Can a Brown Interview hurt you?

BrownAlumParent
Tue, 29 Jan 2013 18:59:17 +0000

I think the interview can usually only add to the impression that the ad com is already making about you. (either negative or positive) and then not usually enough to sway things much. I have been told that my interview report has pushed someone who otherwise would have been turned down up into the wait-list pool in the past, and there is one memorable applicant in the past who from everything I knew would be unlikely to get in, but I wrote a long and detailed report about the kid (his family had been in the local gossip circles) explaining things that I was pretty sure were not in his HS reports (unless a teacher rec may have addressed them) and which we talked about in the interview. I was very pleasantly surprised when he did get admitted. Did the interview report make or break his admission. While I would like to think so, no one except the ad com ever knew.
Some things that might hurt you “significantly”:
1.coming to the interview really not knowing anything about Brown. Particularly if the interviewer gets a strong sense that the student is only applying to Brown “because it’s on the list”.
2. Being extremely rude, disrespectful, or anything in that “criminal” /psychotic category above . Even then they still might throw out the interviewers comments if they didn’t know the interviewer from reputation of prior reports. Some interviewers like me have gotten to know the regional ad com for our area and they have read dozens of our reports. They get to know who gives “all superlatives” and who are the “tough graders”.