Panel interview vs MMI is a difference in structure, not in what is being scored. A panel seats you with two or three assessors for one long conversation: Ottawa states a semi-structured interview of approximately 40 minutes with two Admissions Committee members and a fourth-year medical student. An MMI moves you through short, independent stations, each assessed separately: UBC states 10 stations with approximately 10 interviewers. A panel rewards one coherent, specific account of yourself. An MMI rewards ten clean restarts. Both are scored on judgment, communication, ethics and self-awareness.
What does a panel interview test that an MMI does not?
Consistency over time. Forty minutes is long enough for a rehearsed persona to run out of material, and long enough for an interviewer to ask the follow-up that a vague answer invites. Ottawa publishes the attributes its panel assesses: motivation, empathy and compassion, conflict resolution and teamwork, communication skills, professionalism, critical thinking and ethics, and resiliency. A panel also builds one impression rather than ten, and that impression is held by people who will still be in the room twenty minutes after your worst sentence.
The other thing a panel tests is your file. Ottawa notes that anything in your application may be discussed. If your autobiographical sketch claims a leadership role you barely held, a panel has time to find the edge of it.
What does an MMI test that a panel does not?
Recovery speed, and range. A circuit samples deliberately different situations so that a candidate who is only good at ethics is caught by the teamwork station. Because each station is scored by a different assessor with no access to the last one, you start each door at zero. That is protection and pressure at the same time: nothing bad follows you, and nothing good does either.
Stamina is the underrated part. Ten stations at UBC, eight at Calgary in the cycle described on its own MMI page, means you are performing the hardest cognitive task of your year for the eighth time while tired. Most people are visibly worse by the back half of a circuit unless they have practised the whole circuit, not single stations.
Which Canadian schools use which format?
Do not generalise. Toronto uses a Modified Personal Interview, four independent interviews of approximately 12 minutes each, and states that its virtual variant is completed asynchronously with video responses of approximately 5 minutes. Queen’s uses both formats in sequence: an asynchronous early-phase MMI recorded on the Acuity Insights platform, then a virtual synchronous panel. Ottawa also uses both, an early-phase MMI as a gate and then the 40-minute panel. UBC runs a 10-station MMI. Check the school’s own page for your cycle; these change.
What does the same question look like in each format?
An original prompt, written for this page and not taken from any exam:
A classmate on your group project has missed the last two meetings. Today she messages the group at midnight saying her section is not done. The submission is in nine hours. What do you do?
Weak answer, either format. “I would talk to her and find out what is going on, then I would help her finish the work, because teamwork is important in medicine and I want to support my colleagues.”
Strong answer, MMI station, about six minutes. “First, the deadline is the immediate problem, so I would reply asking one question: what is left, in concrete terms, and what can she do in the next two hours. That tells me whether this is a gap I can cover or a section that has to be cut. Then I would split the problem. For tonight, I would take the part of her section I can actually write and tell the group plainly what we are submitting and what is thin, so nobody is surprised by the mark. Separately, and not at midnight, I would ask her about the two missed meetings, because two in a row is a pattern and a pattern usually has a cause that has nothing to do with the project. If it is something like illness or a family situation, the right move is to point her at the course coordinator or student affairs, not to keep quietly covering. What I would not do is either dump her section back on her at 3 a.m. or hide the shortfall from the group, because both protect me at someone else’s expense.”
Strong answer, panel, same content plus the parts a panel will ask for. Everything above, then be ready for the follow-ups a panel has time to ask: what if she asks you not to tell anyone, what if this is the third project she has done this on, and what did you actually do the last time this happened to you. A panel answer needs one real example from your own life attached to it.
Why the difference. The MMI version is complete in itself because nobody is coming back to probe it. The panel version has to survive three follow-ups from people who will remember the first version you gave. In both, the marks come from the same places: you deal with the deadline and the person as two separate problems, you name what you will not do and why, and you escalate to someone whose job it is rather than carrying it alone.
Key numbers
- Ottawa panel: approximately 40 minutes, two Admissions Committee members plus a fourth-year medical student, interviews held February to March and conducted virtually for the 2027 cycle.
- UBC MMI: 10 stations, approximately 10 interviewers, interviews stated as taking place on the UBC Point Grey Campus in Vancouver.
- Toronto MPI: four interviews, approximately 12 minutes each in person; the virtual version uses video responses of approximately 5 minutes.
- Queen’s: early-phase MMI plus a later virtual synchronous panel; no station count or station timing is published.
- Attributes Ottawa names for its panel: seven, from motivation to resiliency.
Bring the format you are actually facing to a mock, not the one you read about first: 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.