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uOttawa Panel Interview 2027: Dates, Format and Prep
Key facts (2026-27)
The early-phase MMI is done (Oct 16, 18 and 19, 2026). Next: status emails in the last week of January 2027, then a 40-minute virtual panel in February or March for invited applicants.
Early-phase MMI guide: format, scoring, dates and practice prompts
- Format
- Panel (semi-structured)
- Where
- Virtual
- Stations
- 1 panel: 2 committee members and a 4th-year medical student
- Length
- About 40 min
- Also required
- Early-phase MMI on Acuity Insights (done: Oct 16, 18 or 19, 2026)
Dates for 2026-27
Status emails in the last week of January 2027
Interview invitations
February and March 2027, virtual (exact days not published yet)
Interviews
Checked October 2026 against uOttawa MD: Application process, Acuity Insights: early-phase MMI dates and AAMC MSAR 2027 interview report. Confirm details in your invitation.
uOttawa's early-phase MMI is done: the recorded sessions ran October 16, 18 and 19, 2026. Next is the panel interview. uOttawa emails application status in the last week of January 2027, and invited applicants have a 40-minute virtual panel in February or March 2027.
What happens next, and when
- Last week of January 2027. uOttawa emails every applicant about their application status. This is when you learn whether you have an interview. Invitations come from a rank-order list built on your CGPA, early-phase MMI score and ABS score.
- February and March 2027. Invited applicants have the panel interview, held virtually this cycle. uOttawa hasn't published exact interview days yet, so go by your invitation.
- When you're invited. If you need an accommodation, email the Admissions Office right away, so there's time to process it.
- May 2027. First-round offers go out through OMSAS. uOttawa ranks applicants "based primarily on interview performance."
What the panel looks like
It's one semi-structured interview of about 40 minutes with a panel of three: two Admissions Committee members (faculty or community representatives) and a fourth-year medical student. It is not an MMI.
The panel evaluates motivation, empathy and compassion, conflict resolution and teamwork, communication skills, professionalism, critical thinking and ethics, and resiliency. It runs in the language of your stream, and French-stream applicants are also assessed in English.
How to prepare for the panel
- Now to January: for each of the seven characteristics, write down two real experiences you could talk about, with what you did and what you'd do differently.
- Practice out loud: answer one question per characteristic on camera, then have someone ask a follow-up you didn't plan for. "Semi-structured" means planned questions with room to push past your first answer.
- Rehearse the full 40 minutes: once invited, run at least one mock panel with three people, one of them playing the medical student (session 5 in the drill below).
- Set up for a virtual interview: a quiet room, a stable connection and a camera at eye level. Practice on the setup you'll use.
- French stream: practice moving from French to English mid-answer, since the panel checks both.
To rehearse with follow-up questions, Confetto runs AI panel and MMI mock interviews and scores each answer against a rubric. See also our panel interview guide.
uOttawa's two interview stages
The University of Ottawa MD program interviews you twice, in two very different formats.
- Stage 1, October (done for 2026). Every applicant did an early-phase MMI in October: eight recorded video stations on the Acuity Insights platform, done from home.
- Stage 2, February or March. Applicants who rank high enough are invited to a 40-minute panel interview in February or March, held virtually this cycle.
The later interview is not an MMI, which is where a lot of older advice goes wrong.
| Early-phase MMI | Final interview | |
|---|---|---|
| Who does it | Every applicant who submits an OMSAS application to uOttawa | Invited applicants only |
| When | October, shortly after the OMSAS deadline (October 1, 2026) | February and March 2027 |
| Format | Asynchronous: you record video answers to prompts. Currently 8 stations plus a rest station in the middle, about 1 hour 15 minutes in total | Semi-structured panel interview, about 40 minutes |
| Who's evaluating | Not stated by uOttawa. Acuity says programs either rate the videos themselves or have Acuity's trained raters score them | Two Admissions Committee members (faculty or community representatives) and a fourth-year medical student |
| Where | Anywhere quiet and private, on a computer with a webcam, microphone and reliable internet | Virtual for the 2027 admission cycle |
| Language | The stream you applied to. Answering in the wrong language disqualifies your application | The stream you applied to. French-stream applicants are also assessed in English |
| What it's used for | Deciding who gets an interview, together with your CGPA and ABS score | Ranking for offers, which is "based primarily on interview performance" |
Sources: uOttawa's MD application process page (updated June 2026), the OMSAS University of Ottawa page, the OMSAS key dates, and Acuity Insights' early-phase MMI page and help article on scoring.
The early-phase MMI: format, dates and cost
The 2026 sittings are over. This section stays as a reference for how the early-phase MMI worked, for next year's applicants. What uOttawa and Acuity confirmed:
What it is
- Platform. It runs on Acuity Insights, the company behind Casper, but it's a separate assessment. You record spoken video answers.
