<p>Well, I just got home from mine. It went pretty well, given the circumstances (an awkward interview fair event), and my interviewer was an all-around nice guy. Interestingly enough, the “why Harvard” question never even came up. We just kinda talked.</p>
<p>Yesterday my son went from school, to basketball practice, to work, and then drove 30 min. to his interview. Full day to say the very least. He’s a public school kid in Marin County and it was intimidating to arrive at the county’s elite private school to meet a guy like Bill Gates (his words). He came casual as suggested, but the interview felt very formal. Be prepared…bring a resume and your app and your game. Be ready to have a conversation, and reveals who your are as a person. Forget about your GPA and test scores, and bring your personality and true self. My son’s lasted an hour, and he felt he connected. All you can ask for these days.<br>
FYI…He also had his Princeton interview over the weekend at a local coffee house. Great 1 hour+ discussion with a super guy, but it was extremely informal. Harvard’s was the exact opposite for him.</p>
<p>@girlfriday - I’m also a public school kid in Marin, and I was at that event last night! Funny, my experience was quite the opposite from your son’s, although my Princeton interview was similar.</p>
<p>I had my interview last week with a female doctor from a local health network. The interview lasted about 50 minutes, and went very well! Since I am planning on studying biology/biochem, this arrangement worked very well and we had a lot to discuss. It was a bit weird at times, as she would start talking and then stop in mid-sentence only to continue a few seconds later. Other than this minor oddity, it was great!</p>
<p>If I haven’t received an interview request, yet all the other kids who applied from my school did, should I contact them?</p>
<p>Do NOT contact them. Interviews are offered at random, so even if everyone else in your school interviewed, you might not.</p>
<p>Best of luck to both of us</p>
<p>Are international students pre screened before getting interviews? The Harvard site says you will be contacted only if additional info is required on your application.</p>
<p>From what I have seen from Ivy League threads, ALL applicants are pre-screened to weed out the impossible to be accepted applicants from the somewhat chance to be accepted applicants. Internationals students are no exception, so I guess the answer is yes, international applicants are pre-screened. Harvard probably won’t ask for an interview unless something is fishy with your application and wants to confirm the person on the paper and the person in real-life.</p>
<p>Best of luck to both of us.</p>
<p>I’ve heard the opposite, that even if your gpa is 2.9 and act is 23, you will still be contacted. A lot of the senior CCers emphasize that if you are not contacted for an interview, it doesn’t reflect on the quality of your application, so I would assume the opposite may be true.</p>
<p>@hminot
Hmm that may be true, but given the voluminous numbers of applicants that a team of 20 or so people have to read and critique, I think that there are some automatic cut-offs in relation to GPA and standardized testing scores. However, I’m not an admissions person, just a fellow applicant, so I may be wrong and you may be right :)</p>
<p>Best of luck guys.</p>
<p>Harvard makes an effort to interview all applicants. Being contacted for an interview tells you absolutely nothing about your chances of admission. Not being contacted simply means that there are not enough alumni interviewers in your area – we are volunteers, after all. Really. There is no more to it than that.</p>
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<p>lboss, I have read that there is some screening of international applicants before they’re offered interviews. I live in the U.S., and I frankly have no idea whether that’s true or not.</p>
<p>But for applicants from the U.S., it is absolutely false. Neither Harvard College nor the local Harvard Clubs screen applicants before assigning them to alumni interviewers. So I can say with complete confidence that for a U.S. citizen or permanent resident, getting or not getting an interview has no predictive value.</p>
<p>I second Sikorsky. At least for domestic candidates, there is no screening process for interviews. Whether you get one or not is entirely dependent on the robustness of the local Harvard Club and not on your profile. However, international candidates are different, and there is probably some pre-screening in countries or regions where alum resources are scarce. That is, probably true for Malaysia but not for the UK.</p>
<p>@wcu: you might want to check with your interview chair to confirm whether your statements above remain 100% accurate; if you are Westchester cty and/or NYC, they probably are.</p>
<p>I interview for suburban NJ; it’s certainly still true here. I’m also pretty sure local clubs can’t do any screening, since we don’t get scores or stats. If admissions is starting to screen out candidates before sending names out, I haven’t heard.</p>
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<p>Really? From what I have seen from Ivy League threads, practically NO applicants are pre-screened to weed out the impossible to be accepted applicants from the somewhat chance to be accepted applicants. </p>
<p>Harvard interviewers are saying NO pre-screening. I’ll raise my hand for Yale Bulldogs: NO as well.</p>
<p>I am not sure why this is so difficult for people to accept. While I posted yesterday that most students I interview have SATs in a fairly narrow range, I certainly have interviewed applicants with sub-par (even below average) test scores. I see no evidence whatsoever that my regional chair is weeding out the 1700 SAT scorers before sending along those who scored over 2200.</p>
<p>Now, I suppose it is POSSIBLE that Harvard is trying to snow its interviewers when it sends out emails that say the University appreciates and values the alumni who volunteer their time in an effort to interview every single applicant despite rising numbers of applications received, etc., but I cannot imagine why the school would do that.</p>
<p>Ridethewave, I think I understand why applicants and their families have a hard time believing there’s no screening before interviews. For one thing, that’s often not the case; there usually is screening before candidates are invited to interview for jobs or scholarships. In addition, candidates who are contacted for a Harvard interview understandably really want it to mean something. It takes a lot of reasoning to overcome a desire that strong!</p>
<p>Sent from my DROIDX using CC</p>
<p>Wow, I stand corrected.
I have talked to college admissions counselors over the summer who vehemently believed in pre-screening of all applicants due to the sheer number of applicants, but I guess they were wrong. Obviously, interviewers are first-hand witnesses to this,so I guess you guys are right.</p>
<p>If there is indeed no pre-screening by the admissions team, it sure is an amazing job they’re doing with the manpower they have and the number of applications they have to read through!</p>
<p>It must’ve been mentioned somewhere, but I am too lazy to dig it out. Could a Harvard “insider” tell me if there’s set deadlines for alumni interviewers to conduct the inteviews and send in their reports? Also, What would they <em>typically</em> write in the report? What are some of the clear red flags that may go in the report and cause concerns to AOs? Thanks.</p>