Oh man, if you had told me that I would have the privilege to interview at the most selective medical school in the nation, I would have scoffed and called you naive. MMS is a true gem in the sea of medical schools, hiding behind its Top 20 US News Ranking (when its resources could easily place it as a Top 5) and its location in Rochester, Minnesota. I attended my interview expecting to be blown away by the campus and disappointed by the location, but oh my goodness, I absolutely loved both.
Rochester, as many will tell you, is “in the middle of nowhere.” With a population of only 100,000 people or so, 30,000 of whom are employed by Mayo Clinic and MMS, its easy to see how claustrophobic this town might be. While this might detract students are wish for a larger social scene during their college experience, I actually find myself not minding it at all. I rarely went in college anyway, and Minneapolis is about an hour and a half away if I happen to want something more than the daily routine. Furthermore, I was pleasantly surprised by how similar Rochester is to the various small suburbs I had lived as a kid in Washington. I definitely felt nostalgic when I was there, haha! And really, Rochester isn’t missing anything necessary to daily living; there are shops, dinners, a Costco (which is really all I cared about HAHA), parks, lakes…the list goes on. You definitely should have a car here, but it’s not “necessary to surivive.” Most students either living within walking distance of Mayo or take the shuttle (since there is not campus parking), so the car is really used to go grocery shopping to head out of town for a weekend trip. Personally, if I’m given the opportunity to consider Mayo, I would actually list Rochester as a positive rather than a negative.
My hosts were extremely nice and genuinely happy about their experience at Mayo, which is incredible. They raved about the small class size, selective options, and how they’re really learning “from the best of the best” here. Thoughts about Rochester seemed to be split 50/50, but I think that really depends a lot on your own undergraduate experience and how you expect medical school to be. My hosts found that they appreciated Rochester’s peaceful calm, since “you go to med school to learn and study” and with their 2 most difficult blocks being taught at the beginning of the first year, it makes sense. “There are some days when I wondered what it would be like if I had chosen to go to medical school in NYC. Then I realized that I would be super distracted all the time,” she joked.
Dinner was a lively affair, since a good portion of hosts brought their interviewees together at the Forager Brewery. Pizza was delicious, and everyone made a genuine effort to really get to know us and praise their experience at Mayo. The class size seems to be a huge seller, allowing one to really get to know their professors, while providing one with plentiful opportunities for patient contact and research. To me, this is amazing. As I’ve said in my other school reviews, I really look for a strong suport system in a school. While I consider myself to be a go-getter who takes initiative when something interests me, I want the other party to be receptive and supportive of that. Moreover, the flexibility of the selectives between blocks allows students to really direct and customize their education. “It’s really perfect. Just don’t date anyone in your class,” they joked. “The rest of us will find out in like…3 hours.” Following dinner, we all drove over to Snagdoodle, a whimsical homemade ice cream shop, where I was able to meet more students. Seeing them all bond so closely and comfortably with one another made me really excited about the idea of attending Mayo!
The next morning, my host drove us to one of the shuttle lots where MS1s and MS2s are allowed to park. Mayo’s primary model is “The needs of the patient come first,” and everything it does reflects that. The parking lots, for example, are reserved exclusively for patients, their families, and attending physicians. Hospital employees, on the other hand, are assigned a shuttle lot based on how often they’ve worked at Mayo; the lot that MS1s are assigned would require a Mayo staff member 12 years of employment!
Interview Day officially started at 8am with coffe, snacks, and an introduction to MMS. Dr. Romanski is a quiet woman, who puts a lot of thoughts into her words. She gave us a brief history of Mayo and its founding, which helped explain the school’s philosphy of training physician leaders and physician scientests, as well as its location in Rochester. After Dr. Romanski’s brief introduction, Ms. Perez came in to briefly go through the admissions process and curriculum.
Let’s start with the admissions process: there are 2 partially blinded interviews, in which the interviewer knows your personal statement and activitis, but not your stats. (Mayo is famous for looking at so much more than your numbers.) Following your interviews, each of your interviewer write a report of their impressions of you, as well as rank you from 1-5, with 5 being the highest score. Now, what my host told me the night before was that your application already has a score on it, which may have been used to decide who receives an interview invitation. Your scores are then added up to a total of 15, and the adcoms meet every Wednesday (or every other Wednesday?) to discuss the interviewed applicants. Since they prefer both of your interviewers to be presents and advocate for you, your application may not be discussed right away. Once you are “ranked,” you will receive an email informing you that you’ve reached the final step; you will not know what your rank is. Starting on 10/15, appointments (acceptances) will be given out on a rolling basis, with the bulk of them being offered in January. Only after all acceptance are given out does Mayo decide who goes on the waitlist and who gets rejected, again using these rankings as a metric. Mayo is extremely receptive to letters of intent and updates, since it pulls as much as half of its class off the waitlist. I was surprised to hear that the average admitted Mayo student holds 6-8 acceptances, which accounts for its high turnover. Personally, I also hope this means good things will happen this cycle! 😉
Next, the curriculum: unfortunately, the admissions staff didn’t spend much time going over this. As illustrated in the handout we were given, Mayo’s curriculum is organized in blocks spanning 4-8 weeks. Between each block, students are given 1-2 weeks, sometimes as along as 6-8 at the end of 2nd year, to essentially do whatever they want. As long as the activity is remotely related to medicine and takes up 20 hours/week, then you can do anything from shadowing specialists to research to community service. Furthermore, the world is yours! Want to go home and shadow a physician in your hometown? Sure! Want to visit another country and do global health research? Awesome! There is a 3 month reseach requirement, but students are allows to spread that out as much as they please. Classes are usually in the morning (MS1s) with 3 afternoons free, or in the afternoon (MS2s) with 3 mornings free. It’s a unique mix, I think. One thing I would’ve wanted to learn more about was the clinical opportunities available during rotations, but I guess I’ll look into that further if I happen to get an acceptance.
There was a brief talk about financial aid, which recently transitioned to being need-based rather than something that every student received. Mayo still boasts about its generosity, with the average debt being only around $60K including undergraduate debt. Ms. Perez mentioned that there may be 1-2 merit scholarships offered depending on their budget, but that’s just incredibly rare.
After this introduction, I had my first interview with a faculty member. He was super nice and seemed genuinely happy to meet interviewees, and I found our interview to be one of the most conversational by far. I hope this brings good news! I didn’t receive any behavioral type questions, but I do think my student interviewer made up for that haha! She interviewed me in the afternoon, after the tour and lunch. It was a pleasant interview, but I did notice that she focused more on behavioral questions and trying to see what makes me tick as a person and who I am beyond medicine. It wasn’t as relaxed, but definitely was thought provoking rather than stressful.
Between my interviews was the tour, and OH GOSH. THE TOUR. THE FACIILITIES. Hands down, Mayo has the most gorgeous facilities I’ve ever seen. Everything is centered around the patient, from the decor made at eye-level for the pediatrc patients, to the brightly and airy lobby, to the piano and volunteer singers. Everything is made for the comfort of the patient, and there is even a Center for Innovation (aka Mayo’s Google) where people come together and try to find ways to improve patient care and comfort. Just. Simply. Amazing.
Lunch with the students was a lively affair, and the conversations were really similar to the ones I had with the MS1s the night before. I was really happy to hear that even though Mayo is very patient centered, there is ample opportunity to get involved with research. Nothing is out of reach, and that’s amazing to me.
Overall, I am blown away by what Mayo has to offer. It’s very much one of my top choices, and I would be absolutely thrilled to receive an acceptance here.
