Tell me about a book, podcast, or article that changed how you think.

Intellectual curiosity and whether you engage with ideas beyond coursework.

Written by Victoria Young, DDS · NYU College of Dentistry '24 · Penn Dental Medicine

The trap

Naming a prestigious book you skimmed. They will ask a follow-up. Getting caught here is worse than naming something modest and knowing it inside out.

How to structure your answer

Name it → the specific idea that landed → what it changed in how you think or act.

Pick something you actually consumed and can discuss
Focus on one idea rather than summarizing the whole thing
Name the change in you, not just the content
It doesn't have to be about dentistry or medicine

A weak answer

What most people say

I read Thinking, Fast and Slow and it really changed how I look at decision-making. It's about the two systems in our brains and how we're much less rational than we assume we are. I think about it a lot when I'm studying or when I have to make a call under pressure.

A famous title summarized at book-jacket depth, with no change in her named.

A stronger answer

What lands

Being Mortal, by Atul Gawande. The part that stuck wasn't the medical material. It was the idea that you ask people what they're willing to trade, instead of assuming safety is the thing they want most. My grandmother moved in with us two years ago and we had been managing her like a logistics problem. I started asking her what she wanted her day to look like. She said she wanted to make her own tea, which sounds like nothing. She burned her hand once. We kept letting her.

One idea, followed all the way into a household, including the part that went badly.

The first answer proves a book was read. The second proves it went somewhere, and somewhere uncomfortable.

These are illustrations, not scripts. An answer you memorize sounds memorized — the point is the shape and the specificity, in your own words and about your own life.

Reading it isn't the same as saying it.

Most people can explain a good answer and still fall apart saying one out loud. Admitted asks you all 100 questions in a faculty voice, records you, and scores your pace and filler words.

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