Favourite Awkward Interview Moments

Applying to College
281

<p>At my Olin interview, the interviewer double-booked for my time slot, and therefore started my interview 40 minutes late. I wasn’t very happy with him, and accidentaly let it slip that I had to leave early because I had an interview with Yale in twenty minutes. I then ran out of the conference room =)</p>

<p>And of course, my Yale interview was at Starbucks, and of course, I ended up in the wrong Starbucks. My interviewer was very understanding considering there were three starbucks in two blocks. And it was amazing when she told me that she wanted to make my interview last as long as possible because her in-laws were in town. haha</p>

<p>and for USC, I asked if there was barbed wire on the fence surrounding campus</p>

282

<p>For my MIT interview at a nearby diner, my interviewer was about ten minutes late. So, there I was, just standing around, looking at every nook and cranny, and asking every other waiter whether or not they’d been told to direct a high school girl to a certain booth.</p>

<p>Suddenly, I get this really bright idea. Maybe it’s a test! Perhaps he’s trying to see how resourceful I am! I called his cell – d@mn, voicemail. Alright, let’s look around again. Is there a man who’s sitting by himself looking like he’s waiting for someone?</p>

<p>Jackpot! Guy at bar.</p>

<p>I actually went up to this dude and asked if he was my interviewer. The guy gave me the most weirded-out look. Then, as I moved to stand by the door again, my face turning ten shades of mortification, my interviewer walks through the door.</p>

283

<p>Vassar – We had to move from Starbucks because there were too many people in there and then we sat outside… but we had to move because there was bird poo on my chair. -_- Now I am helping my interviewer with furthering her organization through my connections. (really)</p>

<p>Weird.</p>

284

<p>it’s funny how the “wrong starbucks” thing seems to be a fairly common occurrence! The same thing happened to me, and it was all the more unusual because my interviewer gave me the wrong address. lol…
I blame the company for placing their shops too close to each other, especially here in WA. :)</p>

285

<p>Yeah, adding on to minjiminji… this Cornell alum wanted to meet me at Starbucks for an interview, GOOD THING IN SEATTLE THERE ARE TWO STARBUCKS ON EVERY BLOCK. </p>

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286

<p>is every interview at some kind of coffee shop?? i had three (2 at starbucks and 1 at panera) and everyone my class has their interviews at starbucks except for like two people who went to the person’s house. is it some kind of protocol lol?</p>

287

<p>Coffee shops just tend to be the most available and acceptable place to have an interview. They’re everywhere and they have pleasant atmospheres where people can talk easily.</p>

288

<p>haha i wouldn’t say protocol, more like convenient. my columbia interviewer explained that he liked meeting at coffee shops because of the neutral environment, plus he said he just liked coffee :slight_smile: i had three interviews. on was at an office (brown), one was at starbucks (columbia) and one was at a house (dartmouth)</p>

289

<p>i’ve been poring over this thread to see if my interviewer has been sharing horror stories about me…</p>

<p>my first interview went really, really well the lady was really nice, it was a great informative session and at the end she basically said we look for kids just like you to come to our school</p>

<p>the next one, for duke. she won’t quit asking me if there is anything else i want the admissions office to know about me. i try to answer this question 6 times in a row. she goes so far the sixth time to say “i’m going to write she should go to school here because________” i panic, have no idea what to say that i haven’t already covered 6 times and just say “i think my application covers it all”</p>

<p>isn’t an interview supposed to add something to your application? sweet. goo thing i hear from them tomorrow…</p>

290

<p>It pales in comparison to some of the others, but here’s my worst:
I was interviewing for one of the ivies which is by far my first choice, and I was mostly able to play it off cool and all, not freaking out and such. Then the interviewer starts going through my transcript and asking for highlights from each English and history class that I have quite honestly slept through for the last 4 years (“Oh yeah… right now we’re reading that… Achebe book… that’s his name, right?”). She gets to my AP scores and says “Wow! You got a 5 on US History, that’s really impressive, I’ve heard it’s one of the most difficult to get a five on!” So, having apparently missed the idea that she’s more of a history-minded person, I explain that the only reason I scored so well was because I couldn’t bear to take another history class in my life, and I crammed for 25+ hours the week of the test. Needless to say, she was taken aback at my honesty. Monday I’ll figure out if it ended up hurting me though :).</p>

291

<p>Wow, some of these stories had me in tears when I was trying to repeat them to my mom. xD</p>

<p>I have a few, considering the only interview I thought went well was Georgetown’s. xP</p>

<p>Swarthmore: For some reason, the Senior who was interviewing me really freaked me out. Not like…he was a bad person or anything (he was totally nice), it’s just that he kept asking everything so seriously and I kept not knowing the answers, and he would just stare until I came up with something.
Interviewer,<em>In a 'have you accepted the Lord? sort of voice</em>: What is your cause?
…Yeah, so I do a lot of local community service. VERY local. I enjoy picking up trash but for some reason I didn’t think that was a very compelling answer, so I blurted out something about the genocide in Darfur. I really do care about that, but it sounded absolutely idiotic. Like, “mmm Genocide in Darfur is bad and nobody does anything about it and we should help people and I want to go to college to really understand my cause…yeah.” </p>

<p>Brown:
I: “So, Stanford was my first choice, but I didn’t get in so I went to Brown…”
Me: “ME TOO! :D”</p>

