If you're applying to a healthcare program such as medicine, dentistry, nursing, OT, PT, etc, you've probably heard of the Casper test which is short for the computer-based assessment for sampling personal characteristics and oftentimes that test represents a large portion of your application. In this video, we're going to go over the possible question types that you may encounter in the Casper test, as well as some tips and tricks to help you ace that Casper test. Hey friends, welcome back to another video. If you're new to the channel, hello, my name is Emmanuel. I'm a first year medical student at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. And I would greatly appreciate it if you could like and subscribe to the channel if you haven't already done so. So what is the Casper test? The CASPer test is an exam that has 12 stations that are five minutes each, so that's a total of one hour. And in these stations, you can be asked a multitude of questions, be it personal questions, situational based, ethical dilemmas, and so on and so forth. The purpose of this exam is so that the professional program you're applying to gets an idea of who you are as a person and whether or not you're a good fit for their program so that they can invite you to an interview and get to know you a little better. Some of the questions that you may encounter are the situational questions, the policy questions, and the personal questions. So let's start with the personal question. And this can be, for example, tell me a time where you got into a conflict with a superior. And you can answer by talking about a time where you argued about something with your boss. But the point isn't to explain to them why you were right and they were wrong. The point is that maybe you made a mistake or maybe there was maybe your boss was at fault and you tried to explain to them. You're trying to show off that you dealt with this argument very well, and then you followed up, maybe the follow up questions, you know, tackle this a bit more, but you follow up by saying what you learned from this experience, how you could avoid this experience in the future. And remember, you only have five minutes to answer three questions in each of these 12 stations. What's important here is not the quantity of text, but the quality of text. You can write two, three sentences per question. And if they adequately answer the question, then you're going to get a good score on that station. Now, the policy type question, this question is very easily identifiable because they usually tell you, suppose that this such and such is implemented, what's your two cents on it, for example. And an example I could think of off the top of my head, and this is one that I just made up, is... I'm in Quebec and lockdowns are very common here in Quebec so let's say that the government decided to impose another lockdown how do you feel about that? personally you might say I hate lockdowns we shouldn't do it so on and so forth but that's not the answer they're looking for here the answer they're looking for here is that you evaluate both sides of the spectrum if the government were to impose this lockdown What positive and negative effects will this lockdown have on the general population? What effects will it have on the healthcare system? These are things that they want you to think about. If they didn't have a lockdown. what are the positive and negative effects on the general population? What are the positive and negative effects on the healthcare system? Some things I could think of off the top of my head is, if a lockdown was put in place, then that's going to negatively affect the general population because they're fed up with lockdowns and it negatively affects their mental health. But at the same time, I am acknowledging that it might alleviate some of the strain that the healthcare system is going through right now because if there's less contact, less spread of the virus, and... less chances of transmission and potential hospitalizations. So that's a positive to having the lockdown. Usually these policies do have positives and negatives with both sides of the story. What's important is that you can identify these aspects and even better, if you can top it off by providing an alternative or a solution, the fact that you're able to propose an alternative policy or a... compromise let's say for both parties means that you're able to think outside the box in a very short amount of time which is something that's very important in a healthcare program that you might be applying to as for the situational questions I would encourage you to actually check out the BMO's website and in no way am I sponsoring them but I think they have excellent free resources to practice for the Casper test and they actually go into detail on the different question types and what kind of questions you can expect. But I'll give you an example that I came up with and we'll try to tackle it together. So let's say I'm a medical student and I'm doing my clerkship rotations and I feel like the resident has been giving me signs that they're flirting with me. but I'm not entirely sure. Maybe it's in my head, maybe it's not, but I am concerned because this person is evaluating me. So how would I approach this scenario as a medical student? Well, the first thing I would do is acknowledge that this is happening, right? I've noticed these signs, but I need to gather more information because I'm not entirely sure. maybe when I talk to the resident pay more careful attention on how they're treating me are they giving me special treatment versus the other medical students maybe I could talk to the medical students and get an impression from them what about the staff physician he's involved as well so these are all parties that I need to consider if after gathering all the information, I've concluded that, yeah, actually, the resident is treating me a little differently. She's nicer. She's giving me excellent feedback and so on and so forth. Then maybe she is flirting with me. And at this point, she's crossing a professional boundary because she's evaluating me, right? There shouldn't be any romantic interaction at that point. Okay, so that's one. one pathway and how would I deal with that if that was the case but if if it's not and it was just all in my head maybe maybe one time I noticed something but at other times that you know she treats other medical students that way too then maybe that's not the case in that case I wouldn't make anything of it I just carry on with my with my duties and maybe keep an eye out in case I'm given special treatment in the future So, that's the general way to approach these types of questions, to acknowledge the situation, what's the most pressing issue here, who are the parties involved. How can I gather all the information while maintaining a non-judgmental approach? And not jumping to conclusion, of course, any conclusions, of course. And finally, if, you know, I've decided that this might be the possible outcome, then I will approach it this way. And if not, then I will approach it that way. So thank you for watching this video. If you enjoyed it, please like and subscribe to the channel if you haven't already done so. And if you have any questions regarding the Casper test, you know that you can comment, email, or DM me on Instagram. And as always, friends, I'll catch you in the next one.