Themes that recur
Four accounts now — one new B-grade YouTube transcript (Calum McIntyre, fourth year at Edinburgh's Royal Dick School). Calum gives the most specific breakdown of what Edinburgh's seven stations actually contain, and it's more varied than I expected. From his account: a drug calculation station ("simple maths, nothing you wouldn't have done at A-level"), a practical origami task, a scenario-based station ("what I would do in a certain situation"), and a personal statement discussion station. That's four distinct types in seven stations.
What Calum says about the practical: he made a mistake one minute in, noticed it, and chose to dismantle the origami and redo it correctly with 30 seconds left. "To this day I swear that was the one reason I got in — the intuition of correcting my mistake." The message isn't that origami is the key to Edinburgh — it's that how you handle going wrong is what's being observed.
The 2021 admitted student (EDIN-001, B-grade blog) describes the day as energising and chose Edinburgh partly because the staff were approachable on interview day. That theme — atmosphere matters — runs through both B-grade accounts.
What surprised applicants
Calum's origami story is the most specific surprise in any testimonial on BecomingVet so far. He walked into his first station, made a mistake partway through, and made a real-time decision under pressure: redo it or leave it. He redid it. Someone was watching.
The practical station isn't about testing whether you can fold paper — it's testing how you respond when something goes wrong in front of an observer. That's a very different thing to prepare for than an ethical scenario question. The Edinburgh MMI also runs across multiple rooms of the Easter Bush campus — Calum confirms movement between stations.
The 2018 account mentions some stations are shared between candidates, others individual. The 2024 parent confirmation adds that Edinburgh interviews happen in December, earlier than most other UK schools.
Where the accounts diverge
Station timing is where things get murky. Calum says "about a minute and a half" per station. But with seven stations and confirmed ~70-minute total session length from other sources, that would be roughly 10 minutes per station. Calum was a fourth-year student recounting an experience from several years earlier — the 1.5-minute figure is almost certainly a mis-memory of how fast each station felt, not the actual allocated time. Most published sources put Edinburgh stations at 10 minutes each. I'd trust the 10-minute figure over Calum's recalled "minute and a half." The station types Calum describes — drug calc, practical, scenario, PS discussion — are consistent with what other UK vet school MMI formats include, and Edinburgh's format seems stable across accounts from 2018 to 2024.
What I'd tell my past self before this interview
The origami story has genuinely changed how I think about the Edinburgh MMI. It's not about performing flawlessly — it's about what you do when something doesn't go as planned. Calum's instinct was to correct the mistake rather than leave an imperfect answer standing. He thinks that's what got him in. I can't verify that, but the principle generalises: show your reasoning process, especially when things go wrong. For the practical station specifically: don't freeze when you realise you've made an error. Think aloud, make a decision, explain it if you can.
For the personal statement station: know what you wrote. For the scenario station: think out loud, don't aim for a perfect answer, aim for a coherent reasoning process. And Calum's framing of walking in like "running onto a rugby pitch" — that tunnel vision focus is something he credits for his performance. Find whatever version of that mental reset works for you before you step into room one.