<p><em>head-desk</em> AAHHHHHHH!</p>

<p>I love Brown. ;_;</p>

292

<p>just thought of another one</p>

<p>after 2 Hours my harvard interviewer talks about the amazing alum he went to school with and says</p>

<p>I: " Yea, Bhutto was in my class."
Me- Smiles thinking who Bhutto is …and after a couple of seconds- O the lady that died!
I- Yea the Pakistani Leader
Me- (trying to cover) we had a great discussion about her legacy in class yesterday…</p>

<p>LMAO…that was so rough</p>

293

<p>Interview for a scholarship at a small LAC:</p>

<p>A question on the app. was what book would you recommend to the adcom. I put The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell because it sparked my interest in economics. One of the interviewers brings it up, saying she read it, and asks me to explain the premise to the other interviewer (there are two). I completely blank about what the “tipping point” actually is b/c I had read it more than a year ago. So I come up with this ludicrous example of a tipping point- I said that it can be the one factor that causes a person to agree to a deal, or something- and the first interviewer laughs.</p>

<p>I remember a few hours later what the tipping point actually is- the thing that causes an idea or product to suddenly become popular and spread- and i kicked myself. i still don’t know if it ruined my chances at the scholarship (still waiting by the mailbox to hear!!), i mean it obviously must’ve appeared to the first interviewer that i hadn’t actually read the book.</p>

294

<p>hmm, I figured that. But before one interview, I got a cup of coffee and it was really really hot so I was barely even sipping it. And then someone knocked into my chair and I burned my tongue horribly. I never burnt my tongue so badly. Not only did I have a lisp through my interview, I could barely talk for a week. My mother wanted to take me to the hospital. I guess I learned my lesson about drinking coffee (now that i think about it, it was a chai latte) before an interview.</p>

295

<p>In my Harvard interview I mentioned I’d just finished reading “One Hundred Years of Solitude”. I said I loved the book, and we’d talked earlier about how I was interested in French, so then he said something like, “Maybe one day you’ll read it in the original French, huh?” It bothered me so much, but I knew it was stupid to say something, so I compromised by mumbling, “…Spanish, actually…” Smooth.</p>

296

<p>That’s pretty weird, I had just read One Hundred Years of Solitude myself… right before my Harvard interview. >_></p>

297

<p>i was in a rice interview and talked about engineering…and this random guy at starbucks came up to us and started to chat about gt. i was like…umm dude…inteview going on… and i lost my focus…dang that guy.</p>

298

<p>Heh, I’ve been sitting in my room, chuckling to myself for the past while now… </p>

<p>Anyway, my Dartmouth interview was… interesting? Reasons: </p>

<h1>1: It lasted 1 hr 45 min, and I had been up late the night before for something or other, so I was trying extremely hard not to yawn… I tried yawning inside my mouth when he looked away- except… He maintained eye-contact throughout. And I actually hate prolonged eye-contact. It creeps me out.</h1>

<h1>2: He listed all the pros and cons about Dartmouth (as well as all the other Ivies). Then he goes: “I don’t know if you’re interested in this kind of stuff or not… but… All the Dartmouth guys are 6 ft tall, with athletic builds and very good looking!”</h1>

<p>Me: “Oh! <em>Awkward laugh</em> Umm, ok. I’ll keep that in mind, thanks” Meanwhile, thinking: “Is he saying I’m going to school to get guys??”</p>

<h1>4: Him: “So, what other schools did you apply to?”</h1>

<p>Me: <em>Wasn’t expecting this</em> “Umm… <em>lists all</em>”
Him: “Oh, you didn’t apply to HYP? Why not”
Me: <em>Initial thought: Because I can’t get in" but… of course… I can’t say that since it’ll make it seem as though I think I can get into Dartmouth (which I don’t think)… So I end up saying: “Um… you know, I visited the campuses, and I just couldn’t see myself there”
Him: “Why not?”
Me: “Oh um… Something about the its atmosphere… it just wasn’t for me… I think it was a little…tense/ constricted?” *Complete with hand motions</em>
Him: “How so?”
Me: “It’s hard to explain… I get these feelings about people/ places, and can feel it in certain parts of my brain…” (<em>Dies</em>)</p>

<p>Oh, and I said I wasn’t great at math, and so when he asked for my SAT marks and my math was the highest he went: “OH!” Me: “I KNOW! I was surprised too!!!” </p>

<p>Though, he did say that he would give me the best recommendations, so I guess it wasn’t too bad…</p>

299

<p>my Columbia interview still makes me cringe…
My interviewer was talking about how people grow in college and whatnot, and I, of course was thinking of academics, so I said something like “well, a lot of high achieving boys at my school like to cheat a lot,” and he completely thought I was saying that I had been cheated on, as in a relationship. So he was like, “YOU would never cheat on anyone, right?”</p>

<p>So I said “No!!” and all the while still thought it was about academics.</p>

<p>Then the whole thing dawned on me while I was driving home, and I almost got into an accident. I’m such a ditz. :)</p>

300

<p>An alumni interviewer asked my son if he had gone to an elementary school that is a common “feeder” for his high school. When he said he had, the interviewer got very excited and wanted to know what my son had thought of the pre-K program because the interviewer’s four year-old had an application pending. . . “well, I was kind of young at the time, but I remember that the big slides on the playground were fun.” I guess parents stress out as much about pre-K as they do college.</p>