I know this cannot be a consolation to you and it hurts the same but at least this year was zoom. Imagine yourself with your parents to fly all the way from somewhere on the opposite side of the hemisphere or the continent, let your dad drive many hours in the middle of o-so-common New England snowstorm on a rented car, stay overnight at a motel, only to receive a 10-min interview of indifference. It has been that way all previous years.
Now, I know what some of these schools would say. But we are not talking about rejection here. I too think rejection is not only necessary but when done with candor and integrity could actually help the kid. There was one professional AO interviewer who told, after asking so many questions at our kid “I would advise you to cast a wide net because he would not find our discussion-based type of teaching most conducive to his learning.” Rejections are always painful but we quickly got the message and were thankful to her for being open about the fit.
On the opposite extreme, there were schools that actually said “We found the perfect candidate in you! You are God’s Gift to Podunk Academy! Hallelujah!” only to send the kid a rejection (no, they did not even waitlist God’s Gift) on M10. Such schools tend to send “encouraging emails” to make you watch their icehockey games until M9, by the way. The kid will either feel he has already gotten in and cheer for Podunk or will ask “Will they check my login record to judge my interest in them?” To which every sensible parent should say “Only if you like to watch the game. Read nothing into it, and never feel obliged to do something because you want to get into Podunk. If done on M9, this is just to protect their yield - i.e. since they are prohibited from sending anything selectively to their preferred applicants, they simply do to ALL because they do not care about those who will get rejected tomorrow anway whereas they care mighty that those they have already chosen would find special meanings from their lovecalls. You are far too valuable for that. No matter where you go, remember - the school exists for your education, not the other way.”
So I think your parents are very very wise.
To be fair to these schools, I found out that many among their alumni and teachers do not endorse most of these practices. Administration and teaching should be considered different worlds, although your logic about dorm room and sports coach seemes solid to me. But they must also have some very dedicated too. They do have some of the best teachers and best students - as well as those who fall into drugs.
All I can tell you is this: Never ever think one interviewer’s bad day reflects on your candidacy in any way. They have not even read your file except the most basic interests you provided yourself on their portal (no, not the Part I) - to keep the process free from bias.
Now, this is what I would like to tell the schools and interviewers: These are 13 year old kids and you are adults. This is one 10 minute segment of your life you will push into oblivion this evening. But it is one 10 minute segment the kids will remember after 100 years, on their dying day. Just because you have to reject 9 out of 10 kids or whatever, you dont have to hurt their dignity. Please be respectful and kind to them. And for god’s sake, unless you are gonna let someone intelligent enough to judge these uber-smart kids who apply to your schools, just do not make the interview the centerpiece of the application process. How do you distinguish between fit and diversity? You want someone who fits and yet at the same time diverse? So you want someone who only looks different but similar in the head? I understand you don’t want IQ diversity, but still, diversity is such a wide concept if applied in a true manner that it tends to cut into fit. Interview, when so subjectively and yet decisively applied, may look little more than a disguised form of gatekeeping - something the Ivy League had done in the past against the Jews and are still accused of doing against ORM today.
Sorry for the long post, but some schools need to change, I feel.