Personal Qualities
In this section you will find examples of ways in which you can build upon your personal qualities. These are personal for a reason and as a result you should focus on personalising things to what you have done. Have a look at some pages below:
A general structure you can apply to answering personal qualities questions is STAR(R).
STAR(R) structure
- Situation
- Briefly introduce the situation, giving necessary background details for your interviewers to understand.
- Task
- Talk about the task you were assigned to do and why.
- Action
- Explain the actions you took, putting emphasis on how the personal qualities you’ve been asked about helped.
- Result
- Conclude by explaining the result that your actions lead to. Even if the situation was partially unresolved, make sure to give a sense of finality.
The last R is sometimes omitted from the acronym, but it is very important in medical school interview questions:
- Reflection
- This can tie the answer together by showing insight into what you’ve learned, about the task and yourself, and what you will take away. It is good to show self awareness and reflect on what you could’ve done better / differently.
Common Traps
- Spending too long on the ‘situation‘ part of the question
- Keep this to 1-2 sentences. Interviewers care more about the ‘AR(R)’ part of the acronym as it is the part that shows the most insight into you as a candidate. The situation itself is a springboard to talking about yourself.
- Leaning too much into how these qualities would help you as a doctor, if it wasn’t asked
- This can seem counterintuitive, and you will encounter a lot of contradicting advice on the matter.
- Example A: concluding a question on (e.g.) resilience by explaining in your Reflection that you hope to be able to carry this onto medical school as it is a challenging course. This is relevant, shows hope for the future and demonstrates you understand why the question is being asked. You can keep this brief to 1-2 sentences.
- Example B: concluding a question on (e.g.) resilience by explaining in your Reflection that in the moment it made you realise how important resilience is for medical students/doctors are. This can come across as rehearsed and disingenuous, especially if you attribute this reflection to yourself in the past. This could also imply that you only sought ways to demonstrate certain qualities to become a medical student.
- This can seem counterintuitive, and you will encounter a lot of contradicting advice on the matter.