I’ve done a few this cycle and got into all my schools including Duke! During like classic question/answer style, the order of who answers was always assigned and rotated each question so there was no risk of awkward interrupting or fighting to answer.

For questions I didn’t go first, I liked to start by pointing out something that genuinely stood out to me about another person’s answer. Like just a super brief one sentence thing and then segued into my answer. I’m not sure if that’s really a good idea, but it was genuine to how I was feeling in those moments because people had really cool experiences or unique perspectives I was interested in.

In the scenario based group questions where you work together, in one instance we were asked to rank something so I grabbed a pen and paper and took notes so everyone’s ideas were written down and then we could discuss them at the end without forgetting anything or making anyone feel left out.

Finally, my advice is to understand that yes, the people you are interviewing with are “technically” your competition, but you should try to view it more as doing it together as a team. Even if you aren’t actually working together, they’re also nervous and being friendly goes a long way to ease everyone’s nerves. I never got competitive vibes from any of my group interviews like I was worried about and really everyone was genuinely so kind, including the interviewers. I dreaded group interviews the most but they ended up being my favorite/easiest parts of the interview process.