<p>There’s really no need to get stressed out – just call him or send him an email and explain what happened, and see if you can reschedule.</p>
<p>That’s true, I was just overreacting I guess. Turned out okay in the end. Thanks :)</p>
<p>Ahh! I have my MIT Interview tomorrow and my EC asked me to bring my resume and copies of my test scores… I’m already freaking out.</p>
<p>I had my interview and I think it went well (despite some awkward silences :x). We shared similar interests so he did most of the talking (I could tell that he was trying to make my experience as easy as possible) and I asked him about those interests and how they related to his experience at MIT. He looked at my resume, my test scores, and then just asked me what I wanted to know about MIT. No interrogation or anything, just “So what else do you want to know about MIT?”. I got some nice info, like his experience with UROP, out of him. Despite the fact that I don’t think I conveyed myself to the fullest extent, he told me that he will write me a “very strong recommendation” :D</p>
<p>Roughly this time every year (the day after deadline day), we get asked the same FAQ’s. I thought I would take a stab at some answers here.</p>
<p>Qu: Ohmygoodness! I totally forgot about the deadline. Can I still contact my EC.</p>
<p>Ans: Yes you can, but the EC does not have to grant your request for the interview. Depending on the circumstances, most EC’s will cut candidates a little bit of slack, it depends on the circumstances. For example, if we get a candidate who has been in hospital for the past couple of weeks, then we will certainly try to arrange the interview, whatever happens. However EC’s tend to be busy people, and we make no promises. From the MIT admissions website:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Question: I am a student at a boarding school. Over the month December, school is not in session and I am returning to my home which may be in another part of the country or another part of the world. But my EC is near the school. What do I do?</p>
<p>Answer: Contact your EC immediately and let them know. It may be possible to do the interview just before you go away, or it may be possible to shift the interview to an EC nearer to where you are going to be in December. In the last few years I have shifted interviews from my region to ECs in Hong Kong, Vietnam, Germany, and other locations. However, just as EC’s are busy folks, transfers like this need to involve the admissions office, the local Regional Coordinator, the remote regional coordinator, whew… It’s a mess and we need to act on these as soon as is possible. So let your EC know.</p>
<p>Question: Argh! My EC has just changed on the MyMIT page. What happened?</p>
<p>Answer: Who knows? It can happen. In my region, I have one EC who was just sent to the middle east for the month of December on business, another who has been rushed to hospital, and one who is on a honeymoon. We sometimes need to shuffle folks around. It does not mean anything. Particularly with candidates whose interviews are tricky to schedule, we can move stuff around. </p>
<p>Hope this helps,
-Michael</p>
<p>I was supposed to have an interview at barnes and nobles, but the guy didn’t show up. I noticed a woman was interviewing another kid for MIT, and i asked if she knew the guy. She did and we tried contacting him, but he didn’t answer. So instead, she gave me the interview. I think it went well, but i don’t know whats going to happen.</p>
<p>Bharney55,
Do not fret. You have your MIT interview. It will be submitted. All is fine. There will be some reassignment of EC’s to be done, but that is not really a problem. Relax.</p>
<p>I had my interview recently and it went terribly! There were no big mistakes but i wasn’t myself at all during the interview. I can’t believe some of the answers I gave and just how I acted. Was like a completely different person so polar from what im truly interested in and passionate about. It was my first interview and now im confident i can be myself, but its sad to know how much of a blunder i made. Especially knowing how it didnt reflect who i really am.</p>
<p>bharney55 - </p>
<p>We won’t hold it against you.</p>
<p>Hey everyone, here’s a list of questions my interviewer asked that might help you guys prepare:</p>
<p>Tell me a little about your self/why mit/background
ECs
If you could invite any 3 people to dinner, who would you invite and why?
If you had unlimited resources but only 24 hours to live, what would you do?
Tell me about a time you have failed, and how you’ve overcome it.
How do you relieve stress?
What are your strengths?
What are your weaknesses?
What is one question that MIT or I haven’t ask, but you want to answer?</p>
<p>My MIT interview was radically different from the other 2 i’ve done. My first guy just quizzed me over all my academic subjects, the 2nd guy just talked with me in a coffee shop, this guy actively took notes. Be prepared for all sorts of environment!</p>
<p>Reflections on how I did: I think it went pretty well. I guess he was impressed. I hadn’t prepared for half of the questions he asked so I had a lot of the on the fly thinking. Some of my answers were plain wacky…but the interview ended on a good note. He told me at the beginning that he had to rank me in 4 categories on how “joyful” I appear, how well i match with mit, and some other stuff</p>
<p>2 hrs and 10 minutes?!! Good lord. I was thinking it would be like 30-45 minutes… Please someone tell me it won’t be longer than an hour…</p>
<p>It takes as long as it takes. 50-90 minutes is about normal. Sometimes it takes longer, sometimes less long. Long is not necessarily good, nor is short bad. There are a wide variety of reasons why an interview may go long:</p>
<p>[ul][<em>]An interviewer may be so fascinated by the candidates wonderful tangential anecdotes that it simply takes longer to cover the material that we would normally want to cover off in an interview.
[</em>]An interviewer could have such difficulty understanding the candidate’s heavily accented English that every sentence needs to be repeated.
[<em>]An interviewer could be trying desperately to find anything that the candidate actually cares about enough to talk about. This hunt can go on for a while.
[</em>]The time just flies by because the conversation is so much fun, despite keeping entirely to topic.
[/ul]
As an interviewer, all of these things have happened to me at least once.</p>
<p>Can we start a little survey on how long the interview took? I’m getting kind of nervous.</p>
<p>Mine was about 40 minutes.</p>
<p>Mine was ~50.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>To reiterate again, Long is not necessarily good, and short is not necessarily bad.</p>
<p>If I met a candidate and after 10 minutes I have found out that they have 27 patents, have published 5 novels, is the star athlete in their secondary school program and is weighing up whether to go to university at all or accept the offered professional sport contract, runs a party arrangement business, which he uses to raise money to donate to the inner city orphanage where he has lived all his life, how much more time do I need before I conclude that I will probably write a positive report??</p>
<p>An interview takes as long as it takes for the interviewer to get the information that he or she needs. The time taken has very little to do with any qualitative value of that information.</p>
<p>Does the interviewee have any extravehicular activities?</p>
<p>See, that’s an example of something that might affect the duration of any interview. Any interviewee demonstrating extravehicular techniques will certainly make for a longer interview, particularly if spacecraft are involved (grin).</p>
<p>I had my interview early this month. it was terrific and lasted about an hour and a quarter. The only interview-ish questions my EC asked were: books i have read and what i saw myself doing in ten years from now.</p>
<p>Mine is today (!! i think i’m one of the last ones…)
I have one question: should I avoid talking about what I wrote in my application essays? What if my interview turns out to be an oral version of my written application? But I’ve wrote about issues/stories/themes that are most important to me in my app, naturally similar topics will come about in the interview, right?</p>
<p>Also: Since I’m not a great conversationalist, my biggest fear is that my interview will die away slowly and painfully by the end of 45-50 min, with me having nothing left to say, and the EC having no more questions (as opposed to a neat, to-the-point “ok we’re done now it was nice meeting you”). Anyone have some advice?</p>
<p><a href=“!!%20i%20think%20i’m%20one%20of%20the%20last%20ones…”>quote</a>
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Not nearly… Sigh. I have three more interviews to do this year. Usually I try to have them all wrapped up by now, but this year, three have slid until after Christmas. It’s just the way it works sometimes, though I had one student requesting an interview in March. I informed him that the admissions decision would likely have been made before the interview he was trying to have to influence that decision. Oh well…</p>