MUG Interview 2027: Topics, Scoring and Practice Questions

• Start with one specific moment or experience that made medicine real for you, not a general wish to help people.
• Say what you learned from it about the work itself: responsibility, uncertainty, contact with patients.
• Show you know the hard parts too: long training, night shifts, giving bad news.
• Link it to the kind of doctor you want to become, in one honest sentence.
• Speak in your own words; a memorised script sounds memorised.

Likely follow-up: What do you think will be the hardest part of the job for you?

• Give real reasons you checked yourself: a six-year MD programme taught in English, clinical teaching at the University Clinical Centre and teaching hospitals in Gdańsk.
• Mention something you know about the city or the university, only if you can back it up.
• Be practical: living abroad, climate, distance from home, and how you will cope.
• Show willingness to learn some Polish, since patients in clinical years speak Polish.
• Avoid saying only that it was cheaper or easier to get into.

Likely follow-up: How will you prepare to talk to patients who speak only Polish?

• Pick one concrete example (a school project, sport, volunteering, a job) and set the scene in a sentence.
• Say what your own role was and what you actually did.
• Describe the result honestly, including what went wrong.
• End with what you learned and would do differently.
• Connect it briefly to medicine, where teamwork and staying calm matter every day.

Likely follow-up: What would you do if a member of your team was not doing their share?

• Name three or four qualities: empathy, honesty, communication, resilience, willingness to keep learning.
• For each one you claim, give a short example from your own life.
• Admit one quality you still need to develop, and how you are working on it.
• Mention ethics: respect for patients' choices and confidentiality.

Likely follow-up: How do you deal with stress, for example before an exam like this one?

• Transcription in the nucleus: RNA polymerase copies the gene into mRNA, which is processed (cap, poly-A tail, introns spliced out).
• The mRNA leaves the nucleus through nuclear pores to ribosomes in the cytoplasm or on the rough ER.
• Translation: tRNAs bring amino acids matched by anticodon to codon; the ribosome joins them by peptide bonds from the start codon AUG to a stop codon.
• Proteins for secretion or membranes enter the rough ER, are modified and folded, then pass to the Golgi apparatus for sorting.
• Old or faulty proteins are degraded by proteasomes (after tagging with ubiquitin) or in lysosomes.

Likely follow-up: What is the difference between diffusion and active transport across the cell membrane?

• Men are XY: they have one X chromosome, so a single recessive allele on it is expressed.
• Women are XX: they need two copies of the allele to be affected; with one they are usually unaffected carriers.
• A carrier mother passes the allele to half of her sons, on average, who are then affected.
• An affected father passes his X to all his daughters (carriers) and none of his sons.
• Colour blindness is inherited in the same way.

Likely follow-up: What causes Down syndrome, and what is the karyotype?

• Inflammation is the body's response to injury or infection, aiming to remove the cause and start repair.
• Mediators such as histamine and prostaglandins dilate blood vessels and make them leakier.
• White blood cells, first neutrophils and then macrophages, move into the tissue and engulf pathogens.
• The classic signs: redness, heat, swelling, pain and loss of function.
• Acute inflammation usually resolves; chronic inflammation can damage tissues.

Likely follow-up: Which vitamin deficiency causes scurvy, and why?

• Epidermis: stratified squamous keratinised epithelium, with no blood vessels; keratinocytes, melanocytes making melanin.
• Dermis: connective tissue with collagen and elastic fibres, blood vessels, nerves, hair follicles, sweat and sebaceous glands.
• Hypodermis (subcutaneous layer): mostly fat, for insulation and energy storage.
• Functions: barrier against pathogens and water loss, protection from UV, temperature control by sweating and changing blood flow, sensation, vitamin D synthesis.
• Appendages: hair, nails, sweat and sebaceous glands.

Likely follow-up: How does the skin help to cool the body down on a hot day?

• Osteoblasts build bone by laying down matrix; osteocytes are mature bone cells trapped in the matrix; osteoclasts break bone down.
• The matrix is collagen (for flexibility) hardened with calcium phosphate (hydroxyapatite).
• Bone is remodelled all the time, balanced between osteoblasts and osteoclasts.
• In osteoporosis, breakdown outpaces formation, so bone mass and density fall and bones fracture easily (hip, spine, wrist).
• Risk factors: age, oestrogen loss after the menopause, low calcium and vitamin D, little exercise, smoking.

Likely follow-up: What is the difference between the axial and the appendicular skeleton?

• A nerve impulse reaches the neuromuscular junction and acetylcholine is released, depolarising the muscle fibre.
• The action potential spreads along T-tubules and causes the sarcoplasmic reticulum to release Ca²⁺.
• Ca²⁺ binds troponin, which moves tropomyosin off the binding sites on actin.
• Myosin heads bind actin, pull (the power stroke) and detach using ATP: the sliding filament mechanism, shortening the sarcomere.
• Relaxation: Ca²⁺ is pumped back into the sarcoplasmic reticulum.

Likely follow-up: How do skeletal, cardiac and smooth muscle differ?

