<p>Our son had a few college interviews and alway viewed them as interesting conversations. No tough questions. However he is a very transparent and honest person so if an interviewer ask his where else he was thinking of attending he would have told the interviewer every single one.</p>
<p>He never considered himself in a “sell yourself” situation. If he was not “good enough” for the college in question he considered it their loss not his.</p>
<p>My S had somethng similar to the book question, as Nikara mentioned. I think it was an easy question for him. He could speak about Feynman and others. This seems far less intrusive than the “what other colleges” Q or “is this your top choice” Q.</p>
<p>I personally hate those open ended “tell me about yourself” type of questions. Ask me something specific please!</p>
<p>I’d love to have the choose a book question, though I might not choose just one.</p>
<p>Kinda school-specific, but my S was asked, “if you had $100 and a day to spend in NYC, what would you do?”</p>
<p>No kid should directly answer the “what other schools are you applying to” question. There’s just no good answer. The interviewer will either think, “Oh, she really wants to go to Harvard,” or “Well, he’s not good enough for my alma mater if he thinks Random Community College is good enough for him.” It should be possible to say, “I’m mostly focused on New England LACs” or “I’m looking at a variety of places, mostly in big cities.”</p>
<p>One place asked S “What was your least favorite aspect of HS”</p>
<p>These “negative” types of Qs can be tough for kids who may not be savvy to realize that they have the potential to reflect negatively on the student. Answers like “I hated the kids” or “the teachers are stupid” are worse than “I loved going to a small HS for the opportunities and experiences that I might not have had in a larger school, but it was sometimes challenging to schedule all the classes and electives I would have liked to take!” That kind of thing is not necessarily intuitive for kids (or adults for that matter).</p>
<p>It is also a talent to be able to focus on what you want to convey to the school and work those things in to the variety of Qs you may be asked. For example, “Tell me about yourself”, “How would your friends and teachers describe you” and “Give three adjectives that could be used to describe you” (S got this one ) are basically all asking the same thing. If you are prepared ahead of time and know what you want to convey, they become much easier to answer.</p>
<p>Another Q my S got that would have been a toughie for a lot of kids (again - and many adults!) is where do you see yourself five years from now? Ten? </p>
<p>As far as what other school are you applying to, S generally gave a few comparable schools when asked, but by no means did he feel he had to give the whole list. I personally don’t like the idea of answering a direct Q answer in generalities - it just seems evasive to me and may not go over well with some interviewers.</p>
<p>My son was invited to campus for an interview and I tried to coach him or at least get him to consider in advance the types of questions that other CC parents were posting at the time. He would have none of it. He didn’t see a need to prepare for an interview. Frustrating.</p>
<p>But I guess the school had decided in advance that they wanted him. When he flew back, the first thing I wanted to know were what questions did he get? Did he get any of the questions that I wanted him to prepare for?</p>
<p>He said that almost the entire “interview” was the interviewer trying to convince him to go to that school. He said it was more of a sales job than an interview.</p>
<p>Interviewer from a highly-selective tech/science school had a penchant for asking off the wall questions. E.g. “Which comic book character would you most like to be.”</p>
<p>I don’t remember what D’s answer was, but she was admitted.</p>
<p>“I know of one interviewer, when doing interviews for a scholarship, who will have a pile of books one different subjects in the room. He asks the student which books he/she would most like to read and why. That one can be quite tough- I wouldn’t want to have it!”</p>
<p>If I were the interviewee, I would find that so much fun. And as an interviewer, I would think that the quality of the responses would say a lot about the student – not the particular choices made, but the “whys” & how the choices were made, & the student’s ability to discuss the choices intelligently. Not saying it’s easy – depending on the books arrayed–, but it intrigues me.:)</p>
<p>"Another Q my S got that would have been a toughie for a lot of kids (again - and many adults!) is where do you see yourself five years from now? Ten? "</p>
<p>This is a question my son had to answer for an essay and I don’t get it. Do they want a 17 year old to have his life mapped out already? It’s one thing to have a general direction to follow (I’m interested in science/math/writing and I think I’d like to go into…), but really. My son talked about what he is planning (now) on studying and some options for the future, but basically said he was a work in process. Hoped to be pursuing new passions and interests until he was an old, old man.</p>
<p>I kind of think that’s what a good undergraduate education is about- exploring new things, changing directions, rethinking paradigms. What kind of students are they looking for with that question?</p>
<p>“Describe a dilemma you have faced and how you resolved it.” Yuck! Points for even trying to answer, in my book.</p>
<p>“If you could have diner with any person living or dead who would it be?”
There’s a slippery slope.</p>
<p>doubleplay, </p>
<p>couldn’t agree with you more! I wonder, however, if the thought behind those kind of Qs is not so much that the colleges expect most HS students to know what they will be doing in 5 or 10 years, but to show some evidence of being the kind of person who sets goals, even if those goals are likely to change quite a bit over the years. </p>
<p>Personally, I think your son’s answer was just as impressive, if not more so than a kid who claims to have his or her life mapped out at age 17. It’s not even so much what the answer is in some cases as the ability to handle the questions with confidence that counts.</p>
<p>My son just had his Harvard interview. Question number one: “Why didn’t you apply early action?” </p>
<p>He didn’t exactly want to say because Harvard is probably not my first choice. 
What he did say was because he wanted to apply to MIT EA and he couldn’t do both.</p>
<p>The interviewer spent a good part of the interview selling him Harvard as a good place to do techie stuff.</p>
<p>“That’s a hard one. “Um… where would you like me to start?””</p>
<p>Not a good answer for the “Tell me about yourself” question. </p>
<p>The interviewer is giving the applicant a wide open field to highlight his/her positive characteristics. “What do you want me to say?” sounds like the answer a person would give who is more interested in following the crowd and mouthing what s/he thinks others wants to hear than being honest and following his/her passions and interests.</p>
<p>“I personally hate those open ended “tell me about yourself” type of questions. Ask me something specific please!”</p>
<p>The open ended questions are wonderful windows into applicants’ characters and thought processes. That’s why I ask them and it’s also why my college encourages interviewers to ask such questions.</p>
<p>I was joking – I’d never actually say that in an interview. Actually, the two I’ve had went quite well.</p>
<p>Camelia,
You may have been joking, but, unfortunately, the young man was not who answered, “I don’t know. You tell me,” when I asked about why my alma mater should admit him. It’s amazing what some people will say in interviews.</p>
<p>BTW, I wasn’t being sarcastic when I asked the question, which is one that I routinely ask. I was giving him an opportunity to provide more info about his strengths.</p>
<p>That strikes me as amazing but probably very common, Northstarmom. I think that that is a great (and fairly obvious, from the standpoint of interview preperation) question and can think of many reasons why a college might want me (I am pretty great, after all :)). </p>
<p>For me, the toughest question that I was asked was “What is your greatest fear about college?”. That was a toughie for me–I finally stammered out that there was always a fear that I misjudged my college list and would show up next fall and hate the place that I chose. I didn’t handle that one too well, but I really don’t think that it had a negative affect on the interview, which went very well overall.</p>