submit a list of achievements. So it’s about like 10 achievements over the past three to four years. So it’s fairly recent so you don’t have to list your primary school or early secondary achievements. They want stuff that’s recent and higher impact. And of course, the official testimonial that’s typically submitted by your school teacher, your form teacher from JC or wherever, and two referee reports.
The two referee reports can be written by teachers or anyone you feel can, you know, write a good testimony about you who knows you fairly well. So for example, if you’ve done research with like a medical doctor, you can also ask them to write it for you, which is what I did for my in my portfolio.
Isaac
So the big question is always must I do shadowing, and if I do how many must I do?
Faith
Well I would not say that it’s mandatory but I mean even from you know just picking a career standpoint it’s good to do a job shadowing if you’re able to secure one just so that you can get a few of what your future might look like i would recommend getting one shadowing in a gp clinic and another in the hospital.
So in my year I think there was an NUH job shadowing program where like I think at least half my JC class applied and we went to NUH and I was shadowing a rheumatology professor for three days in his clinic so I got to see what outpatient work looked like and he shared a bit of insights about you know med school training process in his time which was 30 plus years ago and he told us oh the hours are long and you know the job will be tough but it’s rewarding so I remember we had like lunch at 2pm because this clinic dragged and even back then I was still delusional and you know had my rose-tinted glasses on, I was like yes I see this and I want to commit to it
And I also did a GP clinic shadowing and seeing that made me think that okay yeah I can actually see myself doing this day-to-day work in the long term and I also did some hospital shadowings as well like in the wards I think I did an internal medicine department ward round and I was like okay maybe not, but you know, we’ll get through it.
So while it’s not compulsory and it’s not listed as a definite requirement I think having that clinical experience or maybe working as a clinic assistant in a I don’t know a GP clinic or dental clinic it puts you a bit closer to healthcare and helping you understand and that adds to the depth of what you’re able to provide during the interview round when they ask you like, how are you so sure you want to be a doctor? Like, what have you tried?
But it’s not to say that you’re at a complete disadvantage if you don’t have any job shadowing opportunities at all. Yes, I mean, volunteering or just showing that you’ve got a heart for the community also still counts.
Isaac
Yeah, I think I’ve heard a lot of interesting clinical exposure opportunities from other people as well. One of my good friends worked as a phlebotomist in a private hospital for a period. And then you have people who volunteer at various care settings. NKF volunteering was something that a student of mine did before. I think I don’t even know what really goes on in a dialysis centre.
Faith
Me neither.
Isaac
Until something goes wrong. So I think those are really valuable experiences, right? And then what I’ll ask you is, many students are wondering, my friend is also going for shadowing, my other friend is doing lots of volunteering. How do I stand out if out of 10 of us, only one of us is going to get in?
Faith
Yeah, I mean, unfortunately, medicine is competitive and the people you’re competing with are most likely your classmates and your friends. So it’s not so much about the number of job shadowings or how much experience you have or how much you can, you know, wayang on paper. It’s also about how well you pitch it concisely within that 500 word personal statement.
Because, I mean, that’s all they have to go by, you know, in the first round, in the selection round. So you need to be able to fine tune, pick the keywords, come up with, you know, a deeper insight or tie it together to your life story and your motivation about why you want to join medicine. And I mean, same for when you get to the interview round, if they ask you why you want to be a doctor, if you just say, because I went for like 10 job shadowing, so you’re not going to get in.
But whereas if you just did some volunteer work or you’ve got a heart for the community, then if you can pitch it in a stronger way, then your odds are probably still better.
Isaac
Do you happen to remember any tidbits from your application about how you perhaps strung together some of the things that you did, be it your academic experience, research experience, or your clinical work? Was there any part of that narrative that you can share?
Faith
Okay, it’s been like 10 years since I applied. In 2016, we are old. But I definitely remember writing about my community service projects that I did because I was in Interact Club, which is one of the volunteering-based CCAs in JC.
So I wrote that I helmed some leadership projects in there. I did some job shadowing in GP clinics and hospitals and what I learned from that and how it confirmed that I really wanted to become a doctor and that I could actually see myself doing this job. I shared briefly about some personality traits that I felt were essential to being a good doctor or at least being a resilient and committed medical student.
And then I also just threw in a bit of a hobby, like just one or two lines I think about, oh, I taught myself how to play guitar to show that I’m an independent learner. Yeah, so it’s all about teasing out traits from your own life that can stand out. and make yourself a bit more unique compared to the other applicants.
