^^^ I’m talking in generalities, while you seem to think I’m talking about your situation. My point is that if an interviewer can use a library with a quiet meeting room that affords privacy and safety, that sounds like a better choice than a coffee shop. If a coffee shop is the best place for an interview for you, great.
Will admit that I did not read all posts but I’ve heard very positive things from students about interviewees who have been in their 40’s, 50’s and older. Problems “connecting” may rest in the student who may have had difficulty regardless of the age of the interviewer.
I once got to hear an interview in a quiet library. I thought it as a terrible place for an interview. In a coffee shop everyone is having conversations and it’s hard to pick out one over another usually. I was in my armchair first, but I got really uncomfortable listening the a conversation that should have been private.
I think all of my kid’s interviews were with adults close to my age. Most were in coffee shops but some were in the interviewer’s home. (The Harvard interviewer had a broken leg - so he had a good excuse!)
I wonder how much these really count for. My kid did a number of interviews but she really hit a homerun with her UPenn interview…she met up with a physician at the end of his day and at his office…they talked for an hour plus about international affairs and world matters and weighty books…He not only said he would give her an exceptional recommendation but he followed up after her thank you note to say that he would go to bat for her because of her “keen intellect.”
UPenn was the only school that rejected her outright…not even the courtesy of the meaningless wait list. LOL.
I think a lot depends on the interviewer an interviewee. When one of my kids was applying to prep schools she was intimidated by the DOA and incoming DOA she met at one of the schools, both middle aged men. They were friendly and welcoming but they made her visibly nervous. Luckily her interviewer turned out to be a bubbly young woman who immediately put her at ease and they hit it off.
On the other hand my older child had her worst interview at a school at the top of her list with a fresh graduate who seemed to be working from a script and asked her one of those stupid, meaningless “let’s see if they can think on their feet” questions. She gave what I thought was fantastic answer but she was annoyed by the whole thing. The advantage of an older grad is that they are often more experienced and comfortable going off script. Of course the disadvantage can be that they are comfortable going off script, as some of the stories here and on the “worst interview” thread demonstrate.
I’m so old that I remember when parents and students were grateful that alums gave their time so generously to conduct interviews of prospective students.
Wow I’m old.
Guess what folks- four years from now, your kid will be interviewing for jobs for their actual career. Some of the interviewers will be fantastic and well trained and empathetic and fun. Some of them will be grotesque and awkward. Sometimes the job your kid really, really wants involves making it through a panel interview of a bunch of old people (aka senior management). Some of the interviews will take place in a conference room where the air conditioning isn’t working on a hot day. Some will take place over lunch in a restaurant where the waiter is eavesdropping. Some will take place in a very small cubicle where everyone in the office can hear what’s going on. And some interviewers will cut the meeting short because their kid has just been hit by a baseball in the head and they’re heading to the ER.
Are you going to offer critiques to the folks who go “off script” when your kid is interviewing for a real job?
Agree, @blossom! I was talking to my college senior this past month about interviewing and the importance of have a 3-5 minute spiel down - the old “tell me about yourself” pitch - and how to politely and effectively work it into a conversation even if you aren’t asked because the interviewer is inexperienced, or wants to only talk about him/herself, or for any number of reasons. Being able to take charge of an interview is a good skill to have whether its interviewing for college, internships, or in one’s career.
The main issue I have with these interviews is that both on this thread (post #44 ) and on previous ones about the topic, it seems that no matter what the colleges say regarding whether they’re evaluative or not, the alumni interview reports are not taken into account at all. On that previous thread, a couple of folks said they stopped doing them for that reason, once they noticed that the kids to whom they gave a poor recommendation would get in, while the one or two truly exceptional ones that they raved about, would not. So in my mind, it’s a meaningless hoop to jump through, except in certain cases when a student really needs or desires one.
@blossom Isn’t it acceptable for us to discuss various interview experiences? And yeah, they’re not all great, can’t we vent a little?
I would have liked to have had this thread to discuss with my D a few months ago before she interviewed, though really, she did not encounter any of the bad or awkward situations described.
We certainly appreciate the volunteer alum effort, but as in any endeavor, there are a few people who maybe shouldn’t be doing it. And yes, it’s good to prepare kids how to hold their own under those circumstances.
My D’s interviews all went well so we don’t have any gripes to report. But I will reiterate that the interviews had to stand in for campus visits in D’s case and they seemed to fulfill that function well. We had done plenty of research but there’s nothing like a real live face to face connection.
@SouthernHope and @TheGFG , interviews are just one factor among many, no matter how glowing the results. At highly selective schools many applicants with fabulous files don’t make the cut. I think it was in The Gatekeepers that they mention an applicant that the college president personally recommended, who didn’t get in. I do like that many colleges consider interviews optional and informative rather than evaluative.
