<p>"I’m sorry for the rudeness, it’s just I’ve heard some pretty bad things about Harvard and this just seemed to confirm it, that’s all. "</p>
<p>I agree that if you believe the interviewer’s behavior confirmed your impressions about Harvard, you should withdraw your application. It doesn’t sound like it would meet your needs.</p>
<p>“All I am saying is that he won’t even LET himself get carried away with casual conversation—who knows, maybe we’ll talk about some book for a half hour, or something. He’s rigid in the sense that he won’t even allow spontaneous things like that.”</p>
<p>Has it ever occurred to you that maybe he doesn’t have much free time, and he’s using some of that limited time to volunteer by interviewing students? If he’s like most busy adults, he wouldn’t have time to waste by getting way off topic when he has a specific task to do.</p>
<p>If your previous interviewers got far off topic, perhaps they weren’t very good interviewers or perhaps they were lonely people whose main source of entertainment is talking with students who applied to their colleges.</p>
<p>“perhaps they weren’t very good interviewers or perhaps they were lonely people…” Ouch!</p>
<p>Or perhaps they were selfless, kind-hearted people, generous with their time, and actually enjoyed the company of their interviewees?</p>
<p>I agree the OP is being whiny and petulant in her perspective, but there is no reason to suggest the other colleges’ interviewers were incompetant or riddled with lonliness. To do so feeds the impression of Harvard arrogance.</p>
<p>“Or perhaps they were selfless, kind-hearted people, generous with their time, and actually enjoyed the company of their interviewees?”</p>
<p>People can be selfless and kind-hearted and enjoy their inteviewees, but still don’t have 2 hours to spend with an interviewee. Keep in mind, too, that after the interview, the interviewer has to write a narrative report about the interview, and that can take an additional hour.</p>
<p>Harvard also suggests that the interviews be 1 hour or less. It is wrong for interviewers to let interviews drag on forever when the interviewee may have other things to do and it’s also not fair for a student to get a 2-hour interview when most other applicants get a one-hour interview or less.</p>
<p>Frankly, I think that most people who use their free time to interview are selfless and kind hearted, but still wouldn’t have 2 hours to spend with one interviewee particularly when so many people are applying to Harvard that most interviewers have to do several interviews in order for all of the applicants in their region (which could be hundreds of miles) to get interviewed.</p>
<p>And heck, the students are applying to Harvard, not the CIA. One really would have to be an incompetent interviewer to need more than an hour to assess an interviewee for Harvard. Someone may be smart enough to have graduated from Harvard, but that doesn’t mean they are expert at interviewing.</p>
<p>Some people – including alums – are lonely, and so many let interviews drag on.</p>
<p>Saying all of this as an alum who has interviewed for Harvard, chaired a regional alumni interviewers , committee for Harvard, and has taught interviewing techniques.</p>
<p>my interview was great. i actually interviewed with a harvard professor, which was definitely an interesting experience. she was so nice and accomodating and made me very, very excited about harvard it lasted for about an hour and we talked a lot about books, since she teaches literature, which was nice and relaxing.</p>
<p>i’m sorry for those of you who had less-than-satisfactory interviews, but i don’t think you can blame it completely on the school.</p>
<p>Why do you guys sit here and overanalyze the words of an overwhelmed high school senior? I am, after all, just 17 years old. Am I not allowed to just rant a bit on an online forum? I say one (perhaps overgeneralized) thing about Harvard, and you guys pounce on me. </p>
<p>I don’t think my 2hr interviewer was lonely. She was actually really busy, but it really seemed like she cared about me. It’s too bad that you automatically assume interviewers who spend more time are probably lonely/incompetent.</p>
<p>And you’re calling me judgmental. </p>
<p>smoda, I made that statement because 1hr restriction pretty much made sure random tangents wouldn’t happen. My own opinion, which i guess obviously is not worthy of you guys?</p>
<p>D’s interview was less than an hour and there was some structured discussion and plenty of unstructured.</p>
<p>As for getting overanalyzed, I’m just going to pass on comments like I would to my daughter. Any time you express yourself publicly you run the risk of responses you don’t like. You opened the door by “ranting” and making negative and as you put it “rude” statements. Don’t complain when people take exception to you comments and respond negatively back. If you want to rant and only hear what you want to hear, I suggest assessing your audience first. Instead of an open medium like here, rant to your friends and family who will let you do so without criticizing.</p>
<p>I had my interview on wednesday. Really casual. he asked some things like test scores, extracurriculars. we talked about blowing things up (i founded the rocket club at school and he had a mini cannon), some stuff about harvard. A little bit about why I wanted to go to harvard. Why I liked medicine. Talked about diversity and where i have lived. </p>
<p>^that was really unorganized but you get the idea. i thought it was good-abt 40 minutes also. He said to just take it easy, didnt think it mattered much other than to make sure you are normal…</p>
<p>"smoda, I made that statement because 1hr restriction pretty much made sure random tangents wouldn’t happen. "</p>
<p>Actually, people can have random tangents in a 10-minute interview. What determines whether random tangents occur is how organized and skilled the interviewer is, and to some extent how much the interviewee stays on track.</p>
<p>Interviews aren’t supposed to be like regular conversations , though depending on the people involved, they can feel like regular conversations. The person doing the interviewing has to assess the student on certain characteristics that Harvard asks about, so random tangents may mean that the interviewer won’t be able to answer those questions, so the interview may be of little value to Harvard.</p>
<p>There are some colleges for which the interview is a formality or even is only a chance to recruit the student or for the students to have their questions answered. In such situations, it may not matter if the interview goes off track as long as the student feels they had a good experience. The Harvard interview, however, is part of the student’s assessment for Harvard.</p>
<p>I had mine yesterday… At first I thought it went okay but the more I think about the more I start worrying that maybe it didnt go that well after alll.
