How was your Harvard interview?

Colleges & Universities Harvard University
141

<p>weirdest interview ever!!</p>

<p>he started off by telling me to not make too much eye contact or use SAT words. Then he asked me what websites like CC say about interviews, how to prepare, dress etc… He asked me what questions i was expecting and why. He then asked me whether i would rather have 1 million or 5 million dollars in the future. He asked me what I thought about Superbad, and then I had to list and describe about 15 books that i liked. Finally, i had to describe in detail the personalities of each of the 6 members of my family and 2 friends, and substantiate with details. I came out more confused then when i went in</p>

142

<p>“as maybe that I emphasized my Christian beliefs a lot, which I know can be a deterrer for an elite school like Harvard”</p>

<p>Not true. Harvard wants all kinds of diversity including students who are religious, including conservative Christians, who can be hard to attract to a liberal school like Harvard.</p>

143

<p>I’m an international.
They’ve e-mailed me like 3 weeks ago saying that it might be helpful for my application to have an interview. I replied to them immediately, and now I haven’t heard from them for 3 weeks at all.
The admissions office is probably so busy right now so my e-mail could have gotten lost among all the e-mail they probably receive now so I sent another e-mail on Monday.
I was really hoping to have at least a phone interview, but I read on CC that deadline (for something about interview?) is Feb 20th (today!) so is there any point of hoping that I’ll be contacted eventually?</p>

144

<p>Harvard says that if U.S. applicants haven’t been contacted for an interview by today, they should let the admissions office know. Interviews still will be occurring in March.</p>

145

<p>I guess I’ll still keep optimistic then. Thanks!</p>

<p>But then again, if the admissions committee convened already, how much point is there if an applicant gets an interview in March? Does that mean the applicants (who weren’t really guaranteed to have an interview, like internationals) who get an interview in March are still being considered and adcoms want to have more information that will “make or break” their application? </p>

<p>Sorry if I’m annoying, I am just curious about the process.</p>

146

<p>jpd wow that is bizzarre. at least it was interesting?</p>

<p>i called today and was given a email address to contact the guy in charge of my area. hopefully i’ll get an interview soon</p>

147

<p>There’s horsetrading going on up until the day that the decisions are mailed out, so yes, March interviews do count. </p>

<p>And do you really think that Harvard would waste the time of its alum interviewers, many of whom are very busy, potentially large donors, and also would be connected enough to know if March interviews were shams?</p>

148

<p>boho_girl:
I was an international too, and I had a bunch of problems…first, they set up an interview in the town I used to go to school (in the US), which is neither the town where my permanent home address (in the US) is nor the town where my “current” home address is (Switzerland). And I requested the undergraduate interviewer booklet 3 times and I never got it…finally, I was able to get a hold of the admissions office and they gave me the name of an interviewer in my town…who didn’t respond. I gave her three weeks and then got back to the admissions office, who proposed an interview 6 hours away from where I lived. i had my interview today, a slightly more manageable 2 hours away.</p>

<p>my interviewer said that international interview reports were due on saturday…you could probably set up a phone interview before then…i have the contact info for the chairpeople in both france and switzerland, if that would help (didn’t see where you were from :slight_smile: )</p>

149

<p>Northstarmom, thanks as always!</p>

<p>Subjunctively -
Oh, wow, lots of work and mixups for your process. Fortunately, they’ve got my addresses right, and so far, I haven’t had any problems with them (besides not hearing from them for over three weeks). I hope your interview went well at least!</p>

<p>Unfortunately, my country doesn’t have any interviewers (they’ve told me so, hence they asked me if I’d be going abroad in February. If not, they offered to set up a phone interview) and my country is one of those countries in which students get contacted if adoffice needed more info. (and I am not so close to France or Switzerland) But thanks for offering to give me contact infos! :slight_smile:
So do you think I should call the office and ask them about it instead of waiting for e-mail reply?</p>

150

<p>Wait at least til Mon. for the e-mail reply. The office needs to find an alum willing to interview you.</p>

