Medicine at Imperial College London & Interview Questions 2024

Key Aspects

🎓 Imperial Medicine Interview Questions & Topics 2024

Although questions and stations may vary through the years, these are the main topics that you will ask questions on:

• Teamwork and Leadership

• Motivation to study medicine

• Understanding the role of a doctor

• Empathy and breaking bad news

• Ethics Scenarios

• Ability to multitask

• Imperial and contribution to the school of medicine

• Resilience

In the past there have been: 7 stations of 5 minutes each with 1 minute between stations during which you will be instructed to read a brief about what the station is assessing. Each station will be assessing one core element of your fitness to study and practise medicine.

How to prepare for your Imperial Medicine Interview:

• Know your personal statement forwards and backwards

• Be ready to answer common questions such as ‘Why medicine?’ and skill-based questions such as ‘Give an example of a time when you showed strong communication skills

• Don’t script or over-rehearse your answers

• Mock interviews are the best way to prepare. You can do them with family, friends or teachers

• Always time yourself when you do a mock interview

• Practise role-play scenarios. You can find a lot of resources online.

• Familiarise yourself with the four pillars of medical ethics and with discussing medical ethical issues

Face-face stations, the following may be assessed:

• Evidence of commitment to the values of the NHS Constitution

• Motivation and understanding of medicine as a career

• Empathy and Resilience

• Community activities

• Leadership and teamwork

• Extracurricular interests

💯 Imperial Medical Interview Questions Scoring 2024

Answers are given 7 points for content (what you say) and 3 for communication (how you say it). Often there is no right or wrong answer – the interviewers are assessing your ability to explain your thinking. 

And if you change your mind on a specific question halfway through a question, they will consider your ability to reflect on your ideas and how you think on your feet.

❓ Imperial Medical Interview Past Questions 2024 & Likely Topics

Please find below a list of suggested questions that could come up at your interview this year, created by our team to help guide your preparation. 

Motivation to study medicine

1. Why medicine?

2. Why Imperial?

3. What did you learn from your work experience?

4. What qualities of a doctor did you see from your work experience?

5. What did you find challenging about your work experience?

6. What do you know about the Imperial Medicine course? How is it taught?

7. Why do you think you will be well suited to this course?

8. Why medicine and not dentistry or nursing?

9. Tell us about your volunteering

10. What are your hobbies?

11. What are the negatives of a career in medicine?

12. What do you feel are likely to be the worst things about being a doctor?

Personal Insight

1. Why should patients trust you?

2. What are your best qualities?

3. How do you manage stress?

4. Tell us about a time when you dealt with something challenging.

5. Can you provide us with an example of a time when you demonstrated resilience?

6. Can you provide us with an example of a time when you demonstrated empathy?

7. Can you provide us with an example of a time when you demonstrated compassion?

8. Could you tell me about a time when you lead a team in a stressful/difficult situation? How did you deal with this?

9. Why should we give you a place to study at Imperial?

10. Give us an example of a time when you demonstrated teamwork, what did you learn from this?

11. What are your strengths and weaknesses?

12. How would your friends describe you?

13. Tell us about an article that you have recently read.

14. What will you contribute to Imperial?

NHS & Local Area

1. What changes would you make to the NHS if you could?

2. What are the NHS values and why are they important?

3. What is it like to be a doctor?

4. How do you deal with overpopulation?

5. What do you know about the local area here in Imperial?

6. What are the main challenges that face the NHS?

7. How has COVID changed the way the NHS operates?

8. What do you think are going to be the long-term consequences of COVID on the NHS?

9. How does the healthcare system differ here compared to other areas in the UK?

Ethical Scenarios

1. Understanding of the four ethical principles

2. Understanding of the GMC’s good medical practice

3. What is the debate surrounding euthanasia, should it be legalised?

4. Who would you give this organ to? [Prioritisation]

5. Is human cloning acceptable under any circumstance?

6. If you notice that a colleague has turned up to work drunk, what would you do?

7. Who can you escalate concerns to within a hospital?

8. If you had £100,000 to spend, would you give it to a three-year-old needing a heart transplant or 100 older patients needing hip replacements?

🗣️ Imperial Medicine Interview Tips 2024

1. Know your personal statement - Reread any books or papers that you have mentioned in your personal statement and try to follow up on any work that has been done on the topic since. This will make it easier to discuss should the topic be raised in the interview. These almost always come up at interviews - so make sure you can talk about everything that is written on both your medicine personal statement and your UCAS reference.

2. Have examples ready to use: many of the questions asked at Imperial are example-based, ie, they require you to draw on certain examples from your personal life, medical work experience and medical volunteering to help make key points that the selectors are looking for. As such, it is paramount that you spend time learning about these examples and thinking about different scenarios that you can use at the interview. It is helpful if these scenarios are malleable and can be applied to a number of different questions e.g. being a football captain, deputy head girl or playing in the school orchestra.