He also asked me for my grades and my SAT scores which I thought wasnt allowed??
And other colleges I am applying to which I also heard that they arent supposed to ask. I tried answering it by just saying: well i applied to a few more colleges in the states, some in boston, some in york…
but he asked me to name them all…</p>
<p>After two kids, their college aps, and interviews (19 schools and about 12 interviews), I have noticed that what an interviewer “wants” varies widely. Four years ago, S had a notebook w/ resume, transcript, score reports, newspaper articles, photos, etc. There were interviewers that would literally not touch it the noteboook, those that examined the whole thing (scores, grades and all) and those that only wanted the resume. D has traveled with much less (house has been too busy to create) but has always gone with a minimum of a activities resume. There was one interviewer that would not even touch the activity resume. Others used the resume, some were interested in transcript also, others said it would be wrong to have grades. Ironically D had the most stuff with her for Harvard not due to extra effort but actually because the day was insane (she had about 20 minutes to eat, get dressed and grab her things) and all kinds of stuff were thrown together in a folder to be figured out later. The Harvard interviewer was very interested in anything/everything she could learn about D and kept it all. When D got home, she actually had to contact interviewer to let her know that a “work in progress” piece was in the folder erroneously and to deal with it any way she wished.</p>
<p>Harvard did not ask about “other schools” while other school interviewers did. Another case of “it depends on the interviewer. Ds actually stated how she understands that " a student would have to apply to more than just Harvard” and then moved on.</p>
<p>“He also asked me for my grades and my SAT scores which I thought wasnt allowed??
And other colleges I am applying to which I also heard that they arent supposed to ask. I tried answering it by just saying: well i applied to a few more colleges in the states, some in boston, some in york.”</p>
<p>Harvard’s guidelines for alum interviews include telling alum to get students’ stats, but preferably toward the end of the interview. Among other things, the interviewers have to rate the students on something related to their intelligence, and it’s impossible to do this fairly without the interviewers knowing the students’ stats. In addition, I believe that having the interviewers obtain the students’ scores provides a back-up to make sure that all of the students’ scores have been filed in the students’ folder at the admissions office.</p>
<p>Harvard also asks alum interviewers not to ask students where else they’ve applied. Harvard also lets interviewers know that it doesn’t take under consideration how much the student wants to attend Harvard or where else the student is applying so the interviewers’ narrative and assessment shouldn’t reflect those things.</p>
<p>Since interviewers are human, however, some follow to a T Harvard’s requests. Others do differently.</p>
<p>To my surprise as an interviewer, many of the students whom I’ve interviewed have told me where else they applied even though I didn’t ask them. It didn’t matter to me even if they applied to Yale. I know that no matter how outstanding the students are, the chances are extremely low that any of the students whom I interview will be accept to Harvard anyway, so I’m glad they may have some other good options.</p>
<p>My interview lasted 45 minutes and believe me, it was WAY more time than we needed. Think an ENTIRE episode of Gossip Girl (commercials and all). We each went off on many tangents and he said that mine was one of his best interviews… Personally, I don’t see the need for a 2 hour interview. My Yale one was a bit longer (1 hour) and I ended up (thankfully!!!) getting in. And my USC one ** with my actual admissions officer YIKES! ** was 20 minutes (lolz) – but she said I may be able to qualify for the merit scholarships.</p>
<p>All in all, I think the time you get matters very little. There are few people who will actually connect at so personal a level to talk for more than an hour (assuming each party was previously unknown to the other).</p>
<p>I just had my interview a few hours ago. It was at the interviewer’s house. He asked a lot of general questions like “What is your school like?” and “What are your friends like”. Our conversation eventually went up to gun control and eminent domain. I was pretty surprised how much it felt like a normal talk instead of an artificial question-and-answer session. </p>
<p>He basically said that getting into Harvard is tough for even great students, and if you didn’t get into Harvard, you will probably get into another school of equal caliber. He also said that the education of the top 15 or so ranked schools is not drastically different and one won’t miss out on much academic-wise if one goes to, say, Johns Hopkins or Duke instead of Harvard. It basically boils down to different environment. </p>
<p>Overall, it was pretty awesome. The entire interview lasted about 75 minutes.</p>
<p>ok mine was amazing. im pretty sure my two interviewers fell in love with me.</p>
<p>but now i have another question. do i send a thank-you note? i cant email them because the interview was set up by the harvard club of st louis, i never really was in contact with my interviewers directly. what did the rest of you guys do?</p>
<p>whoa zeke you had two interviewers? I’m glad you managed the interview well.</p>
<p>As for the note, you should send one, but you’re saying that you don’t know how to contact them, so how would that be possible?
And you say that the Harvard Club set yours up, not the interviewers themselves? That’s strange, b/c my interviewer set it up personally with me (although she was a member of the club).</p>
<p>I haven’t been contacted yet for an interview. I did have an on-campus interview this summer, but it wasn’t much of an interview. Is there still time for me to be contacted?</p>
it lasted for about an hour and we talked a lot about books, since she teaches literature, which was nice and relaxing.</p>