- Shared with Queen's. Several Ontario medical schools developed it together. Queen's uses the same early-phase MMI (English only), so if you're applying to both, the Queen's interview guide covers the same first stage.
- What it measures. uOttawa says it measures critical thinking, decision making, communication, interpersonal skills, compassion and teamwork.
Dates, booking and cost
- Sessions. The 2026 sessions were Friday, October 16 at 6:00 PM EDT, Sunday, October 18 at 1:00 PM EDT, and Monday, October 19 at 6:00 PM EDT. Acuity made no exceptions for applicants who couldn't sit one of them.
- Booking and fee. Acuity asked applicants to book at least 3 days ahead to leave time for identity checks and payment. The fee for uOttawa was $18 CAD.
- Two programs. If you're applying to uOttawa's French stream and an English program such as Queen's, you'll do two early-phase MMIs, and they can't be on the same day.
- Accommodations. Accommodation requests go to Acuity at least 2 weeks before your MMI date.
- Practice questions. Before the real stations start, the platform runs a system check and gives you two practice questions. Acuity also offers a separate practice video interview you can do beforehand.
Timing per station
Acuity called the 8-station format "tentative" and said full details would come in October, when applicants were contacted. Neither Acuity nor uOttawa publishes how long you get to read each prompt or how long each recorded answer can run.
If you split 75 minutes evenly across 8 stations and a rest station, that's about 8 minutes per slot. That's our arithmetic, not a published figure, and the slot has to cover reading and recording.
The practical takeaway: you're talking to a camera, with nobody nodding back and no follow-up question to rescue a thin answer. Your first 20 seconds need to show you understood the situation, and your answer has to finish on a decision, not trail off.
The final interview is a panel, not an MMI
If you're invited, you'll sit one semi-structured interview of about 40 minutes with a panel of three: two Admissions Committee members, who may be faculty or community representatives, and a fourth-year medical student. uOttawa lists the characteristics it evaluates:
- motivation
- empathy and compassion
- conflict resolution and teamwork
- communication skills
- professionalism
- critical thinking and ethics
- resiliency
The school doesn't publish its questions, how the time is split, or whether scenario questions are mixed in with questions about your experiences.
"Semi-structured" usually means a set of planned questions with room for follow-ups, so expect the panel to push past your first answer. Our panel interview guide covers handling three interviewers at once.
How much the interview counts
This interview carries a lot of weight. After interviews, uOttawa ranks applicants "based primarily on interview performance", and applicants who don't meet its interview performance standards may not be ranked at all.
The school also caps attempts: if you've already done 3 uOttawa MD interviews, you can't be considered again.
If you applied to the MD Family Medicine Focus program, members of the Department of Family Medicine take part in your interview, so be ready to talk about family medicine specifically.
Timeline from application to offer
- October 1, 2026, 4:30 pm ET OMSAS application deadline, including references and transcripts.
- Early October uOttawa contacts every applicant who submitted with instructions to book the early-phase MMI.
- October 16, 18 and 19, 2026 early-phase MMI sessions (done).
- Last week of January 2027 uOttawa emails application status, which is when you learn whether you have an interview.
- February and March 2027 virtual interviews.
- May 11, 2027 (AFMC's uOttawa entry says the second Tuesday in May; its OMSAS key-dates list says May 12): first-round offers of admission go out through OMSAS.
English stream vs French stream
uOttawa runs the MD program in both languages, and you pick one stream when you apply. OMSAS says the school enrolls about 184 students a year, roughly 128 in the English stream and 56 in the French stream.
You can't switch streams after you apply.
Language in the interviews
Both interviews happen in the language of the stream you chose. The school says it "carefully" assesses your proficiency in that language during the interview process, because you have to be able to study medicine in it.
If you applied to the French stream, the panel will also check that you can hold a conversation in English, since patient care in the National Capital Region happens in both languages.
For French-stream applicants, that means practicing panel answers in French, and having at least a few answers you can give comfortably in English if the panel switches. Reference forms can be in either language, and so can the ABS if you're applying only to uOttawa, but the interviews can't.
Casper, MCAT and other requirements
- MCAT. uOttawa doesn't require the MCAT; both its own page and OMSAS say so.
- Casper. Casper isn't listed as a uOttawa requirement on either page. Acuity's page mentions that Queen's applicants must take Casper as well as the early-phase MMI, but that's a Queen's rule. For uOttawa, the early-phase MMI is the Acuity assessment that counts.
- Who gets an interview. Interview invitations come from a rank-order list built on your CGPA, early-phase MMI score and ABS score.
- Regional seats. About 70% of seats are reserved for regional applicants, meaning those who went to high school in Ottawa and the surrounding area.
