Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University (MD) Medicine InterviewFormat, Questions & Prep Tips

Why Stony Brook Renaissance SOM? What draws you to this programme and the Long Island academic medical environment?

Reference specific research institutes (Stony Brook Cancer Center, Department of Biomedical Engineering), the Level I Trauma Center, and the school's SUNY public mission. Avoid generic "great clinical training" answers.

You are an intern and you notice that a senior resident is consistently ordering unnecessary tests on patients to "be safe." How do you handle it?

Address defensive medicine, resource stewardship, cost to patients and the system, and how a junior trainee can raise concerns appropriately (direct conversation vs. attending, vs. patient safety reporting system).

Tell me about a research project you have worked on. What was your specific contribution, and what did the results mean?

Stony Brook is research-intensive — be ready to discuss your methodology, your individual role (not just the lab's work), and the significance of findings. If no formal research: frame a clinical observation or QI project as evidence of scientific thinking.

A patient with Stage IV cancer is admitted to the ICU and placed on a ventilator. The family insists on continuing aggressive treatment; the medical team believes further intervention is futile. What is the appropriate next step?

Discuss surrogate decision-making, medical futility frameworks, ethics committee consultation, palliative care referral, and the difference between withholding and withdrawing treatment. Acknowledge the emotional weight for the family.

You are working in a clinic and a patient expresses distrust of vaccines due to information they read online. How do you respond?

Do not argue. Use motivational interviewing: explore concerns, acknowledge misinformation is pervasive, provide evidence clearly, and use the "Ask-Tell-Ask" framework. Show you respect patient autonomy while not endorsing harm.

If you could design a new research programme at Stony Brook, what health problem would you study and why?

Shows research curiosity and systems thinking. Pick something genuine. Connect it to Stony Brook's existing strengths if possible — cancer biology, neuroscience, structural biology, or Long Island population health.

Two patients need a liver transplant. One is a retired firefighter with a family; the other is a single 25-year-old student. Both are equally medically suitable. Who should receive the organ?

Classic UNOS allocation question. The correct approach uses standardised organ allocation criteria (medical urgency, time on waitlist, compatibility), not social worth judgements. Discuss why social worth allocation is ethically impermissible.

Describe a time you received criticism of your work that you initially disagreed with. How did you respond?

Traditional panel question. Show genuine reflective capacity — not a story where you were secretly right all along. Interviewers value intellectual humility and growth mindset.

Should the legal drinking age in the United States be lowered to 18? Present an argument.

Policy/values scenario. Argue a coherent position; acknowledge the counterarguments. Reference public health data (adolescent brain development, drunk driving mortality) and legal autonomy principles.

What specialty area interests you most, and how has that interest been shaped by your experiences?

No wrong answer — stony Brook trains across all specialties. Show intellectual ownership of your interest, cite specific clinical or research experiences, and connect it to the school's strengths where possible.

MMI role-play: You are a research-team member and must tell a fellow undergraduate (played by the interviewer) that data they collected will have to be excluded because of a protocol deviation they caused. They are upset and worried it reflects on them. Begin.

Separate the data problem from a judgement of the person, be clear that exclusion protects the study's integrity, and offer a constructive path forward. This blends scientific rigour with empathic communication — both central at a research-intensive school like Stony Brook.

You are shown a forest plot from a meta-analysis where most studies favour an intervention but the largest, highest-quality trial straddles the line of no effect. How do you read this, and how confident should a clinician be?

Discuss heterogeneity, weighting by study quality and size, small-study and publication bias, and why a pooled point estimate can mislead. Conclude with calibrated rather than absolute confidence. This data-literacy station fits Stony Brook's research identity.

You are explaining to a family in the surgical ICU why their relative is being enrolled, with consent, in a trauma research registry. They worry their relative is being 'experimented on.' How do you respond?

Distinguish observational registries from interventional trials, explain voluntariness and the right to withdraw, and connect data collection to improving future trauma care at the Level I centre. Use plain language and address the fear directly rather than reciting consent jargon.

A principal investigator pressures the lab to publish a striking preliminary finding quickly, before a confirmatory experiment, to beat a competing group. As a junior researcher, what do you do?

Engage the integrity-versus-priority tension. Discuss the harms of premature or irreproducible claims, the option of pre-registration or a preprint with clear limitations, and how to raise concerns with a senior PI respectfully. Show scientific conscience under real-world incentive pressure.

Stony Brook pairs a research-flagship identity with a strong SUNY public-service mission. Some applicants treat those as separate boxes to tick. How do research and service genuinely connect for you?

Articulate a coherent identity rather than two unrelated motivations — for example, using research to answer questions that arise from underserved-population care, or community-engaged research. Avoid sounding like you bolted 'research' and 'service' together for the application.