<p>
no danas, I think we all know that not all interviewers are created equal but it appears that you want us to agree that all interviews are worthless time wasters that show and tell nothing of import that a college would use in selecting their class. That interviews are merely something to keep the alums occupied and contributing. At some schools that may be so. But not all. Our direct experience contradicts that assumption and it appears the experience of calmom and her D does also. :)</p>
<p>Agree with danas. Wouldn’t it be a great situation if colleges really did determine who was admitted to their institution on the basis of one meeting between a non-employee of the institution and a 17 yr-old??</p>
<p>My son’s first interview was with a local alum of a well-known (non Ivy) private. We should have known to ask son what the interviewer’s name was, because this is a smallish town, but we didn’t. An hour before the interview, my husband casually inquired if son had made a mental note of the interviewer’s name (so he could greet the person correctly) and was a little surprised to hear that interviewer was a colleague of his, and one with whom he had a “history”. Son’s and H’s last name is highly unusual, so there could be no doubt the applicant was the son of a fellow professor.</p>
<p>I assume the interviewer had my son’s name for some time prior to the appointment, but saw no reason to ask to be excused.</p>
<p>As it happens, son was accepted to the school in question, and there is no reason to believe a negative report was issued simply because the interviewer had a bone to pick with dad. </p>
<p>The entire procedure is far too subjective to be reliable, in my opinion.</p>
<p>Perhaps my reluctance to accept this mode of selection is biased because my son is one of those who does not always make a fabulous impression right off the bat. I read the yearbook note from one of his very best friends recently, someone he has known for years. The note said something to the effect of, ‘To XXX, one of the coolest guys around. I remember the first time we met on that camping trip. I thought you were such a jerk. Sure glad I got to know you.’</p>
<p>But as far as relevance to the title of this thread, I don’t think the interview is really the reason any top scorer fails to gain admission to a top school.</p>
<p>midmo,
I believe you are wrong but I don’t have the direct personal experience to refute it. Why one kid is chosen over another? I know that at some schools interviews, both alum and employee , can be the reason an adcom pushes hard for a kid in committee. That I know that for certain. Would my kid have gotten in anyway without that great advocacy? Probably. Maybe. Who knows? 
I just know what the adcom’s told us.</p>
<p>This may be another in the long list of times when people decide whether an ability , trait, talent, prize, award, or score should or shouldn’t be important by how their kid did on that modality. Great SAT/ACT. Tests all the way. Great rank. Vals and sals rule, all others drool. Wonderful essays. If you can’t write you shouldn’t be there. EC’s. Show true character over time. Interviews. If you can’t think on your feet and be personable “in person” then why would a school want you on campus breathing their rarefied air? LOL. </p>
<p>(I’m NOT saying any particular poster is doing this but I don’t think it’s neccessary to denigrate and dismiss a part of the process because your kid isn’t top of the mark. I’m sure they more than compensate in other areas. )</p>
<p>At least with my post I was talking about on-campus interviews, not alumni interviews. They are two very different things. </p>
<p>Of course, the fact that my d. arranged an on-campus interview at an east coast college and flew out on her own in September in order to attend probably didn’t hurt her either.</p>
<p>Sheesh . . . meant to make all on here feel better and gently poke a bit of fun at all the noodling over whose a genius. Guess I’m just too stupid to appreciate the subtleties of your discussion.</p>
<p>MIT tells you upfront that kids who don’t go for interviews (who live close enough to an interviewer) are accepted at half the rate. I can’t imagine that my taciturn son is a great interviewee. He only interviewed at two schools and was accepted at one and rejected at the other. (MIT in fact.) I think at the very least an interview can flag an unpleasant kid.</p>
<p>Some colleges do not have interviews of any kind (my S was admitted to one such). Others do not have on-campus interviews (S was also admitted to one such). Both of his interviews–sorry to repeat myself again–had very little to do with his intellectual prowess or his ability to contribute to the community (yeah, right, solving a rubik’s cube). Most had to do with housing, course selection and reminiscences (theirs, not my S’s). Oh; one interviewer suggested that he consider joining a religious group (he’s a self-declared atheist) to lower the pressure of college. The interviewer in question had never taken a course in the areas that interest my S.</p>
<p>Curm: Yes, essays can be coached–and are. But at least they get read usually by more than one person. On CC we’ve read of interviewers whose college experiences were 4 or 4 decades ago and were not all that well versed about what went on in their respective alma mater. </p>
<p>I’m not saying that interviews are not useful or that they cannot be revealing. But let’s not generalize. I am particularly concerned about the applicants who do not have the means to do on-campus interviews and who are applying to colleges that do not have the vast network of alumni interviewers that a school like Harvard does. And finally, since I’m repeating myself, some top colleges can’t possibly value interviews since they don’t give any.</p>
<p>calmom, I was talking about off-campus alumni interviews only, and definitely not those for scholarships. I think the composition of scholarship committees is much more tightly controlled and the objectives are clear.</p>