Isaac
Okay, and when all this is said and done, how does the portfolio and other components like the interview weigh up against the first bit, which is the grades?
Faith
Okay, so don’t quote me on this, but I think the first cut is really just based on the grades. So if your grades are really not anywhere close to the indicative grade profile, they probably won’t review your application as strongly already. So once you are maybe in the top 1,200, the top one-third, then they will consider you for that interview round. Okay, so now for post-grad portfolios, what does the Duke NUS application require beyond just your grades?
Isaac
So the application form itself requires very similar to NUS. I mean, technically it is also an NUS degree, plus a portfolio of achievements.
So short descriptions and titles, personal statement times two. So there’s one open-ended one plus one with a prompt, which sometimes varies across the years, but most of the time, it asks you to describe a challenge or something that you’ve overcome in your life. Number three, you also need recommendation letters. The number range they give is three to five recommendation letters from various academic supervisors or work colleagues that you’ve worked with in the past.
Faith
Okay, so what did you write for your personal statement given that you had two to write?
Isaac
So for the main personal statement, lots of the same things that you said, which is packaging your whole story into medicine in a way that’s sensible. How I thought of it in my head was, number one, to describe the type and form of impact I wanted to make and how medicine kind of adhered with that very well. Number two, the kinds of things outside of clinical work I might be quite interested to do in medicine. And this is layered on with the whole Duke NUS philosophy, academic medicine, clinician plus is the buzzword, right?
So it’s always clinical work, why you love it, plus something else, be it innovation, be it research, be it entrepreneurship, and to also, I think, even though you apply at a slightly different age, to still have a good grasp of core competencies that you’ve accumulated. So I wrote for my clinical work a lot of the volunteering and clinical experiences I’ve had. Like you, it was a mix of inpatient as well as outpatient settings, from hospice to a charity clinic, shadowing at a pediatrician’s clinic, and to kind of describe why I thought clinical work resonated with me.
I suppose for older applicants who have had university to do all these things, you are obliged in a way to show that that effort is a bit more consistent. So I would probably say that doing Interact Club in JC, which would be a four to three-year-old activity by that point in time, will be less relevant and it would be good to continue showing that you’re growing in that area.
And at the same time, I think it works the other way around as well, which is that if you are a 35-year-old working adult, you are not obliged to talk about CCA because I’m pretty sure accountants don’t have CCAs in that sense. So you will talk a little, there’s a little bit of leeway for you to talk about how your various professional activities, perhaps the volunteering you’ve done on your weekends kind of plays into all of that.
Faith
And so you mentioned something about the clinician plus scheme. So what was the plus that you pitched to Duke NUS?
Isaac
So the plus that I pitched, okay, so it’s relative to what a lot of other people pitch, which is they always talk about research. I have so many classmates as well, pharmacists, biology majors who have done amazing research. They’ve worked with clinicians to do neurology research, genomic research, and really, really high-level things, obviously.
I have none of that because I’m not in any way a scientific academic. So what I pitched a lot of was my interest in the policy and systems kind of things. I think my humanities background made that sound quite sensible.
And I built up a little bit on that through university. For example, submitting to student journals within my university, talking about various medical legal issues that I was interested in, global health issues I was interested in, which is a much bigger field in the UK than it is in Singapore. and talking a little bit more about even medical regulation here at home.
So I wrote a dissertation about PDPA, healthcare data, things like that. I don’t think it was the most well-researched thing in the world, but it helped build up that storyline of me doing something academic in medicine without having to go and dissect a mouse somewhere.
Faith
That’s cool. So do you feel like your prior degree in law got evaluated differently compared to people in a science stream? Do you think it was more rigorous for you? because to prove from your humanities background that you can adapt to the rigor of a science degree. And how far in advance did you start prepping your portfolio?
Isaac
I would say yes and no, because it’s easier, potentially, because the people who evaluate you, while they might have seen other non-traditional applicants before, they don’t fully know, I suppose, in a lot of depth what exactly your activities might always mean. So the onus is on you to give context, but that also means you have the power to control the narrative. At the same time, you also need to prove that you can put up with the rigours of scientific or I would say medical education. And that means that you need good scores, you need consistently good grades to show that just overall, they want to see that this guy or this girl can study.
