I read today that Northwestern is eliminating alumni meetings starting this cycle: Northwestern alumni interviews
I believe Cornell has made the decision to discontinue even their informational meetings with alumni.
Are there any other schools that you know that are ending alumni meetings this cycle?
I just got my Yale alumni interviewer start-of-season email, so I’m assume they’re still on. I do wonder abut the value at this point. There was a time when they felt useful but there are just so many candidates and not all are even given interviews.
Northwestern alumna interview was one of my D23 first and most favorite ones.
I am glad they are pre-screening for interviews. In the past, there were the occasional duds and disinterested candidates – a complete waste of time for everyone.
I don’t know. I have become more disillusioned with the process, the more time I’ve spent as a parent in big city public schools. I could try to explain why, and people could shoot holes in any attempt I made to generalize out. But one example was a student who was great and came through prep-for-prep and a private school (got in), compared to this girl who came to the interview with her dad (who sat farther away at our interview) whose mom had been deported or something at some point (it came up almost as an aside in our interview and I couldn’t figure out the exact story); she was at a large specialized high school and had been identified at her wildly underresourced public school for a state-funded prep course for the specialized high school test. She wasn’t as polished, her activity list wasn’t as developed or well curated; I wouldn’t be surprised if she took the SAT once on the in-school day and suspect that she had no detailed counselor support writing her essays. I went 100% for her in the report (she didn’t get in). Like I said, I know it’s an anecdote and I know any attempt to generalize out would be imperfect. But it speaks to the feeling I have about what the process is. The alumni interview is just a part of it. I’m not a big progressive; I’m skeptical of the ways schools attempt to address this issue (I know they are trying). I think I’ve just begun to wonder if everything some schools do, regardless of what they say, is designed to reinforce barriers to entry to maintain perceptions of eliteness, because that’s what we apparently use as a proxy for quality.
Interesting. One of my interviewees who got in this last cycle (and is attending) came from an outlying farming community where the total population is around 1,000. He was a throwback to the days when kids got to do everything from playing multiple sports, drama club, FFA, student government, etc… At a dinner I hosted for admitees, his parents disclosed that he had very high test scores and that was probably why he caught Yale’s attention. So while just another anecdote of 1 (although I have encountered many similar stories, including one of my roommates), test scores do on occasion reveal diamonds in the rough.
I am guessing that these schools are overwhelmed with the ever-increasing number of applications and can’t handle the coordination required for these interviews. Notifying alumni of the applicants’ info, getting the evaluations back, etc.
I think it’s a win-win for the alumni and the applicants. The alumni get a chance to showcase their schools and feel more connected and the applicants get some real life interview experience with a grown-up. The evaluations seem to have little impact on admissions, but not zero impact. They may matter quite a bit when the committee has two very similar candidates and are trying to choose one over the other.
I think this is exactly on the mark. They need to maintain the reputation that they currently have. If they became solely focused on what other define as merit, they wouldn’t have the appeal that they currently do. The mystique of admissions seems to be part of the appeal. Even the ones who are asking for more transparency in the admissions process often would not be asking if their child stood on the other side of the gates. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if they would be opposed to more transparency since their child was the beneficiary of the current system. Even if that isn’t the case, more transparency might actually lower some of the desire for these schools.
I agree that test scores can find diamonds in the rough but not sure that the parents were correct in their assessment. There could have been other things that made this applicant stand out that just were not brought up during the interview or during the dinner etc.
As the OP, please stay on topic. If you know of other universities who are eliminating alumni meetings, please post. Conversations about admissions in general, scores, etc… are already being addressed in other threads.
TIA!
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