Harvard interview very soon--any last minute tips?

blossom
Thu, 25 Jan 2024 17:04:20 +0000

Do not try to interpret or extrapolate based on how long it took to get an interview scheduled.

I’ve lived in different parts of the country and therefore interviewed with different “Alumni Leads”. Some were very on top of the candidate flow from admissions- detailed spreadsheets with deadlines and names and frequent phone call check-ins so that if an interviewer got backed up, he or she could reassign some of the applicants to another interviewer.

And some were… let’s just say, a little more casual in their approach. It all got done, but nobody called to remind (you could call it nagging!), cajole, insist that you schedule the meetings on a timely basis. But it got done.

So in most cases, it has nothing to do with your kid. It’s about where you live, how well organized the team is, how many alumni volunteers there are to how many applicants from your region there are. Zoom has both helped and hurt. Helped because you have far greater geographic reach since nobody has to travel/take the bus/uber. But hurt because expectations are that everything will be instantaneous- the interviewer is traveling for work? Why can’t he or she do the Zoom from the hotel room at 11 pm???