to a professional program and you've been asked to take the CASPer exam, then I think you know how challenging it can be to start thinking about how to prepare for the CASPer exam. And that's the focus of this video today. I'm Dr. Rajani Kata, and I'm the author of the Medical School Interview Book and the MMI Book. I've been a clinical professor of dermatology for over 20 years, a practicing physician, and I've been involved in medical school, medical student education for over 20 years. years. And during that time, I have worked with and interviewed, personally, hundreds of applicants. And what I found is that interviews can be very, they can be very challenging, they can be very intimidating, but really strategizing about your preparation can be very helpful. And the CASPER is kind of its own entity, and it can be really... It can be really challenging when you're trying to learn more about how to prepare for the CASPer. Now, whether you are applying to medical school, to dental school, to veterinary school, to physician assistant school, or a number of other professional programs, your school may require you to take the CASPer exam, which is an exam that's called a situational judgment test. It can actually be pretty challenging to figure out. how to do your best on this exam. And that's because you are presented with either a video scenario or text-based scenario. And then you have five minutes to write down your responses to three different questions. And I've been practicing on my own with different scenarios, typing this all out. It's challenging to try to condense down all of these thoughts that are swirling around in your head into a written response that is coherent, that makes sense, and that sort of puts everything together in about less than 90 seconds per question. So I've thought long and hard about how to strategize, and in this video I'm going to go over nine main strategies that I recommend when you're preparing for the CASPer exam. Before I get into the specifics of the nine strategies, I just want to make a point here that I think before you sit down for the exam it's really important to internalize several strategies. And the reason I say that is because I think it's really common that you're that you're gonna be presented with a really unusual or challenging scenario and you might find yourself freezing up. So I think it's really helpful to have these strategies sort of really internalized so that you can sit there and you can just start typing right away. When I think about how to be able to communicate your thoughts quickly, efficiently, and well, I think that these sets of strategies fall into two separate categories. The first is how do you organize your thoughts so that you're going to be able to write well and write coherently. The second set of strategies is really going to focus on efficiency and speed. So, nine strategies. One talking about organizing your thoughts. The second talking about getting it all down on paper. Strategy number one is to use frameworks to organize your thoughts. And what I have to say is this is a very challenging exam because it's very quick. And one of the things that's very helpful is if you can come up with frameworks to be able to recognize what kind of question you're being asked and then to have a framework available to help you answer that question. So for example, you might be presented with either a video based scenario or a text based scenario and then you'll have three questions about that scenario. Well, those questions fall into different categories. And in general, I consider that there are about five main types of questions that you're asked on the CASPer exam. One of those is called situational judgment, which is very specific. What would you do in this situation? And I use a framework that I've developed. It took me a while to think about how can I make this as easy as possible in myself. But I developed a framework called the I3P approach. So if you're asked about what you would do in this particular situation, I use I3P stands for impact, issue, information, and potential approaches. So I know if I'm asked what to do in this specific situation, I can start organizing my thoughts around those four main aspects of the framework. Now, let's say instead I'm asked a behavioral interview question, and these are very common as well. So behavioral interview questions are asked in all types of exams, traditional, MMI, and the CASPer. And in a behavioral interview question, you might be asked a question such as, tell me about a time when you experienced a conflict. And then you might be asked further questions about that. What did you learn about it? What would you do differently? And for behavioral interview questions, it helps to use the STAR approach, S-T-A-R. And we've written about that on our blog. We've also written about that in our books as well as on our podcast. So we have more details there. For more on the I3P approach and the STAR framework, I'm going to have separate videos to delve into that with examples in a separate video. Strategy number two is what I call note and scan. And this is a pretty quick one. Basically, as you're watching the scenario, I find it helpful to take notes. And what you're doing as you're taking notes is you can write down names of the main participants in the scenario. You can also take notes as you start to think about what is the main issue or what are some of the impacts that you're identifying in the scenario. Remember, once your three questions pop up, the scenario disappears, whether it's a video or text-based scenario. So it helps to take those notes just to remind yourself and to start to spark some ideas of what you're going to write. You are allowed to have one piece of paper and a pencil while you're watching the scenario, so I find that helpful. Again, notes, main issues