• A reflex is a fast, automatic response to a stimulus, not needing conscious thought.
• Parts: receptor, sensory (afferent) neuron, integration centre in the spinal cord or brainstem, motor (efferent) neuron, effector (muscle or gland).
• Example: the knee-jerk (patellar) reflex, a monosynaptic stretch reflex.
• Another: pulling the hand away from something hot, with an interneuron in the spinal cord.
• Reflexes are tested clinically to check the nervous system.

Likely follow-up: How do the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems affect heart rate?

• Light passes through the cornea, aqueous humour, pupil, lens and vitreous body to the retina.
• The cornea and lens refract light; the lens changes shape to focus (accommodation).
• Rods (dim light) and cones (colour) in the retina turn light into nerve impulses carried by the optic nerve.
• In myopia (short-sightedness) the eye is too long or refracts too strongly, so distant objects focus in front of the retina.
• It is corrected with diverging (concave) lenses.

Likely follow-up: What is glaucoma?

• Normal fasting blood glucose is about 70–99 mg/dL (3.9–5.5 mmol/L).
• After a meal, β cells of the pancreatic islets release insulin, which helps cells take up glucose and the liver store it as glycogen.
• When glucose falls, α cells release glucagon, which makes the liver break down glycogen and make new glucose.
• Adrenaline and cortisol also raise blood glucose, for example under stress.
• In diabetes mellitus, glucose stays high: type 1 from lack of insulin, type 2 mostly from insulin resistance.

Likely follow-up: What does the hypothalamus have to do with the pituitary gland?

• Red blood cells (erythrocytes): about 4.2–5.4 million/µL in women and 4.7–6.1 million/µL in men; carry oxygen on haemoglobin.
• White blood cells (leucocytes): about 4,000–10,000/µL; defend the body (neutrophils, lymphocytes, monocytes, eosinophils, basophils).
• Platelets (thrombocytes): about 150,000–400,000/µL; take part in clotting.
• All are formed in the red bone marrow from haematopoietic stem cells.
• Plasma is about 55% of blood: water with proteins (albumin, globulins, fibrinogen), ions, nutrients and waste.

Likely follow-up: Which blood group is the universal donor, and why does Rh matter in pregnancy?

• The sinoatrial (SA) node in the right atrium is the pacemaker and starts each beat.
• The impulse spreads over the atria, is delayed at the atrioventricular (AV) node, then passes down the bundle of His, the bundle branches and the Purkinje fibres to the ventricles.
• The delay lets the atria empty before the ventricles contract.
• Normal resting heart rate: about 60–100 beats per minute.
• Normal blood pressure: about 120/80 mmHg (systolic/diastolic), measured with a sphygmomanometer.

Likely follow-up: What is the hepatic portal system?

• A vaccine contains an antigen (killed or weakened pathogen, a part of it, or mRNA coding for it) that cannot cause the disease.
• It triggers a specific immune response: B cells make antibodies, T cells are activated.
• Memory B and T cells remain.
• On real infection, the secondary response is faster and stronger, so the disease is prevented or milder.
• This is active, artificial immunity; antibodies passed to a baby are passive immunity.

Likely follow-up: What is the difference between nonspecific and specific defences?

• Oxygen: about 98% bound to haemoglobin in red blood cells (oxyhaemoglobin), the rest dissolved in plasma.
• Carbon dioxide: mostly as hydrogen carbonate (bicarbonate) ions in plasma, formed with the help of carbonic anhydrase in red cells.
• Some is bound to haemoglobin (carbaminohaemoglobin) and a small part dissolved.
• Gases move by diffusion down partial pressure gradients: in the alveoli (external respiration) and in the tissues (internal respiration).
• Breathing is driven mainly by CO₂ levels sensed by chemoreceptors.

Likely follow-up: What happens to the diaphragm during inhalation?

• Most fat digestion happens in the small intestine (duodenum).
• Bile, made by the liver and stored in the gall bladder, emulsifies fats into small droplets.
• Pancreatic lipase breaks triglycerides into fatty acids and monoglycerides.
• These are absorbed by the villi, reassembled and carried in lacteals (lymph) as chylomicrons.
• Normal body temperature is about 36.5–37.5 °C, controlled by the hypothalamus.

Likely follow-up: What is the difference between anabolism and catabolism?

• Glomerular filtration: blood pressure pushes water and small solutes from the glomerulus into Bowman's capsule.
• Tubular reabsorption: glucose, amino acids, most Na⁺ and water return to the blood, mainly in the proximal tubule.
• Tubular secretion: H⁺, K⁺ and some drugs are added to the filtrate.
• ADH from the posterior pituitary makes the collecting ducts more permeable to water (aquaporins), so less, more concentrated urine is made.
• The kidneys also regulate blood pressure (renin–angiotensin–aldosterone system) and make erythropoietin.

Likely follow-up: How do the kidneys help keep blood pH stable?

• It lasts about 28 days and starts with menstruation, when the lining of the uterus is shed.
• Follicular phase: FSH from the anterior pituitary makes follicles grow; they secrete oestrogen, which thickens the endometrium.
• A surge of LH around day 14 triggers ovulation.
• Luteal phase: the corpus luteum secretes progesterone, which maintains the endometrium.
• Without pregnancy the corpus luteum breaks down, progesterone falls and menstruation begins; with pregnancy, hCG keeps it going.

Likely follow-up: What are the functions of the placenta?