<p>DD had her interview with a regional Jefferson Scholar committee member last week. Her interviewer was antagonistic and offensive. She was part of the Cincinnati, Ohio region since we live somewhat close to the city even though we are in Kentucky (probably 90% of the regional candidates are from Ohio). </p>
<p>During the discussion, the interviewer asked DD to comment on a political topic. Since DD has worked for years in hospice care with elderly nuns who have committed their lives to protecting life in all forms, as well as DD spending time volunteering at a crisis pregnancy center, she decided to talk about how abortion has increased her level of compassion and made her more aware of the problems in the world. The interviewer responded with venom that any pro-life position is idiotic and irresponsible. DD had not talked about pro-life positions at all, simply how the issue of abortion had impacted her life personally. She was intimidated and realized that she had struck a nerve but did not know how to respond.</p>
<p>Later in the discussion, the interviewer referred to a desire to improve living conditions in “third world countries that are like many parts of Kentucky”. DD interpreted this as a direct insult and did not have a clue as to how to respond.</p>
<p>It seems ridiculous to me to ask for a controversial topic and then be offended by a differing opinion. Perhaps the intent of the interview was to assess how DD would respond to an antagonistic environment. Either way, this would be an unprofessional way to conduct an interview.</p>
<p>Predictably, three days after the interview, DD received a note that she had been eliminated from the scholarship competition. This episode has left a bad taste with DD and she now has no interest in attending UVa, although it had been high on her list.</p>
<p>Sorrry for her bad experience. Remember that Jefferson scholars program is run and scholarships are awarded by separate (alumni?) group and is not directly from UVA. That’s one reason they tell you that being invited to interview doesn’t ensure acceptance to UVA. UVA doesn’t (directly) have any control over process and this doesn’t necessarily reflect school - or all alumni for that matter.</p>
<p>My sympathies (and views) are with you, rmldad. What you report is astounding, and I believe does reflect poorly on the University. </p>
<p>No offense meant to scmom, but I discount the comment that the schol is run by a separate group; if someone from the Univ said this I’d suggest it was a convenient cop-out.</p>
<p>It is an outside scholarship that is run by alumni. The regional committee seem to have lots of freedom. Several years ago, my daughter was interviewed by 5 UVA (most former Jefferson winners) at once for over an hour. It was held in the boardroom of an intimidating downtown law office. I thought she might be doing well because some candidates were interviewed in less than 15 minutes. She said it was very difficult partly because the interviewers talked over each other and the variety of questions. She received her rejection letter about a week later. It was disappointing at the time, but it is their money to award however they want. She is very happy at another university.</p>
<p>I hope you’ll share this information with the Jefferson Scholars Foundation. I’ll send them a link to this thread, but I imagine getting feedback directly from the students would be helpful.</p>
<p>The comment about our lack of involvement is correct. We don’t even get a list of nominees. We get a list of the students who are invited to the weekend in Charlottesville, but that’s obviously a few steps down the line from local interviews.</p>
<p>We understand that the Jefferson Scholarship committee is not officially affiliated with the university. However, this interview was DD’s second interaction with anything related to UVa. The first was a local Information Session presented by an Admissions Officer. That event was positive, so we were surprised that the interview was such a disaster. DD has not yet been able to visit campus and at this point she is not interested in doing so.</p>
<p>@rebel - DD has had more than a half dozen interviews in the past few months and has enjoyed all the others without exception. The feedback she has received has been uniformly positive and encouraging. She is not political, opinionated or dogmatic in any way. We would also love to hear the other side of the story to understand why this interview went so poorly.</p>
<p>@Moreover - DD would have preferred to have a committee interview so that one individual’s bias would have been mitigated to an extent. Based on your daughter’s experience, however perhaps the scholarship committe’s intent is to observe how the applicant responds when challenged. This seems a dreadful first impression for the intial interview and I question its wisdom. I am curious if other applicants have had interviews that were intentionally confrontational.</p>
