To prepare for the McMaster interview, rehearse a whole MMI circuit in one sitting rather than drilling single stations, and practise across a range of station lengths, because McMaster publishes that it runs a circuit but does not publish the station count or timing for its main MD stream. The only published count is the 12-station circuit used by the MD/PhD programme. Mix station types deliberately: the station that costs people is the one they never rehearsed. And stop revising Casper, because at McMaster it stops counting once you are invited.

What does McMaster actually publish about its interview?

Less than the internet suggests. McMaster publishes that applicants move between stations in a circuit and that the MD/PhD stream uses a 12-station MMI. It does not publish a station count for the main MD stream, and it does not publish station timing.

That gap is information, not a nuisance. It tells you that any prep product promising “the exact McMaster format” is guessing. It also tells you what to do: prepare so that the count and the clock do not matter.

Honest caveat about this page: on 17 September 2026 the McMaster undergraduate medical education site returned a 403 error to automated requests, so the figures here come from McMaster’s own admissions pages as recorded on this site rather than from a fetch on the day of writing. Open the pages yourself and confirm.

Why does Casper stop mattering after the invitation?

Because McMaster uses two different formulas. The pre-interview composite that decides who gets invited weights GPA at 32%, MCAT CARS at 32% and Casper at 32%, with a small addition for a completed graduate degree. The post-interview ranking that decides who gets an offer is built from the MMI, GPA and CARS, and Casper is not in it.

The practical consequence: a strong Casper buys you the interview and then contributes nothing. Every hour after the invitation belongs to the circuit.

How do you practise for a circuit whose length you do not know?

Build the range in. Other Canadian schools publish their timings, and they bracket the plausible span: Calgary’s own sample-question page describes a circuit of 8-minute stations with 2 minutes between them, and UBC states 10 stations. Alberta’s MMI-style questions run 2 minutes to read and 6 to answer.

So run your practice at 5, 6 and 8 minutes across different weeks. If your answer only works at one length, it is a script rather than a structure.

Three rules that survive any station count:

  • Rehearse the run, not the rep. Eight to twelve stations back to back, with the real gaps, once a week. Stamina failure is the most common cause of a weak back half and you cannot detect it doing one station at a time.
  • Rotate the type. Ethical dilemma, teamwork, an acting station, a task, a policy question, and a plain question about you. Draw them blind.
  • Record every run. You cannot hear your own filler or your own speeding up.

What does a McMaster-style circuit answer look like?

An original prompt, written for this page:

You are the senior student on a small research team. Your supervisor asks you to present the group’s results at a departmental meeting tomorrow. A junior student on the team did most of the analysis. Your supervisor does not know that. What do you do?

Weak answer. “I would present the results and mention the junior student’s contribution during the talk, because it is important to give credit where credit is due and to be honest with my supervisor about who did the work.”

Strong answer. “Two things need fixing and only one of them is tomorrow. Tomorrow’s problem is that the wrong person may be standing at the front. So before I agree, I would go back to my supervisor today and say plainly that the analysis was largely done by the junior student, and ask whether she should present it or whether we should present it together. That is a thirty-second conversation and it removes the whole problem.

If the supervisor says no, present it yourself, then I present it, and I open by naming who did the analysis, in the first minute rather than in an acknowledgements slide at the end. And I tell the junior student in advance what I am going to say and why I am the one presenting, so she hears it from me and not from someone else afterwards.

The larger issue is that my supervisor did not know who did the work, which means our group is not reporting contributions accurately. That is not a tomorrow problem, but it is a real one, so I would raise it after the meeting as a question about how we record authorship and contribution going forward, rather than as an accusation about this one talk.

What I would not do is present it as my own work and privately apologise to her later. That protects my relationship with the supervisor at her expense, and it is the option that costs me nothing, which is usually a sign it is the wrong one.“

Why it scores. It separates the urgent problem from the structural one, it commits to a specific first action with a timeline, it names the option it rejects and explains the reason, and it treats the junior student as a person to be informed rather than credited in passing. Note also that it is naturally about six minutes at a normal speaking pace and would compress to five without losing a limb, which is the point of practising at a range.

Key numbers

  • 32% Casper, 32% GPA, 32% MCAT CARS in the McMaster pre-interview composite.
  • 0: Casper’s weight in McMaster’s post-interview ranking.
  • 12 stations: the only published McMaster count, and it applies to MD/PhD.
  • 5, 6 and 8 minutes: the practice lengths worth rotating through, based on published timings elsewhere.
  • 1 full circuit per week, recorded, from the moment you are invited.

Run a full circuit with feedback before the real one: book an interview session.

Related: What is an MMI? and How to prepare for an MMI in two weeks.

Last reviewed 17 September 2026. Written by Arvin Ardakani, final-year medical student, 4th quartile on CASPer four times.