Alumni interviewers question

I realize some colleges value the alumni interview as very important while others deem it less. My question is geared more to the colleges that do consider the report submitted from the interviewer as important. Do certain alumni interviewers reports carry more weight then others or are they all considered equal? I think I know the real answer but would like to hear from some others on the topic.

Curious to hear which schools feel alumni interviews are “very important”.

Interviews with admissions officers can be important but I have never heard that for alumni interviews.

Back in the day when my alma mater did use the alumni meeting as an “interview”, there were definitely no interviewers who would hold more sway than another. Also, the report would only come into play for a student who was very much on the fence for admission. Remember that alumni don’t have access to the students’ applications so we are missing a huge amount of the picture.

@momofsenior1 There are a ton of threads regarding certain school and the importance or lack there of for certain schools. One example I know of as not very important would be Johns Hopkins where as an example of it being very important would be MIT.

Different colleges give different weight to interviews. Among highly selective colleges, one that gives more weight to interviews is MIT. MIT’s CDS marks interviews as “important.” Their website gives further hints about the importance, including listing stats about a ~99% rejection rate among applicants who decline an interview.

At some colleges, interviews may be important among specific subgroups of students. For example, Cornell’s College of Architecture, Art, and Planning makes interviews mandatory for applicants, which involve discussing samples of artwork and/or a portfolio. These artwork interviews can be done by alumni, so I assume the alum interviews are important for this subgroup.

Architecture is the only program at Cornell that still requires a formal interview.

Interviews are still offered for both Art and Hotel majors, but are no longer mandatory.

https://admissions.cornell.edu/apply/first-year-applicants/application-checklist/applicant-checklist-tips

The point remains that interviews are important for specific subgroups at Cornell. The Dept of Architecture portion of Cornell’s website explicitly states,

The Dept of Art isn’t as explicit in their wording, but they still imply interviews are important with statements like, "A portfolio interview is strongly recommended… "

But the interviews at the Cornell departments surely aren’t done by alumni, as per the question in the original post?

Both of referenced important interviews can be done by alumni. Quotes from the Cornell website are below:

Just one more note about Cornell - The still required interviews are not done by CAAAN volunteers. It’s a completely different interview to review the portfolios. Yes, alumni can be involved but it should not be confused with the CAAAN meetings offered to the vast majority of applicants. (I’m really not trying to beat a dead horse by don’t want applicants to the other 6 colleges within Cornell to worry).

OP - back to your original questions -

No, it won’t matter who the interviewer is. It would be ridiculously unfair to give more weight to applicants who were lucky enough to be assigned to certain people. Doesn’t happen!

And remember that even at schools that do still have evaluative interviews, it’s just one piece of your entire application. Do your best to come prepared with questions of your own and be relaxed. If you have issues talking to new people, do a mock interview with a neighbor or friend’s parent. It’s good to have your “elevator spiel” down pat too - be able to clearly articulate the details of why that school is a fit for you and what talents you can bring to campus to enrich life there.

The alumni interview should be fun, not stressful.

@momofsenior1 While your advice is spot on regarding the interview I am not a student but a parent. Common sense dictates that some students(can) get applications that are “backed” by some prominent people. As an example a Senator or circuit court judge etc…while others may be a principal or superintendent of a school district. So it would also make sense that some alumni interviewers may be more “notable” per say than others to the university.Why wouldn’t that endorsement or lack there of carry more weight? Fair or not human nature dictates that it is highly likely that it would.

First off, my apologies for assuming you were a student!

IMO, it’s different when a notable alumni writes a LOR of a student they genuinely know. Totally agree that at elite privates, that can hold sway, especially if that alum is a major donor.

I don’t think it’s the same with interviewers. Take Cornell for example (since that’s the school I’m the most familiar as a long time volunteer from back in the day when the interviews were evaluative for everyone). Architecture’s interviews are set in the Fall, at the start of the application cycle. Truly it’s random which interviewer is assigned to a student. The school is not going to penalize or reward a student because they didn’t have access to a more prestigious alumni interviewer, which is based on where they live. That said, I think, and this is only my opinion, where there may be a bump, is for students who are actually interviewed on campus, by faculty or admission officer. I would say this in particular for students who are geographically within a reasonable drive of school.

I will also throw out that generally speaking, the more high profile the alumni, the less likely they are to be even doing interviews.

@momofsenior1 No need to apologize at all. I agree that it is different for a LOR vs an alumni interview I just used it as an example of the person carrying more weight. Also agree that in general the more high profile the alumni, the less likely they are doing interviews.

That said I would find it hard to believe that some alumni interviewers don’t have a “track” record per say. Something along the lines of wow this person is usually pretty spot on with the kids they recommend highly as opposed to others who might be more hit or miss on kids they score. Again more of a human nature type of response than a conscience decision per say.

Some interviews are informative, some are evaluative.
So some are for the college to give the student the personal touch, and some are used in evaluating the student.
Who knows if some alumni reports are considered more…I imagine there may be some people who do in depth reports that consistently match the final results…those might be used more.
Sometimes it is just that you can get a more rounded picture of the candidate… for example,
I had a student that didn’t appear to have many ECs. But we were talking about that…and it turned out that he watched his little brother after school so he couldn’t do clubs/sports. His parents were getting divorced and he started to notice his brother falling through the cracks. So he started making sure he did his homework, and also signed him up for a baseball league. He took him to practices and games.
So not only did he babysit his brother, he showed leadership in making sure his brother had opportunities and support.
I am not sure that would have come out just on the application.
He was accepted.