<p>curmudgeon, my distrust of the alum interview is a result of being on earth a long time and knowing a lot of different kinds of people. I know people who assume that anyone who is fat is lazy and undisciplined, anyone who is skinny is anorexic and therefore has a psychological problem, I even know a professor who admits she thinks anyone who speaks with a Southern accent sounds dumb. How do you suggest making sure these people are not interviewing prospective students?</p>
<p>How about the highly successful people we all know who would have bombed an alumni interview as a teenager? A good friend of mine holds a named chair at a top university, in a department that is ranked in the top three nationally. His undergrad degree is from Stanford, his PhD from Yale. I laugh at the idea of this brilliant, eccentric, quiet guy making even the slightest effort to appeal to an interviewer he didn’t know. I also know a woman who, along with her business partner husband, is a near (if not actual) billionaire; a mover and shaker in the world of politics and well known in the financial world. She is easily the biggest slob I have ever known; no doubt part of her appearance and attitude stem from the complete lack of need to care what most people think, but I have been told that she was the same kind of person back when she was earning graduate degrees at top business schools. Her alma mater is reaping the rewards of not granting her an alumni interview.</p>
<p>curm, it may be that “some” people dislike alum interviews because their own kids may not fare well in that aspect of the process. It may even be true that yours truly is suspicious because she knows it is not the best way for one of her children to make an accurate impression. However, in my son’s case, interviews were irrelevant; he was admitted to all but one school, and he thought the alum interview at that one went very well. </p>
<p>The main reason I am not upset that alum interviews seem to be on the way out is because I think they aren’t really useful in the vast majority of cases. Thinking about some of my son’s cohort, five kids who would shine in such a situation come to mind (two females, three males). They would come across as highly intelligent, mature, personable, and accomplished, and that impression would be absolutely dead-on accurate. However, the very same information could be culled from the rest of the application, including recs from teachers and counselors, detailed listing of activities and awards, choice of courses, etc. Other friends of his might not make such a wonderful immediate impression but I predict they will be just as successful in their careers and in life. I hope no schools were silly enough to overlook their accomplishments on the basis of a short interview with someone who may or may not have been competent at assessing their potential in a face-to-face.</p>
<p>I’m not so concerned that false positives pervert the system, or that false negatives ruin lives, but that the system wastes a lot of time and money and introduces unnecessary stress for the majority of applicants.</p>
<p>I won’t go into specific details of my own D1’s interviews. Suffice it to say that her 3 off-campus ones were quite mutually revealing & strongly aided the decision process, on her end. However, here’s my point about those 3: the interviewers were chosen well, and did have all the ‘well-versed,’ etc. qualities that one should expect at such an appointment. I do believe that interviews are useful & sometimes even critical, but only when the interviewers are excellent themselves at the task. If the interviewer is so excellent, & coached in technique, & selected for particular applicants, has done the homework, etc., then I think that students and their parents are out of excuses. (Granted, those are several Ifs.) And colleges should not weigh interviews heavily unless they can meet those standards. It’s also not an excuse to say that these are just alum interviewers designed to keep them ‘part of the process.’ Sorry, but I do alum interviews, & I get informed as to what to look for. Student reticence does not in itself reduce points. But reticence is different from nonresponsiveness or disinterest.</p>
<p>I guess we all are gauging this on our kids’ experiences. My D only had two alumni interviews. The rest were with adcoms (in one case admissions “interns” or students - I don’t know which) , some off campus , some on campus . She had one on campus interview at a school that doesn’t value interviews (but her’s was mentioned when she received their highest designation ) . All (including the alumni interviews) lasted more than an hour and were quite in depth. None at her most selective opportunities were sales pitches. I think the adcoms know which interviewers interview well and whose recommendations are meaningful. After all, they are divided by territory. Not that hard to keep track. Since we are only talking about a very few schools at this level of selectivity, I think they can handle it. LOL.</p>
<p>Edit: epiphany, that was our experience also. Well-prepped, well-done interviews at the two alum interviews D attended. If I remember right both wanted the brag sheet e-mailed prior to the interview. I guess we just got lucky and had conscientious interviewers (one a doctor, the other a prof) . Had D had the slip-shod interviews with boobs and nincompoops that others have shared, I’d probably feel differently. But she didn’t.</p>
<p>Epiphany:</p>
<p>Those are big IFs indeed. And that’s the problem.</p>
<p>Mathmom:</p>
<p>MIT expects students to schedule interviews BEFORE they apply. S did one–then decided not to apply. Waste of time for interviewer. For S, his decision had nothing to do with the interview; it had to do with his concern about the techie nature of MIT.
