<p>Greatest ‘challenge you encountered’ is a much more positive thing to ask than greatest ‘mistake you made’ or ‘weakness you have’.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Amen to that - I’d also add that if a student can’t honestly think of anything they want to study (it’s fine to be undecided), I’d seriously question their intellectual curiosity and initiative. If I were an adcom, I probably wouldn’t admit them.</p>
<p>I’ll add more to this: I don’t penalize students’ indecision on area of study – as long as they show an inclination towards learning and discovery. Tell me about something that has gotten your attention! I don’t need your life plans laid out before me – that’s absurd. But tell me something.</p>
<p>Also, I always ask the “tell me about a challenge you encountered”. I can’t recall if anyone has stared back blankly at me. Frankly, I’m looking to learn something about the kid’s processes – not the actual answer. </p>
<p>I’ve had (and recently too) kids who answer my “Why Yale” question with “Prestige”. Smile and nod. Smile and nod.</p>
<p>In one of my previous careers, I regularly encountered extremely shocking information and was required to show equaniminty. It’s served me well a few occasion with Yale interviewees.</p>
<p>As a student who’s had four interviews with HYP and D, I find your post extremely disrespectful. Why do you feel it necessary to bring up the flaws of students you’ve interviewed? Especially when a lot of your questions are vague and unimaginative. And your advice to ask your interviewer if it’s alright to continue speaking after three minutes is just idiotic. Would you actually say no? This is a teenager who is trying his or her best to open up to you in what may be an.uncomfortable setting. I had my Yale interview three days ago. It was the most stimulating conversation I’ve ever had with an adult and lasted over two hours. Neither of us felt the time pass because it was such a free, comfortable CONVERSATION, rather than a blunt, vague interview. Again, as an applicant who has interviewed with four extremely considerate individuals, I find your arrogance disillusioning. </p>
<p>Sent from my LG-P509 using CC</p>
<p>While I do agree the title of the thread could have been paraphrased a little better the OP did provide some good advice regarding interviews. I believe the intent was to help applicants with future interviews rather than disrespect them and other than the title I didn’t see any remarks that were disparaging towards the applicants.</p>
<p>I would like to add one comment for the interviewers. Make sure you give the applicant a complete address when arranging where to meet. My son was late for his interview because he was told to meet at the Starbucks on such and such street and there happened to be two of them with 5 miles of each other. He was early and waiting for the interviewer for 15 minutes before calling him on his cell phone to find out where he was. It was then he discovered that they were both at different Starbucks. Just as an FYI, it wasn’t Yale but a different Ivy.</p>
<p>“Meaning no disrespect, but having one kid at Harvard and one at Yale, I actually think . . .”</p>
<p>Lemme see if I understand the meaning here . . . the reason I can see that there are questions lacking is because I have one kid at Yale and one kid at Harvard</p>
<p>This is like the parlor game: how many seconds will pass before one casually drops in conversation that they went to school X . . . smallest # = HYP</p>
<p>Funny how somehow a thread primarily about strange interview questions and secondarily about Yale becomes HYP-ified . . . love CC :-)</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Ah! The suburbs! In the area where I work, there may not be more than two BLOCKS between Starbucks on the same street.</p>
<p>“they are being asked to nervous 17 year olds who may never have had an interview”</p>
<p>Ever think that is why they are asking the questions. They want a well rounded student who may also be a performer, a debater, an athlete (not varsity for these interviews). There are so many applicants that it is important to find a well rounded, confident (not conceded), individual. A valedictorian who was also cheerleading captain. They have plenty of top candidates, only a few are chosen.