Faith
Yes, but speaking of testimonials, you mentioned needing like three to five. So for a post-grad student or someone who’s working, who would you recommend that they ask?
Isaac
I would say that the testimonial section is a really good place to showcase yourself in as many angles as possible because the testimonials ultimately, for most people, you write them and someone signs off on it, right? So most of the time, I thought of my testimonials as a shadow third personal statement in a way where I wanted to prove the same quality. So I wanted to prove academic rigor.
I wanted to prove that I’m a good team player or someone that people generally can tolerate working with. I wanted to prove that I was curious, have a good learning attitude. So my testimonials came from a few people.
I had someone who was an NS supervisor, one of the medical officers who worked with me in NS. Very good friend as well. So that really helped.
And that could say a little bit more about my direct work ethic. And then I got one from my university academic supervisor. So that told a little bit more about the way I study, the way I approach learning, as well as one of my shadowing, the physicians I shadowed, who talked a little bit more about the questions I asked, the general attitude.
So I guess the picture is that these testimonials should highlight different angles that you want to highlight to the application committee as well.
Faith
Okay, so that was some great advice for all these post-grad applicants. Was there anything else that was unexpected in this whole holistic review process that you think that they need to look out for?
Isaac
Well, I think not so much just for myself, but for everyone across the board, the main thing that they would be figuring out is, are you committed to this journey? And are you giving, as doctors like to call it, informed consent? And this comes through in a lot of ways.
I’ve met classmates who are re-applicants, who had to retake one part of their, retake their MCAT. I’ve met re-applicants who’ve done work on their profile from one year to the next. And I think in general, what they want to see is just that your heart’s in it.
And that comes from various angles, be it the length of time that you dedicate to yourself, be it the way that you package the takeaways and what you want to do. I remember one of the interview questions I got that was quite memorable, not because it was very unconventional. It’s just that I was describing a volunteering experience I had and this professor kept asking me, what did you do for this thing?
So what was your role? What was your role? What did you do?
Even though this was probably the second or third follow-up question. So I think what they were really trying to get out was to see how proactive you truly were, how much ownership you take over your own journey because in your 20s, I suppose, three to four years is meant to make a decent difference in how good of a grasp you have over your own experiences and how you can reflect on them.
Faith
Yeah, so of course, quick question. How competitive do you think Duke-NUS is? Because there don’t seem to be any official published stats.
Isaac
So they don’t release it internally nor externally. I’m not going to comment on whatever Reddit conspiracy theories. But the hot takes I’ve been hearing on the street is that either it’s ultra competitive or it is not competitive at all. I’m not going to comment on which conspiracy theory I buy into more, but the takeaway should be if you think this is for you, just give it a go. And let’s go into the next part, which I think intimidates a lot of people that interview, having to sit there and be grilled, right?
So walk me through your NUS Medicine interview day and what were they asking you in those rooms or that room?
Faith
Okay, so I think it’s pretty different for undergrad and postgrad. So for undergrad, we have a focus skills assessment, which is basically like a bunch of stations that we have to go through. So we were grouped into like maybe I think five or six people in one group.
And we rotated through a bunch of stations over about one and a half hours, with each station lasting about maybe under 10 minutes with some rest time in between. So there was like a group component where we had, you know, to complete a task. I remember we were ushered into a room and given a whole bunch of straws and one row of masking tape, build the tallest tower of straws possible.
And then they didn’t give us any instructions. There were just, I think, one or two examiners off to the side with a clipboard just watching us. so it’s not so much about how you build a tallest tower i mean of course if you do build something great then it means that you know you’ve got teamwork and competency but what those kind of stations are trying to test is also like who steps up to be the leader, how you guys communicate in a brand new team, because in medicine you get rotated to new teams every month you have to be able to work and communicate professionally and still get the job done. So it’s no use if one person says like i am the best at building towers do it my way and then just tells everyone to shut up because then you would not score high even though you accomplish the task technically.
And then there were one or two task-based stations where we were it was actually quite fun it was like a game they gave us like, oh where’s wally you have to find wally, and then you have to do some puzzles with you know the matchsticks rearrange the matchsticks to spell a certain word or something and like count how many beads or whatnot of like sort the beads in a certain period of time.
So it’s not about how well you sort those things or how well you complete the task but how you perform under pressure and under like time pressure knowing that this is a high stakes interview, but still not letting it affect your performance in the way that you’re just like oh no I can’t do anything you’re paralyzed with fear.