151

<p>Just got back from my interview! It was fantastic, my interviewer was really really nice. He had three girls, but looked really young. He took notes down of what I said and seemed interested in what I was saying. He seemed to really enjoy Harvard but we did not really talk about specific stuff about it. I forgot to mention my job but other than that, it was really fun. It was one hour and ten minutes long (which was my longest) but seems really short compared to everyones here. Is that bad?</p>

<p>Oh and the questions were pretty basic. I was a little thrown off by “most crucial moment of your life” part. But I ended up giving a really heartfelt answer that was completely unrelated to academics.</p>

152

<p>I had my interview a while ago, with a researcher alum who was pretty distinguished in his field. We talked for about an hour - he didn’t really ask any unexpected questions. The interviewer and I didn’t really have that much in common but he asked some good questions. </p>

<p>I’ve had a lot of interviewers ask similar questions about my feelings on China and its growing influence in international relations since I’m Chinese and my ECs are primarily political. My Harvard interviewer was no exception! I think a big difference between him and other interviewers was that he asked a lot of questions about my plans for the future…grad school, career goals, etc…whereas other people asked mostly about what I had done in high school.</p>

<p>I left the interview without a good feeling…it wasn’t a bad interview, but it wasn’t good. Or at least I just wasn’t feeling it. So I don’t know if it hurt or helped me. </p>

<p>I left my Georgetown interview feeling awful (all the guy did was ask questions, almost like an oral test about my views on China, politics, and international relations…) but I got in, where my MIT interview I felt great about (the woman actually emailed me afterwards and asked me to take some portraits of her daughter)…So who knows?</p>

153

<p>Does Harvard do something called “priority interviews”?</p>

154

<p>I would sum mine up as: strange/bizarre and unbelievable.</p>

<p>More I think about it, the stranger it gets.</p>

155

<p>^^ care to share more about it? ;)</p>

<p>I finally got the reply from adoffice.
In short, they told me it would not be feasible to do an interview with me so I won’t have an interview…
I must admit I am a bit disappointed, but oh well, now I can only wait for results as my part of application process is officially over.</p>

<p>Good luck, everyone! =)</p>

156

<p>New to forum. Just had the interview with a alumni who was judge. Lasted 45 minutes and talked about politics, sports, school, weather and e.t.c. Seemed impressed by my credentials.</p>

157

<p>My Harvard interview went terribly - it was the worst experience of my life, by far.</p>

<p>The guy wasn’t even enthusiastic to meet me, and he kept changing our dates basically saying “meet me here” and “meet me there” and then finally I had to call him back like 3 times and leave him a message for him to finally respond to me.</p>

<p>And we met at UCLA ( I had to ride 1 hour on the bus…), and he called the UCLA Bruin statue a “Lion thingy”. Um yeah. Beside the point, but still.</p>

<p>He led me to his office and basically didn’t even ask any of the standard interview questions that I was expecting (he didn’t even ask WHY I wanted to go to Harvard, when I had such a good answer ready) and kept asking me about the way US public schools ran because he had been an international student.</p>

<p>When I talked about learning different subjects for Academic Decathlon, he asked me all these specific questions to test my knowledge about the topic that we had superquiz on TWO YEARS AGO, and needless to say, I had forgotten so much of the information that most of the time I was like, “uhh crap”. And he wasn’t even familiar with the AP system OR the National Merit system so I spent all this time explaining stuff that he should’ve already known about.</p>

<p>Then he asked me what I felt about Mao Zedong. And I had completely not anticipated such a question so I kind of beat around the bush (bad idea) and he looked at me as if I was the dumbest thing he’d ever seen.</p>

<p>Then he asked me to explain the American government structure for him (since he was an International student blah blah blah) and when I explained it to him, he asked me if I felt it was efficient. I said yes I thought it was efficient because of the whole balance of powers ideology, and then he asked me, “Yes, we all know one unitary government is bad because that can lead to dictatorship, but why THREE branches of government? Why not TWO? or FOUR? or FIVE?” and I had no idea what to say… I STRONGLY wanted to tell him to ask the founding fathers why they decided on three rather than four or five or a million, but I kinda stuttered away on that also.</p>

<p>THEN he asked me to recommend him some good Korean restaurants since I was Korean, and so basically I spent 10 minutes of my interview time recommending him all these Korean restaurants. . . um yeah.</p>

