<p>Wow, that interviewer is badass.</p>
<p>That will be me in five years :-D</p>
<p>I asked for an interview and there was no one in my area to conduct one with me and I still got in.</p>
<p>Interviews are good to have, but they usually do not make or break an application.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t beat yourself up about all this, what’s done is done and thinking about it over and over again isn’t going to do any good.</p>
<p>Just look forward.</p>
<p>(I literally registered just to say that)</p>
<p>I didn’t even have an interview and I was accepted.
As many have said already an interview doesn’t make or break your application, it just adds another piece to puzzle, allowing the admissions officers to have a more complete view of you as a person and student.
Don’t fret about it! There many different reasons to get accepted, waitlisted, and rejected. Unless we are specifically told by the people who looked at our applications, we’ll never know what they were thinking.
It’s not worth the effort, really.
Breathe in, breathe out.
:)</p>
<p>i thought i requested one by checking off the box, but uchicago said i never asked for an interview. </p>
<p>i can see what you’re saying; they might see it as not demonstrating interest because you didn’t go through with requesting an interview? i think at this point all you can really do is hope for the best, and with people applying to the same schools, chances are good that they’ll be able to use their waitlist.</p>
<p>Concerning the optional stuff: if you check out the Duke forum, there’s a whole bunch of people that got in without writing the optional essay.</p>
<p>I did not have an interview either, because I did not request one (stupid I know, and I’m lucky I was accepted).</p>
<p>Interviews for Chicago are probably more important/ weighted more heavily than they are at other comparable schools. However, one thing that I did (and I don’t know how many people did this) was have a 4th rec letter sent (Chicago is one of the only schools I know that actually has a form for this). </p>
<p>So I had 2 teacher recs, 1 counselor rec, and 1 rec from my friend/boss from my Boy Scout camp. That rec probably helped me a lot because I got my job at my Scout camp because I took a merit badge class there with my boss as my instructor, and he was so surprised that I knew as much as I did about biology that he made sure I was hired the following year.</p>
<p>I also sent in a 3rd teacher recommendation from my AP Lit teacher and I really think it helped substantially.
A few of my friends were also waitlisted and it can be even worse than a rejection because of the uncertainty.</p>