<p>My son, who just submitted his UVA app a couple days ago, is also scheduled to interview soon with a regional rep from the Scholars Foundation. My hope is that the results are a little less severe than in your daughter’s case, but just hearing about your situation has jaundiced me somewhat.</p>
<p>I’m sorry the OPs DD had a bad experience. As Dean J said following up with with the Foundation would be the best step. They need to know what her experience was.</p>
<p>@kelijake1987 - I can understand how reading this could make you anxious for your son. Each year there is usually a thread started by Jefferson Scholar nominees where they discuss their experience and progress. Below is a thread from last year that might be helpful for you. Some of the students discuss their interview experiences. I am in NO way trying to diminish the OPs DDs experience, just giving you another source of information to balance what may be a very unacceptable, but hopefully rare experience for nominees. Best of luck to your son.</p>
<p>I’m in no way condoning what the interviewer did to your daughter, but the Jefferson scholars that I knew at UVA were all amazing people, going on to Peace Corps or winning Fulbright scholarships as well as being amazing leaders at UVa. I don’t know how the interview process works, and I’m sure there’s unnecessary weed out, but they end up with an amazing group of young men and women. I hope your daughter will reconsider UVa, but I understand if she doesn’t. I ended up not applying to UMD and UDel because they wouldn’t accept the old version of the SAT, which is clearly a much lesser reason than your daughter has.</p>
<p>That is the problem with a volunteer organization that is spread over a very large geographic area. It is hard to exercise quality control over interviewees.</p>
<p>Sorry to hear it was a bad experience for your daughter. Our child made it to the finalist weekend and also had some tough interviews. My understanding is that part of what they are looking for is someone who can respectfully and articulately stand up for their beliefs/opinions. I know our child had to “defend” some of their opinions to judges and was initially thrown off by the experience.</p>
<p>Would like to share an entirely different experience. My daughter is a Jefferson Scholar who is about to graduate from UVa. She has had an absolutely amazing experience from start to finish, including the interviewing process. I can’t speak for other regions, but there is a very dedicated, hardworking group of volunteer alumni who run the Philadelphia/Delaware Valley and they take this responsibility very seriously. </p>
<p>We were at the Jefferson Scholars dinner for fourth year students last weekend and the contributions and accomplishments of the graduating class included: A Marshall Scholars, A Rhodes Scholar, a Truman Scholars, captain of a national debate team, President of the Honor System, President of the ISC, World Peace grant recipients, one of the 5 highest ranked ROTC members in the country, board members of numerous other charitable and community service organizations on campus, and that is just what I remember off the top of my head.</p>
<p>I have had the privilege of getting to know many of my daughter’s Jefferson Scholar peers and they are a group of caring, passionate, intelligent, and engaging students who have been leaders on the UVa campus and I think have lived up to the ideals of the scholarship. </p>
<p>I would like to add that my daughter attended a public high school in the Phila suburbs and did not know anyone who had ever attended UVa before, but she is a big fan and has been helping at the local Phila Jefferson Scholar recruiting sessions ever since and wants to continue to help the organization after she graduates.</p>
<p>I would strongly encourage anyone who has strong academics coupled with strong leadership skills and a desire to truly serve their community to apply for the Jefferson Scholarship, and to attend UVa. It has been a lifechanging, positive experience for my daughter and her family. We are sad that we will not have built in reasons to visit UVa starting next fall, but in the meantime look forward to the graduation events in two weeks!</p>
<p>My son is will graduate from UVA in two weeks. He wasn’t really going to consider UVA until he was nominated by his school for the Jefferson Scholarship. He was eliminated after the second round of interviews, where the second interview was pleasant enough but not at all focused on what he expected. We realized the competition was very tough, and you never really know the filtering criteria. He doesn’t strive to be a political leader or change the world, so that probably did not help. In any case, you could say the JS program achieved its goal of helping to get a top student and leader in HS to attend UVA and go on to success there…</p>