.</p>
<p>“As a student who’s had four interviews with HYP and D, I find your post extremely disrespectful. Why do you feel it necessary to bring up the flaws of students you’ve interviewed?”</p>
<p>I disagree. As I’ve posted before, I may not say expressly the same thing (tell me about a failure you’ve overcome) but I want to see the student tell me a process where he/she had to overcome some obstacle. If the response was: I’ve overcome every obstacle with ease or I have no flaws – it raises the eyebrow. </p>
<p>There is nothing disrepectful about either question. By the way, this is a standard question you’ll encounter in many of your future interviews.</p>
<p>Thanks OP for your candid insights… though many are in disagreement… this is the real world… and I appreciate the thread. It’s gives us parents a glimpse into what the interviewer encounters… its something that we can all learn from… like it or not!</p>
<p>I’ve been interviewing for almost 15 years and I guess I don’t have a standard script, other than (as an early post suggested) asking what else we haven’t covered. I do try to avoid the pat questions that everyone has prepared for, such as favorite book or greatest disappointment. </p>
<p>I like to start with a broad “tell me about yourself.” I did two interviews last weekend. The first person started with a long list of extracurricular activities and the second told me how much they love a particular academic subject and want to become a doctor. </p>
<p>Both students had many impressive qualities, but I think stressing academics in such a question is the winning approach. Or at least describing something unique. </p>
<p>By the way, my impression is that Yale prefers that we not ask where else people are applying. Which is a shame, since I’d love to tell students why they should want to go to Yale instead.</p>
<p>Finally, if I ask “why Yale” or anything to that effect, 9 times out of 10 the answer is the residential college system. In other respects Yale has many (well, at least a few) peers, but the living environment is pretty special.</p>
<p>^ Yale84Alum: From the perspective of a high school student, I think the reason you get so many “residential college system” answers is that it is the easiest thing to find online that is fairly unique to Yale.</p>
<p>To answer some of the concerns:</p>
<p>To Interficio: I did not start this thread to “embarrass” applicants (or else I would have shared this on Facebook or something). On the contrary, I wrote this post out on CC in hopes of making current applicants think about the way they approach their interviews. I was in the middle of interviewing for business school last month and there were a wealth of resources on the Internet about what questions were asked. I was hoping to open up a little bit about what interviewers for Yale think about.</p>
<p>[Admittedly, the title of the post is a bit extreme. But if I’ve just titled it, “Yale Interviews” it probably would have been overlooked]</p>
<p>To gibby: I’m not going to pretend that I’m the perfect interviewer. But chances are, not every Yale alumni (or any other college alum) is going to be the perfect interviewer. The questions and answers I point out in the post is NOT the entire interview (or else they’d be over pretty quickly!). Instead, it is simply a list of questions that trip up the most candidates. I start off every interview asking students about their interests, their academics, their successes and what they love doing the most – all questions designed to make the student at ease and open up. I particularly love asking students who is the person who has had the most impact on their life. I’ve gotten really touching stories from that question.</p>
<p>The reason I ask the academic interest / failure / weakness question is not because I want to manipulate the kids into giving the wrong answer, but on the contrary – if you’re a 17-year-old with a clear sense of curiosity and self-awareness, I automatically push you into the 7 range instead of a 5 or 6. (And there are definitely kids I’ve interviewed who have answered intelligently!) Instead, I say the answers were “stupid” because most people, regardless of how great they were in their high schools, are going to find Yale challenging, so it would be good to know how they would be able to approach that. (And no, I don’t sit there awkwardly if they don’t have an answer. I ask them another question and later ask if they want to revisit the previous question.)</p>
<p>To tli83: I also cried after my Harvard interview. I felt like the whole thing was so cold and uncomfortable that I was sure I wouldn’t get in (and I didn’t). That’s why I always strive to make the kids feeling good about the interview. </p>
<p>One of the biggest differences I find between Harvard and Yale is that Harvard interviewers have access to the interviewee’s entire portfolio of scores and GPAs, whereas Yale interviewers go in blind. I make it a point to NEVER try to suss out a person’s academic eligibility because I care much more about the interviewee as a person.</p>