A timing drill for both stages (our plan, not uOttawa's)
This schedule is ours. Since per-station timing for the early-phase MMI isn't published, the first three sessions bracket the likely range instead of copying an official format.
Use the free MMI timer for sessions 1 to 3; its shortest response setting is 5 minutes.
| Session | Timer setting | What you do | What it trains |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Baseline | 8 stations, 2 min reading, 5 min response, 15 s transition | Record yourself on your laptop webcam. No restarts. Pause after station 4 for the rest break. | Sitting through a session close to the real length |
| 2. Short prep | 8 stations, 1 min reading, 5 min response | Same routine with new prompts. Stop talking by the 3-minute mark and let the rest run silent. | Deciding fast, and answering fully without needing the whole window |
| 3. Review | No timer | Watch sessions 1 and 2 back. For each answer, write down the decision you reached and the second-best option you considered. If either is missing, redo that station. | Answers that end in a decision instead of drifting |
| 4. Language round (French stream) | 4 stations, 2 min reading, 5 min response | Answer in French. Then have a friend ask two follow-up questions in English. | Switching languages without freezing |
| 5. Panel mock | Phone timer, 40 minutes | Three people play the panel. One plays the medical student. Each gets two questions from the list below plus unscripted follow-ups. | Holding up for 40 minutes with three people probing |
Session 1 math: 8 stations × (2 + 5 minutes) = 56 minutes, plus 7 transitions of 15 seconds, is about 58 minutes before the break.
For a four-week plan that covers both stages, see our MMI prep guide.
Practice prompts (written by us, not uOttawa)
uOttawa doesn't release its questions. We wrote these to match the skills the school lists for each stage.
They're for practice and don't predict what you'll be asked. Confetto, an AI mock interviewer for medical school and other healthcare program interviews (MMI, traditional, panel), covers both stages: one-way video practice for the recorded MMI and panel practice with follow-up questions for the final interview.
For the early-phase MMI:
- You're on a group project and one member has stopped replying two days before the deadline. The others want to leave their name off the final submission. What do you do?Practice this question now
- A family member asks you to explain their parent's new diagnosis, which you only half understand from what the doctor said. How do you handle it?Practice this question now
- A clinic can fund either evening hours or a French-language interpreter service, not both. Make the case for one.Practice this question now
- Your manager asks you to tell a customer something you believe is misleading. Walk through what you'd say to each of them.Practice this question now
For the panel interview, one per characteristic:
- Motivation: what have you seen of a physician's actual day that made you more sure, not less?Practice this question now
- Empathy and compassion: tell us about someone whose frustration you only understood later.Practice this question now
- Conflict resolution and teamwork: describe a disagreement on a team you were part of that you didn't win. What happened next?Practice this question now
- Communication: explain something technical you know well to us as if we were 12.Practice this question now
- Professionalism: tell us about a time you made a mistake that someone else could have been blamed for.Practice this question now
- Critical thinking and ethics: should medical students be allowed to refuse to take part in care they object to?Practice this question now
- Resiliency: what's the longest you've kept going at something that wasn't working, and how did you decide whether to stop?Practice this question now
There are more in our MMI practice questions with answers.
If you want feedback without recruiting three friends, Confetto runs AI mock interviews in MMI and panel formats that ask follow-up questions based on what you said and score you against a rubric afterward.
It also has one-way video practice, the closest match to recording answers for the early-phase MMI. You can start with a free trial.
uOttawa interview FAQ
Is the uOttawa interview an MMI?
Only the first stage. Every applicant recorded an early-phase MMI on Acuity Insights in October 2026. Applicants who rank high enough then have a 40-minute virtual panel interview in February or March 2027, and that one is not an MMI.
When will I hear about a uOttawa interview?
uOttawa emails application status in the last week of January 2027. Interviews are virtual and take place in February and March 2027. The school hasn't published exact days yet.
What is the early-phase MMI?
A recorded video assessment on Acuity Insights: currently 8 stations plus a rest station, about 1 hour 15 minutes, done from home. Queen's uses the same early-phase MMI.
When was the 2026-27 early-phase MMI, and what did it cost?
Acuity listed three sessions, October 16, 18 and 19, 2026, with no make-up dates. The fee for uOttawa was $18 CAD.
Who is on the final interview panel?
Two Admissions Committee members (faculty or community representatives) and a fourth-year medical student, for about 40 minutes.
How much does the interview count?
uOttawa ranks for offers "based primarily on interview performance." The early-phase MMI counts with your CGPA and ABS score toward deciding who gets the final interview.
Confetto isn't affiliated with the University of Ottawa or Acuity Insights.
Details come from the Faculty of Medicine's admissions pages, OMSAS and Acuity Insights as of October 2026.
Next-step dates checked on uOttawa's application process page on October 25, 2026. Go by your invitation for exact interview days.