<p>Congrats to blossom for being post # 1000!!!</p>
<p>I do alumni interviewing for my Ivy alma mater and I always ask for a resume. I don’t ask specifically for grades and SATs as well as activities and honors but they are usually included and I find those things helpful. I ask for this to be emailed (or mailed) to me at my office before the interview so that I can read it, get a sense of the kid on paper, and then use that to prepare questions (as I would in a job interview). I tell the kids that this interview is the opportunity to convey to the school that which they couldn’t easily come across on paper.</p>
<p>The interviewers looked at my S’s resume, saw that he liked to solve Rubik’s cube and asked for a demonstration. :)</p>
<p>“My daughter is an alumni interviewer at an Ivy League university and the rules she follows are exactly as you describe them. If the applicant brings a resume, fine. But she is not supposed to ask for one.”</p>
<p>What’s unfortunate about that college’s rules is that the kids with the educated and sophisticated parents will bring resumes while the other kids will not. I learned this when I was running an internship program for stellar high school students. After that, I started sending letters to all of the students invited for interviews letting them know what appropriate dress was, that assertiveness was important (kids from uneducated homes tended to think that being very modest about their achievements was the way to impress their interviewers), and that a resume was desired. I also told them to talk to their GC’s about resumes (This was before so much info was on the Internet about resumes).</p>
<p>“Interesting: How many of the volunteers ask for the student’s resumes and copy of application? Are the schools providing those d”</p>
<p>When I interviewed, I told students to bring in a resume and anything else that they thought would help me learn more about them. Some brought in papers they’d written, copies of art they’d created, one brought in a copy of his application.</p>
<p>Harvard only provided me with the student’s name, high school, e-mail, address, phone #, whether their parents had attend Harvard undergrad, if the student had listed a prospective major, and in a few cases some vague info about the student’s activities such as “band” or “baseball.”</p>
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<p>Once upon a time, these colleges had a custom of restricting the number of Jewish students to a certain vaguely agreed upon quota.</p>
<p>And most of them had a strict quota for female students: zero.</p>
<p>Those customs changed, didn’t they? And not by Jews converting or by women having sex change operations. The colleges changed.</p>
<p>[unsolicited plug for my alma mater] In 1972, I had an interview for an Ivy League college: the one I ended up attending. It took place in the interviewer’s home (hey, it was a different time, and different customs applied; the Scouts didn’t forbid one-on-one meetings between youth and leaders then, either). The interviewer was an elderly woman who had graduated from the college several decades earlier. Of course, there is only one college in the Ivy League that could have had an elderly woman alumni interviewer in 1972 – the same one that doesn’t allow interviews to take place in the interviewer’s home today: Cornell, of course. But Cornell always did march to a different drummer. [/unsolicited plug for my alma mater]</p>
<p>". Of course, there is only one college in the Ivy League that could have had an elderly woman alumni interviewer in 1972 – the same one that doesn’t allow interviews to take place in the interviewer’s home today: Cornell, "</p>
<p>Not true at all. Harvard also had women students. Harvard’s women students went to Radcliffe, which was founded in 1879. Women also went to Harvard’s graduate programs beginning in the 1940s, and could have chosen to be alum interviewers for Harvard.</p>
<p>Radcliffe was a member of the Seven Sisters, not the Ivy League. Harvard did not graduate women as Harvardians, with full rights, until 1977. Before that date, although they attended the same graduation excersises, the diploma was a Radcliffe diploma. Cornell was truly egalitarian, enrolling women 1n 1870.</p>
<p>"Radcliffe was a member of the Seven Sisters, not the Ivy League. Harvard did not graduate women as Harvardians, with full rights, until 1977. Before that date, although they attended the same graduation excersises, the diploma was a Radcliffe diploma. "</p>
<p>I agree with you that Cornell was far in the vanguard by enrolling women in 1870. Definitely very impressive!</p>
<p>Radcliffe started conferring joint Harvard-Radcliffe diplomas in 1963.</p>
<p>Women could attend Harvard grad schools starting in the 1940s. Any Harvard undergrad or grad school graduate can be an alum interviewer, so it could have been possible for an elderly female graduate of one of Harvard’s graduate schools to have been interviewing for Harvard in the 1970s.</p>
<p>One more H-R digression: The women’s crew team at Harvard still wears Radcliffe black and white colored uniforms, not Harvard crimson and row under the Radcliffe name, as a show of loyalty to the underdog Radcliffians (?) who pulled out an amazing victory in an early team year. (Not all current female rowers agree with the differentiation today.)</p>
<p>The university for which I interview…we are given very little ahead of time…just a basic form with the student’s name, high school, address, phone, parents’ names, legacy status, ED or RD, intended majors of interest, very cursory list of activities that come from checking them off a form (not comprehensive or specific to students’ information). </p>
<p>The purpose of the interview is to get a personal impression of the student that goes beyond what is presented on the written application. The alum interviewer never sees the application. The alum interviewer isn’t supposed to ask the applicants’ stats, nor is it necessary to do so as that information is already on the application. </p>
<p>While we don’t ask for a resume, it sure is nice if a student presents one at the interview (my own children did this, as do my advisees), because it facilitates the interview so that the interviewer has a context and doesn’t have to find out all the basics and can go beyond the information to probe about the activities, rather than first have to ask what the student does (remember we have no information really ahead of time and so have to gather the basics in order to even probe further). It would be easier to have the basic activity resume in hand to not have to waste time finding out the basics for some context for the more interesting questions. </p>
<p>I have to say that in a dozen years of doing these interviews for a very selective university, that the students in my rural state, only about three kids have ever given me a resume. They obviously are not in the know or don’t read CC or don’t have great college counseling. It’s OK as I first ask them to go over their activities verbally to give me the basics and then I ask the probing questions. Having some written stuff like a resume would be nice to have them leave with me. Instead, I have to take notes to remember it all and tell them that I am taking such notes to help me recall it when I do the write up.</p>
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<p>The Ivies really were incredibly late-to-the-party on the concept of enrolling / educating women, weren’t they? So much for forward thinking.</p>
<p>I think the argument of “there’s so little risk of anything untoward in an in-home interview as to be vanishingly low” is a far stronger argument for in-home interviews than “well, They’ve always done it that way, and so They must be right – or at least worth suffering privation for – because they’re Them.” Sorry, JHS, I normally am in full agreement with your arguments, but this one leaves me cold!</p>
<p>Hmmm… As far as I know, no one has ever accused Harvard of being terribly avant-garde.
