What is the dress code for Medical school interviews?
Knowing what to wear for a medical school interview is important as it is the first impression that you will convey to the interview panel. Although many medical schools will not explicitly state a dress code for their interviews, you should nevertheless always dress formally and we will explain what this means and why this is in this article. Firstly, being a doctor is a professional job and being a medical student requires a high level of professionalism. You do not want to dress informally and even subconsciously give this impression to the admissions team. Yes it is true that you will see modern doctors dressing in a more informal fashion than historically and as a doctor you can still very easily add your own personality and flare in to the way you dress. You may have even come across eccentrically dressed doctors yourself! However, your medical school interview is not the time to experiment with this. Keep it simple, formal and comfortable.
What should I wear to my Medical school Interview?
Males should wear a suit and tie in relatively conservative colours to their Medicine Interview. Females should wear either a suit or a smart skirt or trousers with only conservative make up and accessories. Avoid high heels and low cut tops or skirts that are too short. All genders should make sure regardless of what you wear that you are comfortable. Your day may involve a lot of walking if you are travelling to a new city and interviews often include a campus tour. Consider that it can get very warm indoors even if it is freezing outside during winter interviews. Take care to make sure that your clothes are clean and ironed and that your shoes, which are often overlooked, are clean.
You do not need to overcomplicate this or go overboard. In essence all you are doing is dressing smartly, comfortably and cleanly. It is completely unnecessary to spend thousands of pounds on an expensive suit and shoes specifically for your interview. If that is what you want to do or is how you normally pick your clothes then that is of course fine but do not do it in the hopes of conferring a specific advantage at your interviews because it will not give you none whatsoever. A low cost suit from a high street shop will do absolutely fine. You may not be used to wearing formal clothes regularly so try them on when out and about a few times, taking care to keep them clean. If cost is an issue you can consider renting a suit or borrowing it from a friend or family member. High streets do offer many cheap options however.
What is the dress code in Medical school? What do doctors wear to work?
In case you were wondering, typical days at medical school do not have a dress code. People will dress just like any typical university student. When entering a lab to work you may need to put on a lab coat over your regular clothes and wear closed shoes instead of sandals/open footwear. When in clinical environments or around patients the dress code will be professional/formal. You may have noticed that doctors in NHS hospitals, when in clinical environments wear short sleeves or roll their sleeves up above their elbows. They also do not wear ties or wrist watches. This is all to help stop the spread of infection. Similarly medical students when in clinical environments will dress in the same way.
In the working world, most doctors in the UK wear a shirt or smart top with trousers or a skirt. Increasingly, doctors are dressing less formally. You will see some doctors in smart chinos and shoes which are smart but are not dress shoes. Consultants or GP’s quite often wear suits to work but most other doctors do not. In many specialities e.g. Surgery, Emergency Medicine, some medical wards, the doctors come into work wearing whatever they want and change into scrubs for work and also wear trainers/sports shoes for comfort. You’ve probably seen famous doctors in TV shows like House MD or ER, walk around in lab coats. Many doctors do so in North America and in other countries but In the UK, doctors very rarely walk around in white coats (unless they are working in a lab!).
How Can Medicine Answered help you to succeed in your medical school interview?
Medicine Answered is a leading provider of specialist Medicine interview courses helping student across the world. All of our medical school courses are delivered only by doctors who successfully passed all four medical school interviews and gained all four UCAS offers. This is unlike our competitors as our courses are not delivered by non-medics, medical students or people who were not fully successful in the application process themselves. Our philosophy is that your time is valuable and limited. To help you maximise the use of that limited time to prepare for your medicine interview, we believe that you should only be taught by experts who have excelled at their own interviews and have sat on both sides of the interview panel.
In our Medicine interview course we thoroughly cover traditional and MMI medical school interviews and everything in between. We focus on massively increasing your confidence about the interview and reducing your anxieties to maximise your performance on the day of your Medical school interview. We offer Medicine interview courses in Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool and various other cities around the UK. You will also receive an exclusive discount to use our other services such as our one to one Medical tutoring with a doctor (this can be done in person or online at a time to suit you) on any aspect of the application process or our 360° application review service. This premium service not only involves a professional review of your Medicine personal statement but also a review of your entire medical application and suggests areas of improvement and topics about your Medicine personal statement which may come up at interview.