Not getting a Stanford interview but someone from my school did?

Data10
Sun, 11 Nov 2018 19:18:48 +0000

There are several possibilities. One of the more likely ones is that the number of applicants exceeds the number of available interview spots. This happens regularly in my region. My regional coordinator will sometimes send a mass email midway through the interview cycle, asking alumni interviewers to increase the number of desired interviews in their profile, so she can assign more applicants to interviewers. If this happened in your region as well, then some applicants will get the option for interviews and others will not.

One thing to consider: He is intending an engineering major, Whereas I put Statistics, Physics, or some sort of research science. The alumni who contacted him is an engineer from stanford.

Interviewers are assigned by location. I always get assigned to students from nearby high schools. Aside from location, I’ve found little pattern to who I get assigned. I was an engineering major and work in engineering, yet the overwhelming majority of students I interview are interested in fields other than non-CS engineering. Many students I’ve interviewed seem exceptionally well qualified. A few appeared to be notably lacking. I can’t distinguish the assignment from random.

Another possibility is someone was assigned to your interview, and he has not yet contacted you. The interviewer may not regularly be checking the email listed in his profile to see the interviewer assignment, or the interviewer assignment may have been caught in a spam folder, or he may have been busy this week and be waiting until next week to do interviews.

Students are not penalized for being unable to interview. Stanford has not yet expanded their interview program to most SF bay counties – San Francisco, Santa Clara, Almeda, San Mateo, … so it is quite common for applicants to not have interviews in their file, and a good portion of matriculating students are admitted without getting an offer to interview. I believe that in the previous admission cycle, 52% of applicants were given the option to interview.