that you're identifying, and perhaps people or items that are going to be impacted by this particular scenario. Now, scan refers to the fact that before you start typing, you want to read all three questions. You can start typing, start responding to any of the three questions, but you really have to scan all three questions first. Sometimes there's information or words used in the second or third question that might help you formulate your thoughts a little bit better for that first question. So strategy number two, note and scan. Strategy number three is to create what I call a story bed. You may be asked directly behavioral interview questions. Tell me about a time when you had to make a sacrifice. Or you might be asked questions after you watch a scenario that say something like, Have you ever experienced issues of conflict with a colleague? And what did you learn from that experience? And it helps when you're responding to both types of questions to have examples ready to go at the top of your mind. I can tell you that some of these are really hard to come up with on the spur of the moment and if you're coming up with them on the spur of the moment you might come up with one that really has a lot of associated emotion but you want to really strategize about what is a good example for these and remember that when you're coming up with examples the same example might work for a stressful time is a time of conflict as a time when you had to make a sacrifice So, your examples might work for multiple different prompts. And so, when I think about making a story bank, it might be something as simple as pulling out 10 different index cards and just writing examples of different types of prompts. So, we do have examples on our blog post of different prompts that you might think about. And then on the back, you might want to ask yourself some different questions about that. What did you think you did well? What might you have done better? So there are different angles related to these different examples. And certainly you need to have examples that include times where you... handle things well, and other examples where perhaps you would, where you experienced growth, where you learned something, where you might have done something different. So having that story bank is really helpful. And sometimes this might take a little bit of time, and it's hard to rush this process of reflection, but it can be a very helpful aspect of your preparation for the CASPer. Strategy number four is to learn the basics of medical ethics. One thing about the CASPer is they specifically state that this is not a test about medical ethics or medical policy. And that's unlike the MMI exam where you are expected to understand the basics of medical ethics and medical policies and current events. So the CASPer is different in that they are not requiring that. However, having said that, It's very helpful to learn the basics of medical ethics. And that's because as a future professional, you're expected to have an understanding of ethics and to conduct yourself in an ethical manner. And the CASPer doesn't have a lot of information about what they're looking for in their responses, but they do state that of the 10 qualities they're looking for, One is ethics. And so it's really helpful to understand the basics of those medical ethics. And let's say you understand what autonomy means in a medical setting. You can also apply that principle of autonomy to examples where you are respecting an individual's decision making. And so having that knowledge is very helpful. We do have two podcast episodes that we did about the basics of medical ethics, five cases that presented medical ethics, and then five cases that discussed the principles of autonomy and confidentiality. And so those are linked in our blog post and you might find it helpful to just spend the time to learn some of those basic medical ethics. Strategy number five is to use specific words. So one of the things that the Casper writes that they are seeking is qualities such as collaboration and empathy. And I think as you're thinking about these situations, in my mind, of course, I'm going to be speaking respectfully to my colleague. Of course, I'm going to take the customer aside. and speak to them in private because I don't want to embarrass them. So in my mind I am expressing those values and those are my values but I think it's really important that you not just think those values but that you actually communicate those values in writing in your response. So don't just think them actually use those words. So I would respectfully speak to my colleague. I would ask to speak to my colleague in private. I would gently speak to my friend. In a non-confrontational manner, I would speak to my classmate. So you can see how it is helpful in a written response to actually use those kinds of specific words. I think if you are studying for the Casper by reading different blog posts and reading different examples of good responses, you might have a really different view of what it's like to actually sit down and write out responses in five minutes. I cannot emphasize this enough. You really need to practice responding to scenarios in a time-bound fashion, meaning have your friend give you a scenario, set the timer for five minutes, and say go. And what you'll find is that in five minutes It can be hard to get all of these different thoughts that are swirling around in your mind and to actually get them down on paper. So I've been practicing. My assistant has created different scenarios for me, and she's passing them to me. And then she's saying go, and I'm typing out. And I want to point out that I am a speed typist. I have been typing fast ever since middle school. And I also have a lot of experience with awkward and challenging situations. And it's still really hard because you