How the format works
You read a prompt outside a station for a short period, then enter and respond for several minutes, usually with follow-up questions. Then a bell rings, you move on, and a new assessor who knows nothing about your last station starts fresh.
The independence of stations is the most useful thing to know about the MMI. One weak station does not follow you around the circuit. Applicants who spend station four still thinking about station three lose two stations instead of one.
The common station types
- Ethical scenarios, where two defensible obligations conflict
- Communication or acting stations, often delivering difficult news or handling an upset person
- Policy and current-issues discussion, where reasoning matters more than a position
- Collaboration stations with another applicant or an actor
- Personal and motivational questions about your own experiences
- Occasional data, image, or task-based stations
What assessors are looking for
Structure, honesty, and responsiveness. Can you organize a thought out loud under pressure, can you hold two competing considerations at once without collapsing into a slogan, and do you actually respond to the follow-up question rather than continuing your prepared answer.
In communication stations, the person in front of you matters more than the content. Applicants who deliver a technically correct message while ignoring the other person's distress score poorly, and correctly so.
How to practise
Practise out loud, on a timer, with someone who will interrupt you. Silent preparation builds fluency you cannot access when a stranger is watching a clock.
Record yourself occasionally. Recurring habits such as filling silence, over-hedging, and answering the question you wish had been asked are invisible from the inside and obvious on playback.
Then debrief properly. A practice station without a specific, uncomfortable debrief mostly just rehearses your existing habits.
What not to do
- Memorize answers to anticipated questions
- Open every station with the same stock framework aloud
- Claim certainty about an issue that genuinely has two sides
- Talk for the entire time to avoid follow-up questions
- Bring in experiences your written application does not support