Frequently asked questions
Everything you need to know about practising with WhiteCoat Prep. Still have a question? Email feedback@whitecoatprep.com.
Getting started
What is WhiteCoat Prep?
WhiteCoat Prep is an AI-powered practice platform for medical school interviews, residency interviews, and CCFP Simulated Office Orals (SOOs). You practice against a realistic AI video interviewer or patient that listens to your actual answers and follows up in real time, then you get a full transcript and structured feedback scored against the relevant rubric. It's designed to give you focused reps between mock interviews with a coach or preceptor, not to replace them.
What interview formats can I practice?
You can practice several formats depending on the stage of training you're preparing for:
- MMI (Multiple Mini Interview), a session of independent, timed stations, each with its own scenario. You read a prompt, then respond to an interviewer.
- Traditional / panel, a conversational interview covering motivation, background, and ethical questions. Traditional, panel, and behavioural are overlapping names for one broad category rather than separate products: a panel just means 2–4 interviewers at once, and behavioural questions ("tell me about a time when…") come up in either.
- CCFP SOO, a separate family-medicine certification format with a video patient encounter (see the next question).
Interview question credits cover both MMI and traditional / panel formats. You choose the format and number of stations when you set up a session.
How does CCFP SOO practice work?
The CCFP SOO (Simulated Office Oral) is part of the College of Family Physicians of Canada certification exam. Instead of answering interview questions, you play the doctor and the AI plays the patient. You get a 1-minute doorway prompt, then a 15-minute video encounter, face to face and on camera like the virtual exam, where you take a focused history, uncover a hidden second issue, explore the social context, and negotiate a management plan. The cases are reviewed by recent family medicine graduates before they are published. Afterward you receive a report scored against the official CFPC 11-component rubric with Superior / Certificant / Non-Certificant ratings. SOO practice has its own landing page and its own credits, separate from interview credits.
What equipment and setup do I need?
A working camera and microphone, a modern browser, and a stable connection. That is the whole list: sessions run on a computer, a tablet or a phone. A larger screen gives you more room to read the prompt alongside the interviewer, so a computer is still the most comfortable way to sit a full circuit, but nothing is missing on a phone. A quiet space helps the AI hear you clearly, and a headset improves accuracy on any device.
Can I practice in French or other languages?
Not yet, WhiteCoat Prep supports English only at this time. The AI interviewer and patients speak English, and the transcription and scoring are built for English answers, so responses in other languages won't be understood or scored fairly. This matters most for the CCFP SOO: the real exam can be sat in French, but our practice stations are English-only for now. If French support would make a difference for you, tell us at feedback@whitecoatprep.com. It helps us decide what to build next.
Will this guarantee admission or certification?
No. WhiteCoat Prep is an independent practice tool. Using it does not guarantee admission to any program or a passing result on any exam, and your practice performance has no bearing on real decisions. See our Legal Disclaimer for more.
Are you affiliated with any school, program, or the CFPC?
No. We are not affiliated with, or endorsed by, any medical school, residency program, or the College of Family Physicians of Canada. The CFPC marking framework we reference is the publicly published rubric, used with attribution. See our Legal Disclaimer for more.
Credits and billing
How do credits work?
One credit buys one question. A session spends one credit per station, so a 5-station session costs 5 credits. Medical school, residency, and CCFP SOO credits are three separate types: they're priced differently, draw from different question banks, and never substitute for one another.
You buy credits individually or in packs of 5 or 10 (see Pricing). If you have a promo code, enter it on the checkout page when you buy.
How does the free trial work?
The free trial is one free session per product, no card required: a one-question medical school session, a one-question residency session, and one full CCFP SOO encounter. Each is independent, trying one doesn't use up the others, and no card is taken at any point.
How much does it cost?
Medical school questions are $20 each, residency questions $25, and CCFP SOO stations $30, with packs of 5 and 10 discounted, for example, 5 medical school questions are $90 and 10 are $170. Full details are on the Pricing page.
Payments are processed securely by Stripe. For any billing question, email feedback@whitecoatprep.com.
Do my credits expire?
Medical school and residency credits do not expire. They sit in your account until you spend them. If we ever introduce an expiry for them, it will not apply to credits you already hold.
CCFP SOO credits expire 90 days after purchase. Each purchase carries its own 90-day window running from the day you bought it, so buying a second pack does not extend the first, and a pack bought later outlives one bought earlier. Your profile shows what you hold and when it runs out, and we email you before a window closes.
An expired credit cannot be spent or reinstated, so buy SOO credits for the practice you are actually about to do rather than for a plan three months out. Credits of every kind have no cash value and cannot be transferred to another account. The full rule is in the Terms.
