<p>Many colleges do have on-campus interviews by actual admissions people (or, more frequently, student aides working with the admissions office). Harvard really doesn’t. That has been true for a long time. I applied to college almost 40 years ago, and had on-campus interviews at Yale and Princeton, but not Harvard.</p>
<p>I know of a few exceptions:</p>
<ol>
<li> Sometimes, late in the process (i.e., late February, early March), the Admissions Office will ask a kid to come to a second interview, or sometimes set up an interview for someone who never got interviewed. Usually, these are still alumni interviews near where the applicant lives, although always with someone different than the first interviewer. Sometimes, however, for students in the Boston area, they will ask the kid to come down to Harvard and meet with someone, who will be actual admissions staff. And sometimes admissions staff will conduct the fresh interview by telephone.</li>
</ol>
<p>It’s usually pretty clear when this happens that Admissions is on the fence about the applicant, who is nonetheless getting serious consideration. (Obviously – it’s a big time imposition on lots of people when this happens, as the re-interview has to take place within a couple days at most.) The second interview tends to be relatively brief and focused on some aspect of the kid’s experience or activities that Admissions wants more information about. Sometimes it seems like what may be going on is that the first interviewer was either extremely positive or extremely negative, and maybe a second, more experienced person can give a more reliable sense of the student’s personality. Judging from what I have “seen” on College Confidential, well over half of kids given a second interview like this are offered admission.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>A few years ago, a kid I knew somewhat turned Harvard down on May 1, then changed his mind a week later and asked to be allowed to take back his rejection. He was told to come to Cambridge for an interview with a couple of admissions staff (who, at the end of the 45-minute interview, allowed him to accept admission).</p></li>
<li><p>I don’t know if this is true at Harvard, but it happens elsewhere, and it would be plausible to happen at Harvard. A powerful donor/alum – a “development” case, someone with both public renown and the ability to give tens of millions of dollars over a period of years – wants his or her child to go to Harvard. The Dean of Admissions meets with the kid, both as a sign of courtesy to the parent, and because admitting a student on development grounds will ultimately be the dean’s call, not anyone else’s. This would tend to happen way in advance of the application season – like, now, for someone who would be applying next fall, or even the year after that.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Sometimes the outcome of an interview like that is the dean explaining personally to the parent why it would be a bad idea for the child to come to Harvard. An attempt to salvage some part of a relationship that will be pretty badly stressed by Harvard’s likely refusal to admit the kid.</p>
<p>As I said, I don’t know if that ever happens at Harvard, but I have heard pretty reliable reports of it happening at Harvard peers.</p>