3. Personal Attributes - Imperial is very likely to ask you about personal attributes during the MMI interview. As such it is paramount that you go through and learn these. Imperial has repeatedly focussed on your strengths and weaknesses as a person, so make sure that you have suitable examples for this. Make sure that you have prepared ideas about what your good qualities are. Check out our 420+ interview question and answer guide for dealing with such interview questions. 

4. Know the doctor training pathway: this is useful to mention in answers to show awareness about the career in medicine - and demonstrates that you have a considered approach, fortunately, we have a guide to the NHS and the doctor’s training pathway.

5. Read the MMI instructions carefully - you get enough time to read the instructions provided before the MMI station. Make sure that you don’t miss anything from this. Try and plan how you will structure your answer thereafter in the reading time that you get. Therefore it is really important that you practice MMI questions and ensure that you think about your structure for as many questions as possible before your interview.

6. MMI Stations - remember that each MMI station at Imperial is independent of the other. Therefore it is paramount that you try to treat them as such, if you have a bad station, try to forget about it and reset for the next station, this gives you the best chance of scoring well overall. Read our ultimate guide to preparing for medicine MMIs here.

7. Know the Imperial Course - Imperial’s Medicine course is very prestigious, highly ranked and research-focused; Imperial is consistently ranked in the top 5 universities in the UK and top 10 universities worldwide. Its reputation and high standard of teaching and research quality mean students will benefit from excellent academic opportunities as well as clinical ones. In addition to research, there are many student conferences happening on campus – on average, there are about 1-2 medical ones each weekend. This is a great way to learn more about cutting-edge research. How does this differ from other universities? What is their policy on intercalation? Have you any idea about what you would plan to intercalate in at Imperial? Remember there is very early clinical exposure at Imperial - this can be an advantage!

8. Know the local area - Imperial is a diverse region of London, with a number of local factors and diseases that differentiate the South Kensington region from the rest of the UK. Ensure that you research both communicable and non-communicable diseases in the area. How might this impact healthcare provision in the area?

9. Reflect Well - the Imperial Medicine selectors love reflection, make sure that you are good at not just stating what you have learnt, but also how this helped and what you benefitted from, and what you will carry forward about this at medical school and in clinical medicine. This is especially true when reflecting on your medical work experience during the medicine interview.

10. Practice Role Plays: Role plays are unique to medicine MMI interviews as they do not tend to occur in panel interviews. The only way to ace these stations is to practice! There are so many different medicine role-play scenarios that can come up, such as breaking bad news in the medicine interview, it is paramount that you read about tips for answering role-play scenarios and practice MMI calculation stations. You might want to also consider practising this with a medicine interview tutor, or booking a 1-1 online mock interview.

11. Don’t over-rehearse - this is a common theme amongst interview students and is very obvious to a trained examiner. As such, we would recommend focusing on the structure of your answer, and then naturally letting it flow when speaking to the answers, concentrating on the delivery of your interview answers. Read about our top tips for medicine interviews here. If you are struggling with this, consider booking sessions with an expert medicine interview tutor.

12. Learn about the non-academic societies at Imperial - this is really important and might augment your Why Medicine question as well as help you formulate an answer to how you will contribute to life at Imperial University. Spend time on their website, or looking at their Instagram for ideas about societies that you could think about joining.

13. Think of examples from your life - Write down five different examples from your life, where you’ve demonstrated compassion/empathy, good communication, the ability to solve a problem or face a challenge, teamwork, and leadership. We recommend using the SPAR (situation, problem, action, result, reflections) framework.

14. Learn Medical Ethics & NHS Hot Topics - it is extremely likely that you will be asked about medical ethics at a medicine interview at Imperial, so there is no excuse not to brush up on your knowledge of these topics, especially the four pillars of medical ethics. Learn how to provide a balanced argument on this. Check out some of our free articles on NHS Hot Topics here. It is good if you have an opinion on them, as long as you present a balanced and well-reasoned argument, ultimately, which side you choose does not matter, but is helpful to have. Check out our bank of 420+ medicine interview questions.

15. Learn the NHS Core Values - This can be drawn into different answers about personal qualities or qualities of a doctor, which has formed a feature of stations in the past, and a good understanding of these core values will help you stand out against others. It is important to know about the NHS in general for your medical interviews - read our article here on this.

16. Good Medical Practice - Imperial also puts emphasis on knowing the values and qualities of a good doctor, which can be found in this document and are likely to come up at the interview in the MMI stations. This is universal to many universities, and something that we always recommend students cover during their medicine interview preparation.