Utilizing Multiple Mini Interviews in Medical School Admissions

Abstract

Identifying interview selection tools used in medical school admissions interviews that are reliable and valid is critically important as almost all applicants chosen to interview are already highly competitive. Multiple Mini Interviews (MMI's) are one tool that has been proven to be reliable and valid compared to other methods of selecting candidates including personal interviews, reference letters, personality testing, emotional intelligence, and situational judgment tests. MMI's have been found to accurately measure non-cognitive traits including interpersonal skills, communication skills, and professionalism as well as helping to control for context specificity. The continued use of MMI's is supported due to their reliability and validity as an effective tool in the medical school admissions process. Developing effective, reliable, and valid, as well as acceptable tools in the selection of medical school students has proven quite challenging. One of the most significant problems is that medical school applicants chosen to attend an interview day are anything but a random sample from the population; they are all highly competitive [1]. A method, growing in popularity, to help differentiate such similar candidates is the multiple mini interview (MMI). Not only has the MMI been proven reliable and valid [2-6] it has also taken into account other factors influencing candidate selection such as non-cognitive characteristics, context specificity, and has been found appealing by both interviewers and applicants. According to [1] the Medical College Admissions Test (MCAT), and the MMI have been found to show predictive validity while other more traditional approaches such as the personal interview, reference letters, personality testing, emotional intelligence, and situational judgment tests are not as stringent.