have three questions in five minutes, which breaks down to about 90 seconds per question. And so you might read a perfect, beautiful example of a response to Casper on the Internet, and you might think that you know how it feels. But I'm here to tell you it's really hard to create examples like that in the span of 90 seconds. So start now by practicing your responses. within that five minute time bound scenario and good luck trying to get everything out of your brain onto paper because I found it really hard and I'll just add a little corollary here that oftentimes the timer runs out while I'm typing that's fine the Casper specifically states that you're not going to be penalized for incomplete sentences so just type as much as you can and if you get cut off in the middle of the sentence just move on it's not a big deal Strategy number seven is to type fast. And I don't know how else to say it, but there is a bias that is baked into the Casper, and it favors people who type fast. And that's because, depending on your typing speed, and you should go online and take a typing test and sort of figure out where you are right now with your typing speed. that if you can get down three sentences, that's decent. If you can get down five sentences, you're going to be able to give a fuller response in almost all cases. With questions like this, like, have you ever experienced work-life balance issues in your own past? If so, have you dealt with those? I mean it's really hard to get a good response down in two sentences. So five sentences just gives you a lot more to work with. So I think it's really worthwhile to start working on your typing speed now to practice. And I will say that typing is one of those things where practice really can help and you can get big gains surprisingly quickly. So type fast. Learn to type faster. Strategy number eight is related to the previous strategy, which is all about speed and efficiency. And strategy number eight is to let go of perfectionism. And it can actually be really hard to just let a spelling mistake go. You know, I had multiple spelling mistakes and I really wanted to go back and fix them, and I had to force myself not to. I also had to force myself to just move on from run-on sentences. That was fine. In fact, the CASPR states that you don't even need complete sentences. You can speak in phrases or bullet points. Now, it's really important that you provide a coherent response that makes sense to the greater. So you can't, I mean, you can't ignore all spelling and all grammar, and you really have to pay attention to your sentence structure and the flow of your sentences. But, you know, the bottom line is let go of perfectionism. If you've got spelling mistakes or grammatical errors or run-on sentences, let it go and move on because speed and efficiency really is very important here. Strategy number nine refers to automating your writing. And I've written multiple books and I can tell you that it's really hard when I sit down to write and I'm just faced with a blank screen. Because I have a lot of thoughts floating around in my head and it's hard to just even know where to start. And one of the things I use when I'm writing is I really try to automate that writing process as much as possible. automate the start of that writing process. So what that means is I have phrases and sentences that are ready to go so that when I sit down to write, I know the first phrases that are going to come out of my, you know, that are going to come out of my fingers. And, you know, one of the ones I've been using with the Casper ones is this is a challenging scenario because it brings up issues of blank and it has the potential to impact blank. And so you can see I've got an introductory phrase, I've got transition phrases, and I've got that automated. Now can I use the same exact phrase for every single one of my 12 scenarios? Yes you can! You can use the same exact phrase for all 12 scenarios and that's because on the CASPer all 12 of your scenarios are graded by somebody different. So the grader is never going to see any more than one of your scenarios. So I could literally say the same thing over and over again and it wouldn't matter, but it would help me with automating my writing process. Now, you probably don't want to use the same exact phrases that I just said because you don't want to sound like everybody else out there, but if you can come up with your own phrases, that's going to really help. So automating the process is very helpful and really important. In mid-February of 2022, the creators of the CASPer exam announced a major change. And this is a change from purely having typed responses to now having video responses. And this brings me to my tenth strategy, which is to be ready for changes on the CASPer exam. When we're talking about the CASPer exam, this is a relatively recent exam. So it was created or released in 2015, and over the years we have seen multiple changes. In fact, in 2021, we had a major new development, which is that students finally received their scores. Interestingly enough, this is one of those tests where I found it really unusual that students were not able to see how they scored in the exam. So previously, you would take the exam and then your scores would be sent directly to your school and you would have no idea how you did. So that all changed in 2021 because the test creators started releasing scores not only to the schools but also to the students. So students would be informed of their scores in the form of a quartile. So they were told whether they ranked in the top quartile, the bottom quartile, or the middle quartile. Well, now in 2022, we have another really big development, which is that now we're going to have video responses on the CASPer exam. So I'll back up for a moment. Typically, you would have 12 scenarios, but as of 2022, it's gone up from 12 scenarios to 15 scenarios. Previously, you would only have to type out your responses on the CASPer exam. So, you would be presented with three questions per scenario and you would have five minutes to type out a response to all three questions. Well, now what the test creators have announced as of mid-February is that they're adding extra scenarios. And for some of these scenarios, you are expected to provide a video response. So, you'll watch or read the scenario. And then you're going to have 10 seconds to think about the scenario. And then you're going to record yourself giving a one-minute response. After you're done with that first question, you will then move on to the next question. Same thing. 