My D visited a bunch of schools during his junior year, including many far from home. At the time, he was not able to interview with admissions counselors because interviews were restricted to seniors. Now he’s a senior and would like to interview where possible, but flying him back to his top choices will be quite time consuming and expensive. He’ll request alumni interviews locally, of course, but I wonder if they count as much as interviews with admissions counselors. Any thoughts?
Just do the alumni interviews. We have found that in many cases, even on-campus interviews are done by recent grads and not admissions officers.
An alumni interview is just fine, particularly if you are far from campus. Don’t give it another thought.
Most interviews these days are conducted by alumni, and they are more informational than evaluative. Alumni don’t historically have a big say in whether a student gets admitted, often much to their chagrin.
On campus interviews with ADCOMS are a double edged sword. Even if your student interviews well, there is always the possibility the ADCOM will find something wrong, since they are so subjective. A lot of consultants say to be wary of interviews by admissions officers. Its better to control what you have control over which is the written app.
Both my students got into top colleges without interviews and both got rejected from top colleges with interviews. Both my kids are very personable and can talk intelligently and passionately about a variety of subjects. Lesson learned: interviews by Admissions may not be helpful despite the best of circumstances, despite what adcoms will tell you when you go to their tour and info sessions.
I don’t think interviews are very meaningful.
If a school says that they want applicants to interview, make sure your child signs up for an interview. Not doing so indicates a lack of interest in the school, and I know of some applicants who made this mistake and were rejected by colleges that would have been expected to accept them.
That said, there’s no particular reason why the interview has to take place on campus, especially if it involves time-consuming and expensive travel and the student has already visited the school. Most interviews are done by alumni in the student’s home area.
Going to campus demonstrates interest, but in your case, you have already visited and it is far, so having a local alumni interview, or a Skype interview, seems a logical way for you to demonstrate your continued interest. Colleges don’t want to penalize students for not being able to afford a trip to interview on campus, either.
More of son’s on-campus interviews were conducted by trained current students than by admissions officers; the students did a good job and the interviews were fun, but I mention it because of your question’s wording about admissions counselors.
See what each school’s own website says about interviews, and speak with admissions.
Thank you, all!
My D2 did no interviews at colleges she applied to. It was an intentional strategy. She was very introverted and didn’t interview well, but had excellent test scores, solid ECs, and very good recs. We made a strategic decision for her to stop interviewing after a couple of painful attempts at schools she didn’t end up applying to. She got in everyplace she applied, including some top schools.
If the school cared about interest (determined using the Common Data Set), she made sure to do that in other ways. If they had required interviews she would have done them, of course.
By the time she applied to grad schools four years later, she had matured more and was was confident in her subject area. Interviews went okay, and she is settling into a PhD program now.
But the basic point is that interviews aren’t usually necessary, and they can hurt more than they help anyway depending on the student. If your student is a rock star at interviews (as my D1 was), go out of your way to get them in front of admissions officers if interviews are available with them. Otherwise I would not sweat about it.
If your child is applying to highly selective colleges, demonstrated interest could be a factor in the admission decision. We had to travel a considerable distance, too by plane to visit our D’s three top college choices in three different cities. Visiting the colleges is one great way of demonstrating interest.
We were able to meet privately with the Dean of Admissions or Director of Admissions at two of the three colleges. They explained the admissions decision making process at their respective colleges; at one college, it was a rather large board scoring the applicants. The Dean of Admissions and the regional admissions representative (who would actually make the “case” for our D’s admission to the board) were two voting members of the admissions panel, so we made a special effort to get our D to also meet with the regional admissions representative for her top choice school when the representative was in our city prior to the admissions decisions being made.
While the formal “interview” was not required, we felt it was worth the effort and our D was offered admission to her top-choice, highly selective college as an ED applicant.
No, Infect it is an excellent thing to interview on a campus. It helps to make the student confidence and increase the ability to face the situation.
Student mind is prepared to what happens whether positive or negative.
For each college, look in Section C7 of the Common Data Set, for “Interview” and how it is rated…Very Important, Important, Considered or Not Considered.
Also try to find out if the interviews are evaluative or informational. If informational, they are not as important.
And if evaluative and you blow it, you have not helped yourself.
At least when my kid applied MIT felt very strongly that you needed to interview unless you lived overseas and had no easy access to an interviewer. Alumni interviews were fine and the acceptance rate for those who didn’t interview was half or a quarter of what it was for those who did.
One school U of Rochester I think, really, really, really wanted you to visit. (Actually I think the AO said really five times.) Our school is in NY, I don’t know if they would have been as insistent if you lived across the country. Neither kid ended up applying there, so I don’t know if a visit would have included an on campus interview, but I still remember all those “really’s”!
I’ve heard of a number of alumni who are disappointed that kids they thought were great (and had the grades and scores as well) didn’t get accepted despite enthusiastic support, and occasional alumni grousing that kids who were unprepared, (I want to major in business at a school that has no business major for example,) got in despite writing up negative reports.
This sounds like a good reason to include some schools that do not have evaluative interviews on your list.
Check the Common Data Set for each school and see how important and inteview is. Each school is different. MIT is one of the few that counts it as important. UPenn has made it a goal to try and interview everyone, but they don’t do on-campus interviews at all. I have a small LAC about 1.5 hours from home that makes it clear that demonstrated interest is important and everyone who is within a reasonable drive is expected to do an on-campus interview. I know of someone from our high school who was a strong candidate and was rejected. The guidance counselor called and found out it was because the girl did not go up there and they thought they were merely a safety for her. However, anyone far enough away that they’d have to fly would be allowed to do an alumni interview.
If you need to request an interview (and you think your child will interview well) then get your request in early.
It’s important in that the student can ask questions and determine if the school is a good fit or not from someone who actually attended. For grad school interviews are critical.
I found interviews to be one of those where doing well keeps you in the running, while not doing well removes you from consideration. Very rarely will an interview swing a decision, it typically confirms where the decision was going. There was an interesting article or blog where a Yale interviewer stopped doing them because every one of his recommend for accept got rejected one year, so he decided it was’t worth his time. Also interviews are being done with video (skype e.g.) so make sure your kids know how to handle those.
If the school requires admission interviews, chances are there is a skype or email option. That was the case for the ones my Ds applied to. If there is one close enough it would be good to do for the experience. My Ds were lucky that they had a good HS college counselor that did mock interviews with students to help them get ready. If your student doesn’t have that option then practice with them. Especially, as mentioned above, how to skype (where to look, body language, etc).
It is a little school dependent. Older D did several alumni interviews. For one school, it was a serious part of applying and that person carried a good amount of weight. For others it wasn’t a big part of process and didn’t seem to mean a lot.