Hi.
Re “Interviews” you may wonder their impact? I thought they were super important, but I spoke to Asst Dean Alice Arredondo in room 421 during a quiet time on interview day - so this is direct from the Assistant Dean of Admissions! She said that interviews carried a lot of weight, to which I asked, “How much, are they 50% or 75%?” She said they decide with a holistic system, so I repeated my question very nicely - her reply was:
" (1) the cognitive meaning grades, difficulty of courses taken, and ACT scores count for 50%, the interviews have no impact on that portion of the factors.
(2) the interviews are graded with a number for each of the 10 stations, and you are only scored for what the station is seeking. So if the prompt seeks to test your cooperativeness, then the fact you show great honesty and intelligence is not reflected in your score for that station. All scores from all 10 stations are then added, as well as any comments that the interviewer wrote.
(3) The interview score from step #2 above is added to the non-cognitive portion of your application - which are you medical activities, non-medical activities, leadership, and essays. She would not sat “how much the interview counted in this non- cognitive portion, but when I press was it > 50%, she said it was great, but not that much.”
So in summary, I learned from the Asst Dean of admissions that the admission decision is holistic - which I have learned by pressing her means that 50% of the decision is on an applicant’s cognitive information and the other 50% is on the non-cog, and that the interviews are less than 50% of the non-cog. Therefore the interviews are less than 25% (and may even be as low as 12.5%) of the admission criteria for decision by the committee.
So if you have good GPA, ACT, and difficult courses (like IB or AP) and you wrote good essays as well as had good SC then the interview would probably not impact your admission decision even if you bombed. Similarly, if you have a poor GPA for your status (eh MO resident, regional or out of state) and so-so essays and weak EC, then even with a fantastic perfect interview score you will not really improve your admission chances by much. Do the math, give yourself a 1 to 10 on cognitive, and then do your non-cog as follows: 1 to 10 on your essays, 1 to 10 on your EC, leadership, etc, 1 to 10 on how you think you did on the interviews and then add those 3 scores and divide the sum by 3, then add that number to your cog score and divide by 2, that will be your best guess chance for admission! If you play with it, you will see how the interviews are a factor, and in close cases there ma be an impact, but that would be only when you got all 10 perfect or bombed all 10 interviews. Bottomli8ne is the interviews have a small impact. And unlike other me school interviews, these interviews were graded numerically, not subjective and were looking for one a certain trait, so the fact that you had the personality of Bill Clinton and had everyone in the interview ready to vote for you has no real impact.
Oh, one final thing. The Asst Dean also said one station, she would not tell me which one, and I have no clue rom the ones who interviewed me, but one interviewer was a member of the admissions committee. So besides the numerical score, I assume if you mooned that person you would be denied admission, lol. Seriously, if you showed a desire for $ or such with that person, then the interview could probably have an indirect major impact on your admission, just as if you were like Mother Theresa then there would probably be a major positive impact about you with a voting committee member. But I doubt that the prompts gave little chance for such impact.
So if you got an otherwise great application - and you should have talked with some of the 80 other kids there each day to get a sense of were you stood, then you got a great chance for admissions regardless of your interview. Interviews are weighted much lower than I thought, so relax everyone!
PS I thought the summer even was better organized, the interview day seemed very disorganized, and there was no final wrap up like during the summer. I am not complaining, just an observation. I did meet a lot of nice people - both UMKC people and applicants.
GOOD LUCK EVERYONE!