<p>I just had my Penn Interview with a local Alum.
It was scary to say the least. He asked me all these intellectual questions regarding a politician I admire the most and put forth arguments/statements regarding communism and democracy that he wanted me to validate or refute with logical examples.
I thought it was supposed to be an informal conversation which was supposed to bring out my personality and not test my intellect.</p>
<p>So I was wondering if my answers, which were pretty stupid will have a negative impact on my application?
How important is this interview, because apart from these two topics, i answered the rest pretty well.</p>
<p>I doubt it is weighed too heavily. That sounds like a fun interview though.</p>
<p>My understanding is that as long as you’re polite and respectful, interviews can only have a positive effect, and a mediocre one simply doesn’t affect your app one way or another.</p>
<p>My interviewer told me that interviews don’t really effect your application. It’s just to see if you are serious about Penn.</p>
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<p>Those are pretty much the instructions from the Admissions Office of the Ivy that I used to interview for. Your interview sounds almost exactly like the example they gave of what not to do.</p>
<p>Interviewer’s fault. Not yours. I can’t imagine it’s going to have any significant effect on your application.</p>
<p>If the interviewer starts talking about politics in his report to admissions they will basically know to disregard it. Interviews are not weighted very much at all. You’re fine.</p>
<p>But what if he writes in his report that I seemed pretty clueless regarding world affairs and the likes?
Isn’t that going to have a negative impact?
And he did give some wrong facts about Penn, which I duly corrected him. He seemed pretty cheesed off by that.
Ahhhhh. I’m freaking out-dream school man!!</p>
<p>I wouldn’t worry too much about it. If you are a good candidate otherwise, then this shouldn’t hurt you.</p>
<p>Bad interviewers are a fact of life. My D just had one where the interviewer basically said “I know you are really interested in this unusual thing and have done tons of work on it, but I just interviewed someone last week who co-incidentally does the same thing. So, I don’t want to hear anything about what your #1 interest.” </p>
<p>For future interviews, you can strategize how to handle these kinds of situations. Could you admit you don’t know, and then question the interviewer to learn more? Is there a way to redirect the conversation to something you DO want to talk about? If you can learn to control the interview, then you’ll be better off in the end.</p>
<p>Good luck!</p>
<p>that makes sense. my interviewer pretty much didn’t like me at all but I still got in.
also, I got such a bad impression of my interviewer–hands down, she was the worst interviewer I met–and it even made me rethink about applying to Penn… but now, I love it here. don’t let interviewers affect your decision.</p>
<p>I believe interviews are usually weighted the least out of all the application components</p>