<p>Lastly, I’d like to point out that outside of the few times in which a candidate was obviously not interested in the school/didn’t show up for the interview, I doubt my reports actually make that much of a difference to Adcom. Unfortunately, with the way the numbers work, I know that there’s 90% chance that the person I’m talking to won’t get in. That’s why I often try to make the interview process more about helping the candidate learn about what they should be looking for in their future college.</p>
<p>Honestly, if OP was my Yale interviewer, I’d be disappointed with those canned questions. They don’t necessarily elicit any important information about a particular candidate. “Tell me about yourself,” makes a heckofalot more sense than: major? mistakes? weaknesses? whyYale? </p>
<p>My D’s Yale interviewer (whom she knew in the sense that he was an alum of the same hs) made her come home crying because he was so awkward and drilled her about current events minutiae that elicited nothing about her other than what she knew about current events. All that did was make her respect him less and wonder if she really wanted to go to Yale. Fortunately, she made the right choice anyway.</p>
<p>“Tell me about yourself”
That question killed me when my interviewer (not for Yale) asked me as the opening question of the interview. I just sort of repeated my resume. I think I would have been more comfortable answering it at the end of the interview. Asking it at the very beginning sort of demanded me to prioritize my life to the interviewer, and ultimately my life’s priorities are basically the same as most high schoolers: family, friends, school, sports; which I felt led to a relatively dull response that left out some “quirkier” aspects of my life that simply didn’t seem very important relative to my GPA or my varsity letters.</p>
<p>I would like to say to the Yale interviewers that my son had an alum who asked him questions such as, “Why did the US enter WW II”? They were not even discussing the war; neither did my son mention anything about history nor an interest in studying it. It seemed like to him a “gotcha” sort of approach, including his belittling of my son’s questions, which he had researched very carefully over a long period of time. For example, one was regarding the role of internships at Yale, which he was genuinely interested in and had tried to learn about in his various meetings with Yalies before that point. In any case, Yale went from being his absolute and unequivocal top choice to getting dumped to the bottom of the heap, even if he does get in. I have “lectured” him about not letting one bad apple spoil the lovely Yale tree, but he left that interview with such an awful feeling. Should he be admitted, I will do my level best to help him re-evaluate, but I think it is a reminder to alumni interviewers that a university is as much being interviewed as the young person who showed up.</p>
<p>" . . . a reminder to alumni interviewers that a university is as much being interviewed as the young person who showed up."</p>
<p>^^ Well said!</p>
<p>Under the discussion, “Painful Interview,” you’ll see there are comments from others regarding off-putting interviews with Yale alumni interviewers. As I said there, it may be an aberration, but it would not hurt the Admissions Office to review the behaviors cited here and elsewhere to see if it is a trend of some sort.</p>
<p>Really interesting thread!</p>
<p>A few things…</p>
<p>You get what you get in terms of interviews. I think that having to go through an interview for any 17-18 year-old kid is stressful, whether it’s for Yale or McDonalds. Some kids are more articulate and insightful than others. Some are not. Hopefully, an interviewer can see through immaturity and anxiety and get an overall sense of the person. Some kids are prepped by parents and counselors; others go in cold. Yes, some kids are arrogant and want to go to Yale for the prestige, but others really want to go there for the academics.</p>
<p>That being said, I don’t think that interviewers are prepped on what to ask, or are screened ahead of time. A friend of mine’s son who is unemployed and graduated from another ivy last year, was invited to interview. Is he really equipped to assess future students? Maybe. Is someone in their 60’s who graduated years ago better equipped? Maybe. Who knows. </p>
<p>One of my kids interviewed for a camp counselor position last year at age 16 and could barely answer any basic question thrown out to him. He could not come up with anything to describe himself and could barely say why he wanted to work at the camp. (He did get the job, though.) Yet he is close to the top of his class at school, takes all AP, honors classes, blah blah blah. He’s just a goofy, inarticulate kid. He will probably major in math or engineering. He probably won’t apply to Yale or any ivies. However, my point is that a lot of kids are not that articulate, and hopefully an interviewer looks past that.</p>