10 seconds to process. One minute. Record a response. So you'll still have the three questions. But in this case, you are going to videotape yourself giving a response. So obviously, this is a big wrinkle. One thing that is not known is which schools are going to be incorporating your scores from the video responses. So this is not something that's being rolled out to every school. There are some early adopter schools that are going to be receiving your scores from video responses. I couldn't find anything to indicate which schools or programs are going to be incorporating your video scores. So that's still a major unknown, but obviously you're going to have to prepare as if all of your programs are going to be receiving your video scores. And so I'm going to be creating some additional videos to help provide some guidance on how to create your one-minute video responses. So keep an eye out for that to come. But, in conclusion, my tenth strategy is to really be prepared for changes. So if you're reading something about the Casper that was from, you know, even one or two years ago, there may be some major new developments since that time. So I think it's really important that you... read all of the official literature, the official guidance that's put out by Alta Suites, who are the creators of the CASPer exam, to make sure that you are really kept up to date on the latest about format and grading and scoring. So that concludes the 10 strategies. Again, that 10th strategy that I had to end at the last minute because of this really, this really pretty prominent change. So that 10th strategy is to be prepared for changes in the exam. You are presented with a scenario and you are told that you are the coworker in this scenario. You work with Daphne and Ellen at a jewelry store, and all of you work on commission, which means that if you make more sales in a given month, that you will then have a greater take-home pay. Now, Daphne comes to you and explains what has happened. She tells you that she has a long-term customer by the name of Mrs. Jones, and over the last two years, Daphne has worked hard to develop this relationship. and she's made a number of sales to Mrs. Jones over these last two years. Mrs. Jones had to come in unexpectedly one day because one of her rings had a loose gemstone, so she brought it in for repair. At that time, Ellen was present and Ellen helped her with the repair. Ellen also ended up selling her an additional piece of jewelry. Daphne now comes to you very upset and she says to you that this is completely unfair. Ellen just swooped in and took this sale from me and I am going to speak to my supervisor about this. You are asked to be the coworker in this situation. What would you advise Daphne that she should do? Now, you have to give a one-minute video response here. And I'm going to give you an example of how to do that response using the I3P approach. And again, that's where you talk about issues, impact, information, and then potential approaches. This is a challenging scenario because it brings up potential issues of professionalism, professional boundaries, relationships with colleagues, and it has the potential to impact Daphne's job performance and her relationship, not only with Ellen, but with her customer and with her supervisor. So the first thing I would do is staff need to obtain more information. I would recommend that she respectfully speak to Ellen, ask to speak to her privately, and bring up her concerns. If Ellen explained to Daphne that, well, I had asked Mrs. Jones if she could come back on another day and perhaps speak to you further about her ring purchase, well, if Daphne uncovered that information, then perhaps she could be put at ease. On the other hand, if Daphne was unable to get that sense from Ellen, if instead she got the sense from Ellen that Ellen was trying to co-opt this relationship. Then Daphne could start to respectfully speak to Ellen to try to establish professional boundaries and speak to her about what she might be able to do if a future similar situation were to arise. So that was an example of a one-minute video response to a single question on a CASPER scenario. Now, on the exam, you will then be presented with two other questions sequentially. Again, you have 10 seconds to process the scenario, and then you have one minute to record. The response I gave you right now came in at about one minute. I do want to emphasize one other thing. It is okay if you are cut off in the middle of a video according to the creators of the CASPer exam. According to them your graders are taught that incomplete responses are okay so you don't have to worry about tying it up neatly in a bow although if you're able to that's really nice if you're able to conclude well but if you're cut off right in the middle and you're just sent to the next question don't worry about it. So Please keep an eye out. We'll probably go ahead and upload more example scenarios because this is challenging. So I encourage you to look for other videos that I've put out in this series on how to prepare for the CASPer exam. Best of luck to you.