<p>I realize this is premature and that a certain answer is unlikely, but has anyone ever had or conducted an undergraduate admissions interview in British Columbia, Canada? Specifically Vancouver and the surrounding cities.</p>
<p>The reason I ask is that I've heard of the interview's vital importance in the admissions process. I'm well aware that, if waived, not having an interview will not be held against me, but as an international, I need all the chances I can get :D</p>
<p>On another note, I would just like to thank all the regular contributors to this sub-forum for their thoughtful, reasonable, and kind posts and replies. Being an anxiety-riddled teenager on the cusp of the application process (originally, that was "staring into the abyss"... what does that say about my mental state?), I found reading through those threads, in a word, soothing. I trust that many others have felt the same way. Indeed, how I feel about this sub-forum extends to the MIT admissions website itself; it's just so... nice... perhaps it's the school? In any case, thank you, contributors, again!</p>
<p>If your interview is waived, you can email admissions and see if you can get a Skype interview :)</p>
<p>That is unlikely to be relevant. The EC directory showed 18 Vancouver based EC’s last year. Of course the exact number always changes from year to year, as EC’s join, leave and move. But with 18 last year, I am fairly confident that a Vancouver EC will be available to kaielsu.</p>
<p>In British Columbia, you will in all likelihood have an EC nearby.</p>
<p>Ooh, ooh, I know this one! Or at least, I have a story related to this:
I was a Vancouver student, and was assigned an interviewer to meet. When I contacted this individual, they stated they did not do interviews for MIT anymore. I then contacted Admissions, who said there was nobody else in the area to give the interview. I could fill in a form stating that I tried to get an interview, and one was not available.
They said not to worry, because “the statistics comparing admissions with an interview with those without lump those who tried in with those that succeeded.” Therefore, I was to assume that my chances of acceptance were the higher ~10%, instead of the lower <2%.
Now, I have no statistics background, but this seems like nonsense: Just because you lump the popularity of durians in with the popularity of apples, (considering the group “apples+durians”), and find the group has a high popularity, does not suddenly mean that durians have a high popularity. It just means you’ve decided to group your data in a terrible way, and that further studies will obviously show that the vast majority of members of the group were pushing the popularity upward, but a small fraction of group were pulling the popularity down.
So too, it seems that the decision to group “attempted interviewees” with “actual interviewees”, is a terrible grouping of the data, as the existence (and supportive content) of an interview is the thing that actually affects admissions. It seems that the lumping of the data was just meant as a carrot in front of students to get them to interview, and not in anyway meaningful. Having tried to interview should not logically have improved my chances of acceptance.
But I got in anyway.
Now it may have changed since (this was a couple years ago), but I would hesitate when looking at the numbers above. Maybe see if anybody in Vancouver has other, more interview-ful stories.</p>
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<p>Why not? It means you’re the type of person who wants to talk to someone about the MIT experience, and you’re excited to share your own interests (even if it makes you nervous!). </p>
<p>My understanding is that most interview candidates are interesting people that the ECs enjoyed talking to, and only rarely do ECs state that someone is really not a good match for MIT.</p>
<p>Don’t discount the valuable data of self-selection 
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<p>That is of course only possibly true. While it is true that it is unusual to meet the candidate that forces a “do not admit” letter, they still represents 5.5% of my interviews. So I get one of those maybe every three or four years. As to any region, the number of EC’s fluctuates widely. In one fair-sized city in my region, three years ago we had 6 EC’s, two years ago 3 EC’s and last year, NONE, which really hurt. There were enough EC’s currently registered in BC, so I think that the OP can probably get an interview.</p>
<p>Heard through the parent’s group, only one student from BC was accepted by MIT for 2014. So it’s very likely the student was interviewed. Good luck for 2015!</p>