<p>Sorry gor the vague header buy since you are here, please help me out. I was wondering how selective interviews are and what their real motive is besides letting the student clarify his doubts regarding the university. I asked many people on CC and some friends outside CC and got a variety of answers. Some stated it is purely blind, others said i was more selective. Some even said that it was not blind for international students sonce the alumini to applicant ratio is very le and all interviewers cannot afford to assess all applicants in their areas.</p>
<p>As for the motive.Although I am no expert I myself belive it is a little more than many let on since the interviewers do make a report and send it to the admission board. Some people have even told me that many universiites actually read the forms before sending the interviewers. </p>
<p>I myself applied to the Ivy Leaues and so far have been interviewed by the following universities:
Princeton
Columbia
Brown
UPenn</p>
<p>Please discuss the above gwo points and specific information on the universites mentioned above would be most helpful. Thank You.</p>
<p>There was an article in the New York Times about the significance and purpose of admission interviews a few years ago.</p>
<p>Policies varied. Some small schools said they paid a LOT of attention to interviews because they wanted to make sure that incoming students would fit into the culture of the place, and also to gauge how interested a student really was in attending. At bigger schools interviews seemed less important. They help to filter out completely uninterested or socially inept students, and they might identify a few positive outliers, but they don’t appear to have a tangible impact for the majority of applicants. </p>
<p>Keep in mind that interviews are not conducted by the admissions staff, nor by faculty who will grill you on subject-specific knowledge (unlike Oxford and Cambridge interviews). </p>
<p>Interviews have a few other fringe benefits: Conducting interviews has shown to increase yield rates among admitted applicants, and they also keep alumni connected to the university. (Happy alumni are more likely to donate money to the university and to speak positively about it to others.)</p>
<p>
I don’t know most universities’ admission policies, but at the universities I do know interviews are assigned on a first-come-first-served basis. They don’t pre-screen applicants.</p>