Can I get a refund?
Email us within 14 days of a purchase and we will refund any credits from it you have not yet spent. Spent credits we are not obliged to refund, but if something went wrong we would rather hear about it than not.
Separately, and without you having to ask: if a station fails for a technical reason on our side, the credit goes back automatically. That covers a video session that never starts and one that produces no transcript for us to score. To request a refund, email feedback@whitecoatprep.com.
Can my school, program, or student group buy this for a cohort?
Yes. Our institutions page covers group access for schools, programs, and student associations. Tell us roughly how many people and what they are sitting, and we will come back with a plan.
During a session
Will I be given the same question or case twice?
We track which questions and cases you have already been shown and steer new sessions away from them, and you can ask for unseen material only when you set a session up. A question counts as seen at the moment its prompt appears on your screen, not when the session is created, so quitting an eight-station session at station two leaves the other six unseen and still available to you later. The same rule protects a SOO you abandoned at the doorway. It is also why an unopened station is listed but left blank in your data download: it would otherwise be an answer key for a case you can still be dealt.
How does the AI feedback and scoring work?
Your session is conducted as a live video conversation, which is transcribed automatically. Afterwards it is scored against the marking scheme that matches what you're preparing for.
MMI and traditional / panel stations are scored on six dimensions: Communication, Delivery, Critical Thinking, Empathy & Professionalism, Structure, and Content & Relevance. Communication and Delivery are deliberately separate. Communication is the language you chose. Delivery is how you performed it: pacing, filler words, vocal confidence, eye contact, composure, and body language, drawing on the video itself. For MMI, each station is scored independently, mirroring how real MMI stations are marked one at a time so a single weak station doesn't sink the day. Residency sessions apply the same six dimensions to longer-form answers, over behavioural and clinical questions written for that stage of training.
CCFP SOOs are scored against the official CFPC marking scheme instead: 6 marking boxes containing 11 scored components, 6 points each, for a maximum of 66.
Either way you get a structured report with specific, transcript-grounded observations rather than generic encouragement. The AI is a practice aid, not a licensed admissions consultant or examiner, and its feedback has no bearing on real admissions or certification decisions.
What happens if a session is interrupted?
Each station and encounter is time-boxed to mirror real exam conditions, and timers survive a page refresh so a quick reload won't reset your progress. If you close the tab or drop connection while a session is in progress, you can return and resume where you left off. Note that starting a session consumes a credit per station. If you abandon partway through, the credits for stations you already opened are used, but credits for stations you never opened go back to your balance automatically, as do credits for anything that broke on our side. The full rule is in the Terms. If something goes genuinely wrong, email support@whitecoatprep.com and we'll help.
Privacy and data
What happens to my video and transcripts?
Your video sessions and transcripts are processed by Tavus, our third-party video provider, and transcript text is sent to OpenRouter, which passes it to the model that writes your feedback, today Google’s Gemini. Sign-in is handled by Google OAuth, and payments by Stripe, each under their own privacy terms. We store session metadata (timestamps, formats, question history) to power your history and personalise which questions you see. Full details are in our Privacy Policy and Legal Disclaimer.
Is my session recorded?
Yes. Sessions are recorded, and the video and audio are stored encrypted in storage that is not reachable from the public internet, served only through short-lived links issued to your own account. Recordings are kept for 10 years from the session and then deleted on a storage lifecycle rule rather than by someone remembering to run a script.
Either way, what we hold from a session includes the transcript and written observations about how you came across. You can have an individual recording deleted without losing the feedback built from it. That is an email to privacy@whitecoatprep.com, and only an email, because there is no button for it in the product and we would rather say so than point you at one that does not exist. The Security page covers how all of it is protected.
How do I download my data?
“Download my data” in your profile gives you a ZIP of your transcripts, feedback, purchases, credits and account history, once a day, with no need to ask anyone. Session recordings are too large to hand over that way; email privacy@whitecoatprep.com and we will arrange it.
How do I delete my account?
Deactivating from your profile revokes access immediately and starts a 30-day grace period during which nothing is deleted and you can come back. After it expires the account cannot be reactivated and your session content is purged, including asking Tavus to delete its own copy of every conversation so you do not have to chase them. What survives is listed in Privacy ยง7: the record of what you consented to, and payment records we are required by law to keep.
For anything else (a correction, an objection, or a complaint you want a person to answer), email privacy@whitecoatprep.com. We answer within 30 days.
Didn't find your answer? Email feedback@whitecoatprep.com and we'll get back to you.
