Past admissions interview questions for Medicine (Medical School)

• What makes a good doctor? (Submitted by Oxford interview applicant)

• What keeps you awake at night? (submitted by Oxford interview applicant)

• Why are manholes round? (New Media Medicine)

• I got shown a drawing of nerves from them ear to the auditory centre and asked to explain why it was like that. (New Media Medicine)

• So how good are your teachers at school then? (New Media Medicine)

• How would you measure the weight of your own head? (molivam42's weblog)

• How would you poison someone without the police finding out? (molivam42's weblog)

• Why does your heart rate increase when you exercise? (Oxford University Website)

• Why is it a disadvantage for humans to have two legs? (molivam42's weblog)

• If I were a grapefruit, would I rather be seedless or non-seedless? (molivam42's weblog)

• Given a skull: what animal is this, describe the teeth and why they are like that etc. (New Media Medicine)

• Describe what happens when a neuron is excited and the action potential that follows. (New Media Medicine)

• Draw a graph to illustrate learning against time/ stage in life. (New Media Medicine)

• Draw a cross section of a bicycle wheel. (New Media Medicine)

• Draw another one. (New Media Medicine)

• Show what happens to the membrane potential of an animal cell when put in different solutions. (New Media Medicine)

• What do you think of the state of the NHS? What would you do to improve it? (New Media Medicine)

• What did you learn from your work experience? (New Media Medicine)

• What's the greatest medical innovation this century? (New Media Medicine)

• What do you like most about the brain? (Oxbridge Applications)

• How would you describe a human to a person from Mars? (Oxbridge Applications)

• Should someone sell their kidney? (Oxbridge Applications)

• How would you simulate altitude in your living room? (Oxbridge Applications)

• Can you describe an experiment to differentiate between a normal and a multi-resistant strain of bacteria? (Oxbridge Applications)

• How would you determine whether leukaemia patients have contracted the disease because of a nearby nuclear power station? (Oxbridge Applications)

• What is a tree? (Oxbridge Applications)

• Why does your heart rate increase when you exercise? (Oxford University website)

• Why do we have red blood cells? (Oxford University website)

• At what point is a person "dead"? (Cambridge interview, Oxbridge Interview questions)

• before my interview, when I got to the interview room 10 minutes early, the door was locked and there was a note to candidates instructing them to enter the room and sit beside the chymograph! I thought it was a test and a part of the interview (Cambridge interview, Oxbridge Interview Questions)

• how can reindeer tell the difference between spring and autumn? (Cambridge interview, Oxbridge Interview Questions)

• how is a city like a cell? (Cambridge interview, Oxbridge Interview Questions)

• how many genes are there in the genome of a rice plant? (Cambridge interview, Oxbridge Interview Questions)

• how would you design a better brain (Cambridge interview, Oxbridge Interview Questions)

• if I was given a magic wand and I could eradicate all third world problems but would have to stop all medical research and development, would I do it? (Cambridge interview, Oxbridge Interview Questions)

• If urine was emptied into the intestine instead of the bladder, what would happen? (Cambridge interview, Oxbridge Interview Questions)

• if you are in a boat in a lake and throw a stone out of the boat, what happens to the level of the water? (Cambridge interview, Oxbridge Interview Questions)

• if you could invite any 2 people alive or dead to a dinner party, who would they be and why (Cambridge interview, Oxbridge Interview Questions)

• what does the letter b stand for in b-lymphocyte? (Cambridge interview, Oxbridge Interview Questions)

• What is your opinion on spontanteneous human combustion? (Cambridge interview, Oxbridge Interview Questions)

• Why don't we just have one ear in the middle of our face (Cambridge interview, Oxbridge Interview Questions)

• I’m going to play devil's advocate. how do these prions actually affect the brain (Oxford, Oxbridge Applications)

• calculate what volume of wine can be drunk to reach the legal concentration of alcohol in the blood for driving (Oxford, Oxbridge Applications)

• how does the body try to remove or recognise poison? (Oxford, Oxbridge Applications)

• how many moles of h2o is there in that cup of water? (tutor randomly pointed at his cup on the table) (Oxford, Oxbridge Applications)

• how many people believe in evolution in the united states? (Oxford, Oxbridge Applications)

• how would I solve the aids crisis in south Africa (Oxford, Oxbridge Applications)

• how would you design an experiment to disprove the existence of god (Oxford, Oxbridge Applications)

• what leaves you drier if it's raining: running or walking? (Oxford, Oxbridge Applications)

• why can you not see many stars when you stand on top of a mountain? (Oxford, Oxbridge Applications)

• About 1 in 4 deaths in the UK is due to some form of cancer, yet in the Philipines the figure is only around 1 in 10. What factors might undelie this differnce?

• If you found these sample interview questions for Medicine useful, please remember to submit your questions, post interview, to oxbridgeinterview@gmail.com