Medical schools are questioning how to keep MMIs manageable when faculty and administrative capacity are already stretched.

In recent conversations with admissions teams, we’ve heard about shrinking pools of available faculty raters, difficulty staffing multi-station interviews, admissions staff stepping in to fill gaps, and interview formats being adjusted because the original model requires more people than the school can reliably bring together.

Those pressures can shape the interview itself. Some schools have found that limited rater availability makes it difficult to deliver the full MMI experience consistently, while others are reworking their interview structure to reduce the number of interviewers needed. Admissions teams have also described the time involved in coordinating faculty schedules, replacing unavailable raters, collecting scores, and keeping interview days running smoothly.

Kira partners have faced many of the same challenges. When OHSU School of Medicine moved its MMI online using Webex, the team reduced its traditional eight-to-ten-station format to six stations and removed collaborative and role-play components that were difficult to manage virtually. At UAB Heersink School of Medicine, a nine-station MMI was condensed to three stations with two raters when the school moved to Zoom. In both cases, the way the interview was being delivered affected the kind of assessment the school could realistically run.

The MMI challenge is to design a process that gives admissions teams the insight they need without creating unnecessary demands on faculty. That starts with being clear about what the interview needs to reveal about an applicant, how much interaction is needed to assess those qualities well, and how faculty time can be focused on evaluating applicants.

Start with what the MMI needs to tell you

A strong MMI starts with the qualities a program wants to assess. Communication, professionalism, ethical reasoning, empathy, teamwork, and situational judgment may all be important to a medical school, but the right mix will depend on the program and what it still needs to learn about applicants at the interview stage.

Every MMI station should have a job to do. The question, format, scoring criteria, and reviewer role should give the admissions team useful information about a defined competency. Looking closely at the current process may reveal stations that assess similar qualities, panels that have grown longer over time, or interactions that repeat information available elsewhere in the application.

Being clear about the purpose of each part of the MMI makes it easier to decide how many stations are needed, how long they should be, who should review them, and where live faculty interaction is most useful.

Make faculty time count

The time required to run an MMI extends well beyond the applicant conversation. Faculty may need training, scheduling, time between stations, and time to complete evaluations. Admissions teams are recruiting reviewers, preparing materials, filling last-minute gaps, monitoring interview days, following up on scores, coordinating makeups, and keeping the process moving.

The design of the interview determines how much of that time is required. At NYU Grossman School of Medicine, moving the MMI into Kira reduced faculty interview commitments from four hours to one hour. Faculty could continue contributing to applicant evaluation with a smaller time commitment alongside their other responsibilities.

UTMB John Sealy School of Medicine also reduced the work surrounding its interviews. The admissions team could monitor reviewer participation and make substitutions when someone was unavailable, while interview results that had previously taken two to three weeks to reach the admissions committee became available within a day. The school saved more than 20 hours per cycle.

Creating a more manageable MMI gives faculty more time to focus on the part admissions teams need them for: observing applicants, applying the rubric, and contributing their judgment to the admissions decision.

Design the MMI around what you need to assess

Medical schools have different applicant volumes, competencies, faculty resources, and expectations for interviewer involvement. Their MMIs should reflect those differences.

A program may want several live interactions to understand how an applicant communicates and responds in the moment. Another may use a combination of assessment formats across its admissions process, reserving live faculty interaction for the competencies where conversation provides the most useful insight. Reviewer responsibilities can also be structured differently depending on the expertise available and the number of applicants moving through the process.

UAB’s experience shows how delivery can affect those choices. When its traditional nine-station MMI moved to Zoom, the school condensed the process to three stations with two raters. With Kira, UAB returned to its nine-station MMI, saved more than 30 hours per admissions cycle even as applications increased by 26%, and interviewed more applicants while maintaining the structure it wanted.

OHSU was also able to return to parts of its MMI that mattered to the program. After removing role-play and collaborative stations when interviews moved to Webex, the school brought those formats back with Kira. They gave reviewers additional ways to assess qualities including communication, professionalism, and conflict management, while the school saved more than 75 hours per admissions cycle.

The technology and workflows supporting an MMI should give admissions teams room to build the assessment they want to deliver. For medical schools, that can mean maintaining a robust multi-station process, bringing back a valued interview format, involving faculty more selectively, or making a complex interview day much easier to coordinate.

Questions to ask before the next admissions cycle

Preparing for the next cycle is an opportunity to look at what each part of the MMI is contributing. What does each station help you understand about an applicant? Where is live faculty interaction most useful? Which parts of the process take the most interviewer and staff time? Where are scheduling, scoring, or coordination challenges making the interview harder to deliver?

The answers can help shape the number and type of stations, reviewer responsibilities, scoring approach, interview format, and technology supporting the process. Together, those decisions determine whether the MMI can consistently gather the information your admissions committee needs within the faculty and staff capacity available.

Kira works with medical schools to build assessments around their admissions goals. Our team supports competency development, question design, scoring rubrics, live and asynchronous interview formats, reviewer workflows, and the technology that brings the process together.