I’ve been helping a friend’s kid with college essays, internship and job apps, resumes, etc., for years. (The parents are not college grads and don’t feel very well equipped to offer that kind of support.) But now I’m stumped. She’s applying for a masters degree program, and if she makes the first cut at one school she applied to, they’ll call her in for an interview. I have a pretty good handle on the interview process at the undergrad level–i.e, it’s usually not a very important factor, if a factor at all, in admissions, and is often set up for the benefit of the applicant as much as anything else (an opportunity to ask questions, etc.). So not a whole lot of preparation is required for those interviews–just be prepared to say why you’re applying to this school and to talk about your high school academics and EC’s and be sure to have some intelligent questions about the college at the ready. But I have no clue how critical to the admissions process a grad school interview might be, how it might proceed or how to prepare for it. Anyone have something I can offer this young woman?
It probably varies from program to program, and field to field. I don’t know what field your friend’s kid is applying in or what it might mean for this particular program; I can only speak about my own field.
In psychology, interviews are very common for PhD programs - usually the short list (around twice the number a school will eventually accept, give or take) is invited to do interviews with the faculty, along with some other events like meeting grad students, getting lab tours, etc. The idea is that applications can only tell you so much about a person. The faculty really want to talk to the students and probe a little bit more about their interests and experiences. In my field, by the time you make the interview you are already admissible - your grades and GRE scores are great and no longer really a factor; the general length of your research experience and such is acceptable. What the faculty really want to know at that point are 1) how much independence have you really gained through your prior research work? Anyone can say they were an RA in college, but what did the applicant learn from that experience? and how ready are they to hit the ground running in grad school and start doing some excellent work? and 2) what are your research interests? Can you articulate them? Can you talk about how they fit together into a potential program of research? How do they fit in with the faculty you proposed to work with (or some you didn’t)?
There are other concerns, which are just as important but usually determined more subtly - like fit with the department (you don’t want to bring in a hypercompetitive loner if the department is social and collegial) and general pleasantness (few faculty want to work with a super arrogant recent graduate or someone who doesn’t want to do any work).
Not knowing what kind of program she’s applied to, it’s hard to judge. If it’s an academic MA program, I suspect that the interviews will be sort of similar to the above. So she should be prepared to discuss any prior experiences that have prepared her for scholarly work in whatever field it is, to discuss her current research interests in both specific and broad senses (this is what I want to do right now, and here’s what that might look like over 5 years), and to discuss how her work/interests fit in with the rest of the department. She can talk about what resources she might avail at the university, especially if they have anything special there like archives or a rare book library or an observatory or summer funding for archaeological digs or whatever works for her. And she can also be prepared to speak, at least a bit vaguely, about her potential career goals and how X Program could potentially help her get there.
If it’s a professional master’s program, then I really don’t know. I’d imagine that discussing prior experience there would be paramount, though.
Thanks for your reply, @juillet. It is in fact a professional program, and she just found out she has an interview at the end of the month. I wish I knew what this means–whether it’s just that she survived a broad first cut and there will be a significant winnowing down based on the interviews, in which case the whole thing is awfully nerve wracking, or whether this is a more perfunctory process to make sure she is poised and professional and all that good stuff. Of course she has to assume the former and prepare well. Interestingly, the application process was so extensive and her personal statement so complete that it’s hard to imagine what she could talk about that the school doesn’t already know! I’m a little frustrated that as her usual go-to person I can’t help much. I’m going to send her to Grad Cafe to see if she can find any posts on the interview process for this program.
If you could give us a bit more information, such as the discipline, it might be easier to provide some suggestions.
I am a professor in an interdisciplinary (humanities/social science) field. In our admissions process, we narrow the applicants down to a short list of students–about twice as many as we could admit and support–and then we bring those for an interview. That means the people we interview are ones who all fit the criteria and we are excited at their application–that is at what we can tell on paper about their experiences, goals, etc. Given the nature of our field the interview helps us learn more about their preparedness – yes, they submitted a good application, good statement of goals, good sample research paper. Our purpose is to get a better sense of them academically and, especially. to have a better sense of their research goals and abilities, how do they talk about the experiences they have had, how do they engage the questions we ask, how do they engage with the other prospective students or with our own students. We also want to get a sense of “fit” and by that we mean can we support the work they want to do; it does not need to be in exactly the same field as any of the professors, in fact we’d rather they were branching out in their own direction but we need to know that we can support it, that they are a fit for us and we are a fit for them. The interview then is very focused on talking with them about the research paper they submitted, about what they see as the direction their research would go in the future, about what they want to get from a graduate program.
Whereas interviews for undergraduate school might focus on career goals/major, etc. there is more of a sense that many students have not chosen fields and/or may change along the way; the interviews give a sense of “smarts” without being so focused on the particular field in which the student has expressed interest. The interviews for graduate school are very much about the particular field. If it is a field where the student would work with a very specific professor or in a very specific lab then there is also the question of figuring out fit in that way as well.
Not knowing the field of the student you are assisting it is hard to say more, but I hope this is helpful.
And best of luck to your student. She and her parents are fortunate to have your support.
I wish I knew what this means–whether it’s just that she survived a broad first cut and there will be a significant winnowing down based on the interviews, in which case the whole thing is awfully nerve wracking, or whether this is a more perfunctory process to make sure she is poised and professional and all that good stuff.
I know it’s easy to say this on the outside, but I don’t think it matters that much which of these is the case. Even for a “perfunctory” interview she’d still want to be at her best, so I think she should just assume that this interview will influence her odds of admission and proceed accordingly.
That said…I dunno, I think the best advice is just to be herself. A professional version of herself, of course. But there’s a reason she applied to this program, yes? She just needs to tap into those interests/that passion. Preparing may be remembering why she really wants to do the program, thinking concretely about some potential career goals, reading up on resources at the university and connecting those to the reasons she wants to attend, etc. But the goal is really just to show the school how psyched up she is to have the opportunity to go there.