• Louis M.
• Views(2565)

Hi I’m Louis. I’m a 3rd year medical student at Oriel College, Oxford and I’m here to give you an example of the type of interview questions you can expect at an Oxbridge medical interview. This is a graph I was given at my medical interview and I’m going to talk you through some of the questions I was asked about it. 

First of all, what does this graph show? The graph shows the number of deaths from tuberculosis per million members of population per year between around 1830 and 1960. Even if you cannot identify the disease from clues such as Tubercle bacillus identified and BCG vaccination, you can say that this graph shows reduction in death rate over time from 4000/million/year to only around 50/million/year. 

Next, what do you understand about the term chemotherapy? Chemotherapy, although normally associated with the treatment of cancer, is the chemical treatment of any disease. In this case, the disease is tuberculosis caused by the bacterium mycobacterium tuberculosis and the chemotherapy is an antibiotic drug.

Next, what do you think is the most important contribution to the fall in tuberculosis deaths in the period shown? This is something of a trick question designed to get you thinking about the causes and treatments of disease. As you can see from the graph, none of the three medical advances shown has much of an effect on death rates in terms of absolute number of deaths per year. Because the question is broad, the interviewers are asking you to move beyond the scope of the graph to suggest other factors which may have contributed to the fall in death rate from tuberculosis during this period. Sanitation improved drastically within this time frame and this would have contributed in large part to a reduction in the spread of tuberculosis and, therefore, and the reduction
in death from the disease. Nutrition is another key example, with better nutrition improving the immune system’s ability to protect against the infection and progression of diseases such as tuberculosis.

I hope you found this video useful. And if you would like to know more about applying for Oxbridge or preparing for interviews, then please do get in touch with us here at GuruMe (Young Tutors).