The school he did not interview at really tried to recruit him in April.</p>
<p>midmo, none of my D’s 3 interviews were duplicative of admission materials. (Actually she had 4, as one was for Regents; so clearly that was not an ‘admit’ interview; they do not interview for Regents those whom they have not yet decided to admit. Purpose of that interview was: Does she have the scholarly qualities that she appears to have on paper?)</p>
<p>One interview was designed strictly to get details about the e.c.'s, as these were lifelong & awarded. Another interview was designed to gauge level of interest, as they flew somewhat out specifically for this, since no alums were local. During the 3rd interview I almost called the police. I believe they spent 3 hours together, so with local travel time, we’re talking 5 hours. They couldn’t get away from each other, due to mutual interest & obvious fit.</p>
<p>
Seems that this discussion is being held in other places, too.</p>
<p>I do not think that Harvard has on-campus interviews. S, who lives not a million miles from the Yard, had an off-campus interview. Granted, it was a couple of miles–in the other direction.</p>
<p>Stanford does not have alumni interviews; and it’s not for lack of resources.</p>
<p>
More on this topic from 2004. It seems Yale views things differently than marite’s view of how H does things (which I have no reason to doubt). Good for them.</p>
<p>p.s. It seems Shaw agrees with marite about H. ;)</p>
<p>Playing Devil’s Advocate, cur. (Re: H.) Family friend had an abysmal on-campus interview at Penn, conducted by a clueless student, would you believe. Her H interview was a panel of 5. Thank goodness it was. This gave H an opportunity to see her verbal facility & her high IQ. It wasn’t just that she thinks extremely well on her feet, and is articulate to say the least. It’s that her field & her interests depend on verbal adroitness. In this case, H chose its interviewers (apparently) with her in mind, or lucked out with a perceptive, skilled panel. She nailed the interview big time, and is studying there now. Apparently there is some inconsistency, to put it mildly, when it comes to H.</p>
<p>How H interviews are done depends on the local alum schools committee of volunteer interviews. Some places use only one interviewer. In many places, there aren’t a lot of H alum volunteers, so sometimes there’s only one interviewer who is responsible for interviewing all applicants from the region. Other places have tons of eager alum volunteers, and they decide to use panels to interview so that all volunteers have a chance to help.</p>
<p>Just to add another data point to the discussion re interviews:</p>
<p>My daughter generally gives good interview, and has a track record of success in competitive situations where an interview is important. Her interview for her first-choice (Ivy, ED) college was with the president of the regional alumni club (quite large), someone who had been interviewing seriously for the university for 15+ years. When she left his office, he called me up (we had never spoken before) to tell me he thought my daughter was the best candidate he had ever interviewed in terms of fit for that particular school, and he was going to do everything he could to get her there. So . . . I think it’s safe to say that it was a good interview.</p>
<p>Result? Deferred ED and then rejected RD. She was also waitlisted at another school where she felt the on-campus interview went really well. The places she was accepted included three schools that didn’t interview her at all and one where she had been somewhat upset at the lack of “click” with the on-campus student interviewer.</p>
<p>
Deja vu all over again. Y.B.</p>
<p>I found this online prior to D’s interviews. The Yale website now has security blocking access to this material. Oops. (I printed it out at the time.)</p>
<p>Edit: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=77512&page=2[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=77512&page=2</a></p>