I agree that “just because we’ve always done things this way” is not a good argument. JHS had a better one when he suggested that risks incurred in an in-home interview are incredibly small.
I would not say that the concerns expressed over this issue are “cultural,” rather they are highly personal, and, like many concerns, cannot be allayed by statistics, like fear of flying vs. fear of driving or being driven.</p>
<p>“The Ivies really were incredibly late-to-the-party on the concept of enrolling / educating women, weren’t they? So much for forward thinking.”</p>
<p>The Ivies were ahead of much of society during the 1800s in viewing women as worthy of higher education.</p>
<p>Radcliffe was founded in 1879 as part of Harvard. Among women who were educated there was Helen Keller.</p>
<p>Pembroke (the former women’s college of Brown), founded in 1891.</p>
<p>Barnard, founded in 1889, affiliated with Columbia since 1902.</p>
<p>By contrast, Oberlin was the first co-ed college in the U.S., accepting women from the time it was opened in 1833.</p>
<p>"Before the Civil War, only three private colleges admitted women. All were in Ohio: Antioch, Oberlin, and Hillsdale (now in Hillsdale, Michigan). In addition, only two public universities, the University of Iowa and the University of Deseret ( which later was renamed the University of Utah), admitted women. However, the Civil War brought with it a general decline in (male) student enrollments, making some postsecondary institutions more agreeable to admitting women. By 1870 eight state universities accepted women. "</p>
<p>[Archived:</a> Women’s Colleges in the United States: History, Issues, and Challenges](<a href=“http://www2.ed.gov/offices/OERI/PLLI/webreprt.html]Archived:”>http://www2.ed.gov/offices/OERI/PLLI/webreprt.html)</p>
<p>MIT admitted Ellen Swallow Richards (its first woman student) in 1870.</p>
<p>The Ivies were happy to have the Seven Sisters affiliated with them, but not equal or integrated physically with them, as were the state universities.</p>
<p>The LAC I attend was founded in 1856, and it is the oldest coeducational university in the state of New York. So it looks like the Ivies weren’t necessarily the first colleges to admit women.</p>
<p>Sorry, NSM. Radcliffe was not an Ivy. Radcliffe was founded BECAUSE Harvard would not admit women.
From wikipedia:
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<p>Not exactly pioneering. When I was a grad student and had my finals in Lowell Hall, we women had to cross to Mem Hall to use the bathrooms, because Lowell Hall had only toilets for men. Not so wonderful in January.</p>
<p>Still, Radcliffe was part of Harvard University, which put Harvard way ahead of Princeton, which didn’t have women undergraduates until about 1970. Yale didn’t have women undergrads until 1969.</p>
<p>I agree that the Ivies weren’t the first schools to admit women. Oberlin was the pioneer: being co-ed when it opened in the 1830s.</p>
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<p>LOL, that’s exactly my point. You’ve made it for me! </p>
<p>Oberlin managed to be co-ed from its inception in the 1830’s.<br>
Lawrence University managed to be co-ed from its inception in the 1840’s.<br>
I know Northwestern was co-educational by the 1880’s at the latest. </p>
<p>So it’s hardly evidence of “forward thinking” that in the 1890’s and early 1900’s, all-male institutions decided to form / found female affiliates, and waited 60-70 years or so to make the big step into actually going co-ed.</p>
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<p>Whoop-de-doo! Co-education was the American norm for the vast, vast majority of colleges / students in the country many years prior. Quibbling about 1963 vs 1969 vs 1970 misses the point.<br>
I’m a fan of women’s colleges and my D is going to be visiting 4 of them but come on, at least be intellectually honest here. The Ivies were * laggards * in the area of co-education, not pioneers or anything remotedly close to it.</p>