Since we were not able to do campus visits, D interviewed to show interest and maybe stick in someone’s memory a little more concretely when decision time came around.
This is very YMMV depending on the college concerned and possibly the nature of the alumni report.
One HS classmate who has been doing alum interviews for an elite U for nearly a decade has felt her notes on past interviewees have made a difference for several interviewees from what she heard from the adcoms. A relative who worked as an adcom at another elite U has mentioned alumni interviews are one factor they do take into account when assessing applicants and a strong positive or negative assessment can tip an applicant correspondingly unless there are other parts of the application which are exceedingly strong enough to overcome it.
My D’s alumni interview went well. I don’t know if it had any bearing at all on whether or not she was accepted to the SCEA school she got into, but the same day she got the results, I encouraged her to call her interviewer to share the news. He thanked her for calling, and said that she made a memorable impression by calling him with her appreciation and thanks, bc almost all of the people he interviewed never let him know whether or not they got in.
I agree with @cobrat - the interviews are very much dependent on what the school hopes to use them for. D had several interviews with multiple Ivy Schools - three of them were held by retirees. One admitted to her that the school uses the interviews as a way to throw a bone to alumni to make them still feel connected to the school. Another told her “I don’t know why I do these, as I meet all these great kids like you and maybe one gets in every few years”. I drove S to one interview in a lawyer’s office, right after school, and he told my S he would never be able to get into school now, all the candidates are so much smarter than he ever was.
Another interview was with a current student who had a work-study job in the admissions dept.
I had told S before his first interview, when he was a bit nervous - “Don’t worry, only your entire future is riding on this!” But happily it went very well, and S found it far more relaxing than he had expected. As the others went on, he learned that the ones he liked best were those when he could ask multiple questions based on how the conversations were going.
Some interviewers like to monopolize the conversation - I suppose some interviewees are the same way. When there is a real conversation, the process can be helpful to both sides.
I’ve interviewed for my Ivy alma mater since the summer I graduated (yep, they recruit heavily!) From first hand experience, I can also say that SOME interviews can be helpful to the admissions committee and for a lucky few applicants, it can be a positive tipping factor.
As the multiple anecdotes in this thread have emphasized, there’s no one-size fits all generalization about the interviewers. Some (young or old) are very well connected and can speak cogently about current campus life. Some (both young and old) are poorly equipped to interview & engage the student. That’s the nature of a large volunteer organization. Even the schools have to work hard to keep the alumni engaged precisely because we see so many great kids get rejected. It’s a two way street.
But the students affect the alums too. Years ago, when my alma mater was first went coed, the alumni interviewing corps in my area leaned very WASP-ish and of course, all male. Per custom, in the spring, all admitted students were invited to a welcome reception. The alumni were resistant to the new coed policy and they weren’t happy.
As fate would have it, not a single male admittee decided to attend the reception. The only two attendees were the area’s lone two women admits – neither WASP. They arrived with their families and were stunningly impressive and blew the socks off everyone in attendance. At the end of the day, not a single alumnus held onto his previous animus toward coed admission. BTW: one of these women is the wife of a current presidential candidate.
@T26E4 You and I must have gone to the same school, as there’s only one Ivy that’s gone coed in the somewhat recent past. My class was the first to be at the school when it was fully coed. I’ve also interviewed for a long time. In general it’s been a good experience. At the most recent alumni interview meeting, we were told that while they can’t count interviews for admissions (who knows if that is entirely true), they have found that interviews make a demonstrable difference in yield. Far more students who interview and are accepted end up attending the school.
I was a fly on the wall near two MIT interviewers who were discussing the need to convince MIT to take more kids from an engineering program in our area and from our local zip codes in general. It sounded like they were frustrated that they hadn’t been able to get acceptances for kids who they thought were extremely well qualified and great fits for MIT. We do typically get about one female MIT admit per year from our HS, but I believe it’s been years since we got a male admit. Both MIT interviewers had gotten their BS, MS, and PhD at MIT but in different generations.
I was a fly on the wall a few weeks ago at a coffee shop. The interview was for Dartmouth. It was a conversation, and people have conversations in coffee shops. Yes, there was background noise. Such is life. This particular Starbucks is extremely convenient for people in this area. If you can’t handle a conversation in a coffee shop that isn’t deathly quiet like a library, you’re not ready yet for big- world experiences.
@Pizzagirl , you’ve identified the ability to have an interview in a loud coffee shop as a litmus test for big world experiences? It must be wonderful to know those sort of things.