<p>When the interview was over, he basically walked me to the elevator and was like, “goodbye good luck” and PATTED me on the back (not even a handshake - which I was expecting) and then when I went down it was dark and I got COMPLETELY lost because it was in a part of the UCLA campus that I was not familiar with. . </p>

<p>CONCLUSION:</p>

<p>This interviewer not only made me feel absolutely crappy about myself but also drew me FAR FAR FAR FAR FAR away from Harvard as possible.</p>

<p>On the other hand, (this might be a bit off-topic) I had my Princeton interview a week ago and it was the best time of my life. He was very encouraging, nice, attentive, SO helpful, very friendly - I had the time of my life, I completely enjoyed the interview so much that I would do it over in a heartbeat. He even made arrangements to meet me near my house because he found out I didn’t drive.</p>

158

<p>Elisa,
The questions that the interviewer asked were exactly what Harvard asks interviewers NOT to do. The interview isn’t supposed to be a knowledge quiz, but is supposed to be a way for Harvard to learn things about you that they can’t determine from your application.</p>

<p>If virtually all of the questions were what you described, you could contact admissions, explain what happened in your interview, and see if it’s possible to get a second interview, doing so will not hurt you, but may help you even if it’s not possible to get a second interview due to the lack of enough alum interviewers. If you are upset that you got a couple of such questions, I don’t suggest contacting them, however.</p>

<p>Harvard wants students to have appropriate interviews that leave them with a favorable impression of Harvard whether or not the students get in, so if interviewers are very inappropriate, Harvard want to know.</p>

<p>The things, however, I don’t suggest complaining about are: having to take a one-hour bus trip to get to UCLA (Given that some students have to drive a couple of hours through snow and ice to get an interview, a one hour public bus ride isn’t a big deal. Harvard and alum go way out of their way to try to make sure that as many as possible U.S. students are interviewed, and one is assigned whatever alum volunteer is reasonably close.); I also don’t suggest complaining about the fact that the interviewer patted you on the back (big deal! It’s not as if he groped you), that you got lost leaving the interview (Presumably, you won’t be familiar with Harvard’s campus either should you become a student there. ), or the interviewer didn’t ask you why you wanted to go to Harvard (Harvard doesn’t rate students in terms of their interest in or knowledge about Harvard).</p>

<p>“He even made arrangements to meet me near my house because he found out I didn’t drive.”</p>

<p>That was very kind of the Princeton interviewer. However, it’s not appropriate to expect everyone to do that. The interviewers already are going way out of their way and adjusting their busy lives to interview you and to send a narrative report, which can take an hour to write.</p>

<p>Meanwhile, I hope you took the time to send thank-you e-mails or letters to every person who interviewed you even if you didn’t like the interview.</p>

159

<p>Northstarmom,</p>

<p>Thank you for your response. How should I go about contacting Harvard Admissions - on the phone or through email?</p>

<p>Basically I think he asked me questions about - the AP system, the PSAT National Merit program, the difference between private and public schools (I didn’t know how to respond because I had never attended a private school), the racial ethnicity balance of my school, how I felt about Mao Zedong, give him examples of questions that an Academic Decathlon test would ask, tell him what I thought was most interesting about learning Climatology, explain to him about the American government system, and explain to him what the Harry Potter series was about. Oh, and also recommend him Korean restaurants.</p>

<p>I felt overall that the interview was extremely impersonal, I didn’t get a chance to express myself at all…</p>

<p>Are the questions that I noted above good enough reasons for me to contact admissions?</p>

<p>Also, thank you for your suggestions, I didn’t think the UCLA ride was such a pain really until I had such a terrible interview - along with the interview itself I think that all the other small factors (like getting lost) just made everything worse.</p>

160

<p>dear Northstarmom,</p>

<p>my interview is just in 3 days, but i’m not sure if i have to bring my resume or
other related materials to my interviewer…
my interviewer didn’t ask me to bring anything lol</p>

<p>do you think it would be helpful to bring these things? as you are an experienced interviewer, what’s your opinion?</p>

<p>AND also I’m curious what kind of information you receive from the admissions about your interviewees. Is it just their majors and names?</p>