Deep Dive into Duke Medical: An Interview With Dr. Linton Yee, Associate Dean of Admissions

Dr. Linton Yee, Associate Dean for Admissions at Duke University School of Medicine discusses the program’s integrative learning approach that offers students hands-on training from day one.  In this episode: Can you give an overview of Duke Medical's highly distinctive curriculum? If you're having all of your early clinical exposure and also doing the entire didactic portion in your first year (which many medical schools take two years to do) how do you fit it all in? How has Duke Medical adapted the med school experience in light of COVID restrictions? What do you think is going to stick around and become permanent as a result of those adaptations? What are you trying to glean from secondary applications? You mentioned earlier that Duke is having a very healthy increase in completed secondary applications, can you tell us more? What process does an application go through when it's marked completed? When an application is reviewed, is it reviewed by multiple people? Do you discuss the applications as a committee? What's the process? What can someone invited to interview at Duke Medical expect from the interview day/week, given that everything is virtual? How do the virtual MMIs work? When COVID is behind us, do you see Duke Medical returning to in-person interviews or some in-person, some virtual? What are some of the common mistakes you see applicants making either on the secondary or in their interview? Does Duke consider letters of intent and update letters? If it does, at what phase of the process? How do you look at candidates who have faced mental health issues in the past? How about applicants with some kind of criminal record - does that automatically sink their application at Duke? Would you advise applicants who have not submitted their primary application by late August to use the next year to strengthen their application and apply in 2022 or do they still have a shot for this cycle? When should applicants who have submitted their secondaries and not heard from you assume that they're not going to be invited to interview? On a forward looking note, what advice would you give medical school wannabes planning to apply to Duke in 2022, for a 2023 matriculation?