<p>Hey Shewy – I hesitate giving tech advice to anyone younger than me 
but did you check your “spam” filter? </p>
<p>Good luck to you regardless. I don’t sense the interview is a make or break thing at Midd.</p>
<p>Ds Midd alumni interview:</p>
<p>Interviewers first question: “so do you do well at school?”
D: “Uh… well… yes.” (D asked me later - was i supposed to list my grades or SATs? How was I supposed to answer that?)
Interviewer: “thats good because I couldn’t get it the way it is now”
pause.
D: confused, “OK”
Interviewer: “You know I’ve interviewed 17 kids over the last few years and only one got in”
Ds thinking: well thats encouraging…
then it got worse. the interviewer listed the things that Midd admissions needed her to get answers to in the interview, etc…</p>
<p>As a comparison Bowdoin interview was on campus and by an Associate Dean that was textbook. My d came out enthused and intellectually challeged by the interviewer.</p>
<p>I am hoping and assuming that the Midd interview is unimportant because if it is then they need to improve the qualty of the interview.</p>
<p>Or maybe they didn’t think my D was worth the time of a quality interview? Hmmn. I wonder who interviews the prep school and suburban wealthy kids? </p>
<p>Yet she still wants to go there even though other good schools seem to want her…</p>
<p>Alumni interviewers are people who volunteer to talk to applicants and get nothing in return. They have full-time jobs doing other things (like being a doctor, teacher, engineer, etc.). </p>
<p>Alumni interviewers don’t have the training or polish that an associate dean of admissions has. Any Midd alum can become an alumni interviewer–in fact the school has been desperately trying to recruit new participants to accommodate the huge influx of applicants. So chances are that your daughter just happened to talk to someone who isn’t a good interviewer. This person probably interviews at most 2-3 kids a year. An associate dean of admissions interviews dozens of kids a week as part of their job and likely has lots of training. </p>
<p>I wouldn’t let her experience with a single alumni interviewer alter her perception of the school. Many folks on this forum have had really great experiences with alumni interviews.</p>
<p>^I second that, Arcadia. D’s interviewer was a Midd alum who worked full time and had a family and was doing admission interviews too. According to D, it was a relaxed yet focused discussion about D’s interests and academics with alum adding her insights about the Midd experience. No clipboard with ten questions she had to get answered; no vague open ended questions with uncomfortable silences. She was good at putting D at ease. Nice lady.</p>
<p>One more thing Staple–
I would encourage your daughter to be honest if she gets any sort of feedback questionnaire from Middlebury regarding the interview. If not, once she learns of her admissions decision, she should write a note to the admissions office detailing her negative interviewing experience. I’m sure Middlebury would want to know that this particular interviewer is not presenting the college in the best possible light.</p>
<p>Dear Staple could you elaborate a little on:</p>
<p>“the interviewer listed the things that Midd admissions needed her to get answers to in the interview, etc…”</p>
<p>Did he/she say “Midd wants to know this, this, and this.” or did he mean something else?</p>
<p>I’m sorry if this is really straightforward but my GPA’s higher than the number of hours of sleep I get a night so nothing’s making much sense…</p>
<p>SORRY! And thanks for the lowdown on the not so pretty side of alumni interviews…</p>
<p>Sorry to hear about your negative interview experience. I have to agree with Arcadia. I’ve done alumni interviews for a number of years and have to say that it can be very difficult. Sometimes you just don’t click with a student. That doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with the applicant or the interviewer. It just means that you both communicate differently. It’s impossible to know, but it sounds like, in his own awkward way, the interviewer was trying to convey just how competitive Middlebury admission has become. To a lot of older alums, it’s become a school that would have been a high reach when they were applying.</p>
<p>As I posted previously, one S had a rather formal interview, the other more of an “infomercial”. I just don’t think they are standardized enough to count much, unless there is a strong negative impression, or the interviewer tells admissions “OMG, this is the most amazing person I’ve ever met.” Try not to obsess about it. I know it is hard not to.</p>