What is an MMI?

An MMI, or multiple mini interview, is an interview assembled from a series of short independent stations. You read a prompt, go in, speak with one assessor for a few minutes, then move to the next station and start again with someone new. Each station is scored on its own, so a weak station is read by an assessor who never sees the rest of your interview. UBC states its MD interview uses this format with 10 stations, in person at Point Grey. Manitoba states it uses the MMI for all applicants, on a virtual platform for the 2026-2027 cycle.

What does an MMI day actually look like?

The mechanics vary by school and this is the part applicants most want pinned down, so here is what is verifiable and what is not.

Verifiable: UBC publishes 10 stations and an in-person location. Manitoba publishes the format, the virtual delivery for 2026-2027, and that MMI interviews are held in February. Neither publishes minutes per station on the pages checked.

Not verifiable from those pages: the reading time outside the door, the minutes inside, and the number of assessors per station. Published shapes differ across schools and across cycles. Your invitation email and the school’s own instructions are the only authority for your own day, and any prep site that gives you a single confident number for all schools is guessing.

Why do schools use an MMI instead of one long interview?

To stop a single conversation deciding everything. In one long interview, an early stumble colours the next 40 minutes, and an assessor who does not warm to you assesses all of you. The MMI breaks that by sampling: many short independent observations by many different people.

For you, the practical consequence is the same one that applies on Casper. A bad station is bounded. The only way to make it expensive is to carry it into the next room, and that is a trainable habit rather than a personality trait. There is more on the comparison in panel interview versus MMI.

What kinds of stations should I expect?

Four families cover most sets, and the mistake almost everybody makes is preparing only for the first.

Situational. You are given a situation involving other people and asked what you would do. Same reasoning as a Casper scenario, spoken.

Policy or opinion. A question about something contested, where the assessor wants to hear you argue a position and handle the strongest objection to it rather than hear the safest available view.

About you. Motivation, a failure, a strength, why medicine. These feel easy and are answered badly more often than the ethics stations, because people improvise them. See how to answer “tell me about yourself” in a medical interview.

Acting or role-play. At some schools, a station where someone plays a person and you have to talk to them rather than about them. Covered in MMI acting stations: what to do.

What does UBC tell applicants about preparing?

Worth quoting because it comes from an admissions office rather than a prep provider. UBC’s interview page advises applicants to be themselves and to answer honestly and thoughtfully, and states that you do not need a specific formula, vocabulary or medical knowledge to perform well. It also tells applicants to be very wary of costly preparatory services claiming to have real interview questions.

I coach interviews for a living and I think that advice is correct. What preparation should give you is not a script or a vocabulary. It is the experience of having spoken out loud, under a clock, to somebody who then told you what they actually heard. That is the only part you cannot do alone.

A station, and two answers

Here is an original station. It is not a real item from any school.

Prompt. “Your city is considering charging residents an annual fee for on-street parking permits, scaled to the weight of the vehicle. Heavier vehicles would pay more. Do you support it?”

A weak answer. “I can see arguments on both sides. On one hand, heavier vehicles cause more road wear and are more dangerous in collisions, so it seems fair that they pay more. On the other hand, this might unfairly affect families who need larger vehicles, or tradespeople. Overall I think a balanced approach that considers all stakeholders would be best, and the city should consult residents before making a decision.”

A strong answer. “I would support it, and the reason is narrower than road wear. The strongest case for it is that a heavier vehicle transfers more risk to everyone else on the street in a collision, so the fee is charging for a cost the driver imposes and does not currently pay. The objection I take most seriously is not that it is unfair to large families, because a permit fee is small relative to owning a large vehicle. It is that on-street parking permits are a badly aimed instrument: a van parked all week and never driven imposes almost no risk, and a heavy vehicle driven daily that parks in a garage pays nothing. So the honest position is that I support it as a rough proxy while being clear it is a proxy, and I would want to know two things before voting for it: what the fee actually is, because at ten dollars it is symbolic and at four hundred it is a policy, and whether there is an exemption route for people whose work requires the vehicle. If the answer to the second is no, my support would be conditional on adding one.”

What separates them. The weak answer is not unintelligent. It is uncommitted. It lists one argument each way, asserts that balance is best, and outsources the decision to consultation, which is what an answer says when it does not want to be caught holding a view. The strong answer takes a side in the first sentence, picks the single best reason rather than listing three, then names the strongest objection to its own position and admits the objection has force, distinguishes a weak objection from a serious one, asks the two questions that would actually change the answer, and ends with a condition. An assessor can follow up on every one of those. There is nothing in the weak answer to follow up on.

Key numbers

• UBC: MMI format, 10 stations, in person at the Point Grey campus in Vancouver.
• Manitoba: MMI for all applicants, virtual platform for the 2026-2027 cycle, interviews in February.
• One assessor per station, scored independently.
• Station counts and timings vary by school and cycle; your invitation is the authority.
• UBC states you need no specific formula, vocabulary or medical knowledge to perform well.

If you want stations run live with feedback on what an assessor actually heard, that is interview coaching.

Related: how to prepare for an MMI in two weeks and MMI practice questions with answers.

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