<p>The interviewer attended the college your S is applying to. Okay.</p>
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<p>The college the interviewer attended, and your son is interested in, is affiliated with the religion, schools of which your son has attended his whole life.</p>
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<p>“somewhat politically incorrect.” Just “somewhat.” </p>
<p>So the interviewer works for the public school system. Probably needs the money! Private schools don’t pay a lot. One principal of my religious-affiliated grade school left that post to take a job as a teacher in the public school system; he had a family and needed the pay raise.</p>
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<p>The alum interviewer, who got a values-based college education at the college in which your son is interested, might not be sympathetic to a student who wants the same values-based college education for himself.</p>
<p>Do I have that right?</p>
<p>So what good is this “values-based college education,” then, if the values one is expecting of an alumnus of the institution include a lack of integrity and unprofessional behavior?</p>
<p>Am I understanding this situation correctly?</p>
<p>^^nice.
Same things I was thinking except lack of patience to write it up since those who are arguing the other side aren’t interested in logic.</p>
<p>;)</p>
<p>Bill Gates attended private schools ( from middle school on) yet he puts a great deal of money and effort into improving public education- Is he insincere?
He also happens to live in an area where we do not have vouchers or even charter schools and it is not PC to even * think* about looking at a private school.
Does that stop the public schools from accepting the Gates Foundation money?
um no.</p>
<p>Those who are interested in education and young people are not going to differentiate between home schooling/private schooling/ parochial schools or public schools.
It is too important a topic to play games.</p>
<p>For goodness sakes! If the kid is uncomfortable about being interviewed by this alum, he can request another interviewer without having to give the reason. But if that interviewer is has kids at the public school or works there or is affiliated with a rival school, you are not going to be able to continue asking for another interviewer. Give it one shot at a change. Maybe you’ll get lucky. If not, well, I think you just have to suck it down. </p>
<p>It never occurred to me to ask what any of the interviewers affiliations with the local high school were. I think the majority of them were affilitated with the local school district. The Cornell rep in our area is a very strong public school proponent. Didn’t hurt my kids at all, or other kids in the private schools or even the rival school district/ She interviews from all of those schools. Never heard of it as an issue.</p>
<p>Again, I don’t think an alumni interview is a significant event…but if it was…let’s apply societal norms here. In a court, when choosing jurors, both sides have the right to dismiss if there is any possibility of a juror being remotely biased based on what someone with their experiences MAY perceive. </p>
<p>My first reaction was the same as most here, the OP sounded paranoid at first read. The OP may well be paranoid! But when I asked the opinion of my mother, a small town school principal, she brought up a lot of valid points about the extent school’s and principal’s are in competition today. She has myriad stories from her own little perch. She is a public school principal who loves any kid who wants to learn and she speaks of some very political peers and points to documented situations in school district’s around the country where wars go on between different schools for all sorts of reasons. Football is her favorite. How would we handle the OP’s question if the interviewer was the principal of the rival in Dillon Texas?</p>
<p>So since we don’t know how deep the rivalry is between these factions, how can we judge?</p>
<p>JHS, if you think adults are less apt to be biased than kids, I don’t agree.
On the other hand, I am ready to believe that most alum interviews are given little weight.
My daughter, an unschooler, had an interview with a Princeton alum. She asked my daughter whether she had taken Calculus AB or BC. My daughter had no idea what she was talking about, and it showed. The interviewer was paying $20,000 per year for each of her kids to attend the local private, and (I’m estimating from experience here) another $10,000 per year per kid for tutoring and other “enrichment”. A believer in buying your kids a decent education in profile if I ever saw one. I know these folks well from the community I live in. Of course the (major city) public library was a far better resource for reaching your potential than anything on sale.
My daughter had also attended the School of American Ballet (as selective as Julliard-they share the same dorm) and had danced in several productions with the Joffrey Ballet. Not a source of discussion for this interviewer.
In short, my sense is that my daughter presented this interviewer with a flesh and blood person who negated her world view. Just follow the money.
My daughter was admitted anyway, and is a second year at Princeton.</p>
<p>danas, your daughter was admitted. While this alumni interviewer may have had a different expectation based on the students she’d interviewed in the past and possibly based on her own children’s experiences, surely she couldn’t have been THAT biased, since she clearly didn’t block your daughter’s admission (or at least didn’t discourage it very effectively).</p>
<p>You are assuming the interview was not given much weight, and that may be correct given that Princeton says that the interview is “Considered” during the admissions process (rather than Very Important or Important, according to their Common Data Set). But it might be that the interviewer had some refreshing and laudatory things to say about her interview with your daughter.</p>
<p>You may very well be right.
No way to know for sure. But I don’t have any sense of that. She gave the promised “congrats for getting in” call, fielded by a parent, and said she would call back to speak to my daughter. She never did. Keep in mind that she interviews ten applicants for every on who is admitted.</p>
<p>In the particular case of home schoolers, I think that admissions officers are more experienced in dealing with the population than alums, and are apt to regard alumni interview reports as saying more about the interviewers than about the candidate.
Just an educated guess on my part.</p>
<p>"For goodness sakes! If the kid is uncomfortable about being interviewed by this alum, he can request another interviewer without having to give the reason. "</p>
<p>I’d bet that the college would want to know the reason. It’s not that easy finding alum willing to spend their precious free time interviewing applicants. Consequently, it’s not easy to honor a request for a different interviewer. </p>
<p>The college also would want to know the reason for the request in case there were a major problem with the interviewer. For instance, if the interviewer had just been arrested on a charge of molestation, drug possession, etc., the college certainly wouldn’t want that person representing their school.</p>