Alumni Interview?

<p>How important is the alumni interview? I got an email about two days ago from an alumni asking me if I'm available to meet for a face-to-face interview in "-----" sometime over the next few weeks. The problem is, the city is an hour away by PLANE. It'd cost me around $100 and I'd probably just go to the interview and come back home right after. I really don't know if it's worth all the time and money. Does rejecting the interview harm my chances of being accepted into Dartmouth in anyway? If it does, I want to request whether I can just have a skype interview but this guy did say he wants a "face-to-face" meeting. I wonder if it looks like I'm not really sincere if I ask for a skype interview instead.</p>

<p>No way in the world can anyone reasonably request you to FLY to meet the interviewer. You should kindly reply to him to say that you’ve investigated what it would take (one hour flight each way) but the required time and finances make it a prohibitive venture. However, if a Skype interview or another nearer alum is available, you’d gladly take it. Perhaps the interviewer does not know how distant he is from you.</p>

<p>Not having an interview in cases like this won’ t affect you.</p>

<p>But I live outside of the US and on the Dartmouth site, it says</p>

<p>“For students in some international regions, our applicant volume outnumbers our alumni interviewer resources. Therefore, we will only offer alumni interviews if we need further information from an applicant.”</p>

<p>I’m really really really worried!!!</p>

<p>I’m an applicant from the UK, is receiving a Dartmouth interview a good thing or is it standard?</p>