There was also one role play station where there was a paid actor and we were given a scenario in which our integrity was tested I think the guy was asking us to lie or something and we just had to say no I cannot lie for you yeah so pretty straightforward and what the purpose of all these stations are to assess your soft skills and your character traits more than your competency so once you figure out like the motive or what they’re looking for in each station then it’s easier to figure out what you know you have to present as a version of your best self in each station and of course last but not least there’s the interview station which is you know similar across all med schools it’s why do you want to be a doctor and based on your personal statement, they might tease out two or three points that they want you to elaborate on.
So you have to study your personal statement to some extent before the interview so that you know what you wrote inside and you’re prepared to back it up or elaborate more and highlight any buzzwords that will make the interviewer’s eyes open and shine brightly at you.
Isaac
Do you remember anyone who particularly impressed you or particularly you thought was not very pleasant to work with on that day?
Faith
Oh, actually, my group was lovely. There were five of us. And yeah, we got along well.
We supported each other because everyone was suffering from, you know, pre-interview nerves. We were all like only 18 and stressed. Yeah, so we really supported each other, you know, thumbs up in between stations.
But unfortunately, I was the only one who got in. So it was a bit sad. Okay, so what was the Duke-NUS interview process like for you?
Isaac
Well, it’s a little bit simpler than those stations. That sounded very grueling. But it’s a traditional interview format where you just do a one-on-one interview with two different faculty members.
So they would ask you about your motivations, some basic knowledge about the healthcare system, and what are your thoughts on current affairs, things like that. So I wouldn’t say there’s any question that was very, very out of left field. Things like how you might deal with certain scenarios at work and all that.
So honestly, for the older folks like me out there, just prepare for it. I would prepare for it the same way I would prepare for a job interview anywhere else.
Faith
How long was the interview?
Isaac
It’s about an hour.
Faith
Oh, wow. An hour? That’s actually pretty long.
Isaac
Split between two people.
Faith
So any other last tips?
Isaac
I would say I echo what you said, which was to just have a really good grasp of your own application and your own motivations. And that’s not because it’s a knowledge test, but it’s because from an interviewer’s perspective, if this is a candidate who knows their motivations, who’s done the work, has been thoughtful and reflective throughout the entire journey, then the narrative should flow naturally from there. If you crack under just one follow-up question about what did you do in that particular team or in that clinic or in that project, then your application probably wasn’t that strong to begin with.
So those are the things I would prepare. And finally, we are circling, we circle back to the beginning because we talked so much about the application process and it’s a lot to go through. Some people are very nervous about it.
So for a JC student on the fence about their grades, is there a point where it’s just not worth applying at all?
Faith
So I’ll say, I mean, if you’re an undergrad student and medicine’s really your dream to that extent, I would say just apply regardless of your grades so that you never live with that. What if, like, or what if my grades could just have been good enough? Like maybe you have one or two Bs and you think that you could have made it in through the EBAS, the special admission scheme.
just go for it and keep your options open. Apply for medicine overseas if you’re financially able to as well or work on your portfolio, come back a few years later into postgraduate medicine if that’s what you want. But of course, bear in mind that applying for local medicine for undergraduate comes with a five-year bond as well on top of one year of housemanship. So you’ll be bonded till about 30.
What’s your advice for post-grad med students? For someone with a completely unrelated degree, Does that hurt their odds? Or does Duke NUS genuinely want people from diverse backgrounds? And should they apply?
Isaac
I would say it’s a very accepting school of people from all walks of life, all backgrounds, all ages. But the much bigger question to ask would be whether or not it’s the right fit. And we could talk all day about why this, why that, why not this, why not that.
But all of that is purely theoretical until you actually speak to someone doing it. And I think what benefited me a lot was speaking to people who were already in the profession, people who are much more senior, people who are junior, and just apart from me, by a year or two, people who are somewhere in the middle, just starting out their careers. And from there, you’re able to roadmap how your own path into things looks like.
And the most important question is not do I have five reasons to go in and two reasons not to, but the most important questions are when you look at this person at this stage can you see yourself doing the same thing? So that was a lot about the application process and what it takes to get in as well as all the ins and outs. So we’ll be talking a little bit more next time about some other things about medical school, right?
Faith
Yeah, in the next episode we’ll be sharing all about medical student life in both undergrad and postgrad medicine. So stay tuned!
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