The first thing you need to do is google " Common Data Set" and
then look in Section C7: Relative importance of each of the following academic and nonacademic factors in first-time, firstyear,degree-seeking (freshman) admission decisions.

Then look at " Interview."

This will tell if a college requires/thinks it is important.

I do think some interview reports are more impactfull than others (positive or negative). It is not about “who” the alum is but how insightful of a report he/she writes. Each year we get examples of reports that help the AO (opinions supported by example) vs less helpful (bare conclusory opinions). I am sure since there is a huge variance in the thoroughness and quality of reports, they are not accorded much independent weight. The AO’s I have spoken with say for the most part interview reports are used to confirm or round out the opinions they have already developed of the candidate from the other parts of the the app.

I am seriously hoping that one of my daughter’s interviewers doesn’t have any sway in her acceptance/rejection. He told her that she was his first interview ever, then he said that the school gave him a list a questions to ask but he thought that some of them were “stupid” so he wasn’t going to ask them. My daughter said that she felt like she was interviewing him instead of the reverse. Even given all that, she thought that the interview went well. It probably helped that she wasn’t nervous as she had already done several alumni interviews.

My D had an alumni interview at Dickinson. She felt that it was very different than interviews she had with admissions reps. She said the alumni interview was mostly about the person telling her about the school and not really asking her much.

@momofmusician17 The school I interview for asks how many years we’ve been interviewing, and how many interviews we do a year. The first report I ever wrote, one of my comments was that it was my first interview so the admissions committee probably shouldn’t give it too much weight. Your daughter’s interviewer sounds like he has a style similar to mine, and if she feels like it went well, she probably got a good writeup.

As BKSquared touched on, some alumni give more useful reports than others and as such some interviewers can be more influential than others. The college I interview for has alumni go through a short interview training class and provides related documentation that discusses what types of interview reports are useful and meaningful, and what types of interview reports are not. I’d expect this difference in usefulness of interview reports is the primary reason why some alumni reports often carry more weight than others, rather than colleges focusing on the prestige of the interviewer name.

You can view an example interview report that was presented during the Harvard lawsuit at https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2018/9/12/harvard-student-admissions-file-analysis/ – Click on "View the entire document with DocumentCloud " . The report appears to go into a good amount of detail and have several structured ratings categories, as well as subdivisions of specific criteria within those categories.

One of Harvard’s experts in the lawsuit created a model that was able to explain 64% of the variance in admission decisions based on ratings of applicants received in a variety of categories, and a variety of controls. The percentage of predictive ability lost by excluding ratings from one category were as follows. LORs and alumni interviews were grouped together in this model. The isolated pseudo R^2 numbers suggest LORs have ~1.5x the predictive ability of alumni interviews. Using this ratio results in the following approximate loss in predictive ability when excluding different parts of the application

Excluding LOR Ratings: Lose 33-40% of predictive ability.
Excluding Interview Ratings: Lose 16-20% of predictive ability.
Excluding Personal Rating: Lose 19% of predictive ability
Excluding Academic Rating: Lose 17% of predictive ability
Excluding Extracurricular Rating: Lose 13% of predictive ability
Excluding Race: Lose 10% of predictive ability

This model suggests while interviews may not be tremendously predictive of decisions in isolation, they often add something to the decision that is not duplicated by the other components of the application. That is, rather than focus on small differences in stats, Harvard may look at other areas of the application that have larger differences between similar stat applicants, including LORs and interviews.

As BKSquared touched on, some alumni give more useful reports than others and as such some interviewers can be more influential than others. The college I interview for has alumni go through a short interview training class and provides related documentation that discusses what types of interview reports are useful and meaningful, and what types of interview reports are not. I’d expect this difference in usefulness of interview reports is the primary reason why some alumni reports often carry more weight than others, rather than colleges focusing on the prestige of the interviewer name.

You can view an example interview report that was presented during the Harvard lawsuit at https://www.■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/documents/4872922-ThangAdmitFile-1.html#document/p2/a453353 . The report appears to go into a good amount of detail and have several structured ratings categories, as well as subdivisions of specific criteria within those categories.

One of Harvard’s experts in the lawsuit created a model that was able to explain 64% of the variance in admission decisions based on ratings of applicants received in the categories above and others (not including overall rating), as well as various additional controls. The percentage of predictive ability lost by excluding ratings from one category were as follows. LORs and alumni interviews were grouped together in this model. The isolated pseudo R^2 numbers suggest LORs have ~1.5x the predictive ability of alumni interviews. Using this ratio results in the following approximate loss in predictive ability when excluding different parts of the application

Excluding LOR Ratings: Lose 33-40% of predictive ability.
Excluding Interview Ratings: Lose 16-20% of predictive ability.
Excluding Personal Rating: Lose 19% of predictive ability
Excluding Academic Rating: Lose 17% of predictive ability
Excluding Extracurricular Rating: Lose 13% of predictive ability
Excluding Race: Lose 10% of predictive ability

This model suggests while interviews are not tremendously predictive of decisions in isolation, they often add something to the decision that is not duplicated by the other components of the application. That is, rather than focus on small differences in stats (academic rating is highly correlated with stats), Harvard may look at other areas of the application that have larger differences between similar stat applicants, including LORs and interviews.