<p>Yay? Nay? What are your opinions?</p>
<p>I’m all for bringing a resume to the interview (one with activities though, not with standardized test scores), as long as you yourself dominate the conversation and you’re not letting the resume do all the talking. </p>
<p>You can bring up the resume when the conversation starts to lag so that the interviewer can go through the list really quickly and ask questions about an activity on there that interests him. This can help the person find some common interest between the two of you to help start a conversation (“Oh you’re in band? Hey I was in band too in college! Are you going to be in band when you go to college?”). Or you can bring it up at the very end, as a way of saying “thank you for the interview, and I have a resume here to sum up all of my activities”, in case ther person needs specific references when writing up the report----this is especially good if the person’s not jogging down notes as you talk.</p>
<p>Absolutely. I’d give it to the interviewer after s/he introduces himself. It gives them a way to direct the conversation to your specific interests (ie, if s/he sees you’ve attended a summer program, s/he can ask about it).</p>
<p>No. Bring nothing unless they ask for it</p>
<p>I used to bring a long a activities/interests resume to my interviews and give it to my interviewers at the end of the conversation, so that they could put some context around the points I touched on. The interview itself proceeded normally.</p>
<p>i don’t think there’s any point in bringing an activities resume. columbia provides your interviewer with a file that includes your extracurriculars and academic interests. you also run the risk of seeming, as admissionsgeek said in another thread, “overeager.”</p>
<p>1) columbia does not provide a list of your extracurriculars to interviewers. we see a list of your 3 preferred activities that you’d like to do at columbia, and 3 major choices. these are there to certainly prompt conversation, but they are not specific.</p>
<p>2) the interview is not about finding out all about you (just like the application is not about all of you) - it is about giving you space to vocalize your interests, passions and see the way in which you prioritize information. my job is to compliment the extracurriculars by showing what you choose to talk about, without having the bias of knowing what else you do. </p>
<p>so for example if you spend the whole time talking about this community service activity (and i talk at length in my report about it), but the admissions officer then sees that you did the activity for 1 week in your resume, it allows the admissions officer to question what you choose to prioritize. the interview is meant to be imperfect, i don’t usually get to every question i want to ask, but it is supposed to give a snapshot of information that can be added to your application.</p>
<p>3) if you hand me a resume during an interview, i will not consider this a ‘good’ thing. this is my opinion, not representing all interviewers everywhere (for columbia or other schools), but i do a lot of interviews for columbia, and after receiving dozens of resumes i am part annoyed that students give them just because what am i supposed to do with it (save some trees), but also the point is for me to see you lead me into the details of your activity through the performance of the interview.</p>
<p>i slightly disagree with concoll here - not to say it is all and all a bad idea to give them context, but i notice that when one receives a resume one tends to write his/her reports based on the resume and not the interview, and i find that problematic. i see the desire to give context, but ultimately it is bad for the interviewer, and may lead to a poor report that hurts the candidate. not worth it.</p>
<p>in the end, do as you please. though i suppose there is some correlation to note: of the candidates that have brought me a resume during an interview, not a single one has been admitted.</p>
<p>My interviewers have specifically asked that I bring nothing.</p>
<p>I wish I’d gotten these responses before I replied to my interviewer. I confirmed and asked, “Also, would it be helpful to you if I brought my resume?” </p>
<p>The response of my interviewer was “If you have a resume, that would be great if you could bring it!” so hopefully it wasn’t so much of a faux pas. I was just very unsure of the etiquette.</p>
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<p>no it’s great that you asked, and it seems like you got a positive response. I know some interviewers were very happy to receive my resume (because I had worked for several organizations as well in high school), others didn’t care. I don’t think it hurts to take a resume with you, but I do think it’s unnecessary. I don’t care at all whether or not a HS senior gives me a resume, it isn’t part of what I’m looking for.</p>