Hello! I just got back from my Brown interview. I felt like everything went well, except I didn’t know what open curriculum was. I looked on cc, and it seems like people think this is a huge red flag! She asked me really casually and said some people have heard of it and some people haven’t. I said I didn’t think I had, but, when she briefly explained, I made sure to make it look like I recognized it right away. I answered her questions fine from there. Now, I feel like I completely blew my chances of admittance. I had researched the school, but somehow I hadn’t come across that bit of information, which apparently is essential. Do you think I even have a shot still?
Interviewers jobs are to speak well about you and let you know more about the school. An interviewer would not intentionally make you look bad to AdComs… some just look better than others. You would have ti really screw up to have an interview negatively effect you. Either the report will be bland and it probably won’t help or hurt or it’ll be glowing and it’ll help a little. It will not make or break an app.
The interviewer’s job is not to speak well about you if you don’t deserve it. I wouldn’t “make someone look bad” but I write what I see, hear, and feel. I would think it was odd that an applicant didn’t know about the open curriculum and I would mention it especially when it comes to describing how the applicant is a fit for brown - certainly the applicant hasn’t thought about that.
To OP, I don’t know how the rest of the interview went so don’t take me as necessarily representative. I also am assuming that you didn’t know brown’s curricular structure, not simply that you didn’t know it was called an “open curriculum.” I would probably not mention the latter.
a20171 – what you say is not correct. Our “job” is not to write only nice things. I’ve written several reports where I have strongly encouraged admissions not to accept a student.
It is correct that admissions will not deny solely based on what the interviewer writes.
If admissions is all gung-ho on accepting you, and they get to the alumni write-up and read that you didn’t know what the open curriculum is – here’s my educated guess as to how they would react. They would relook at your background. Are you first-gen? Do you go to an inner city or rural high school? Then they would probably overlook. If you go to a competitive high school in an affluent area – this could raise a red flag. Is this kid just applying to all the Ivies without having done any research? They might call your guidance counselor and have a chat.
If admissions is planning on denying you admissions anyway (as is the case with more than 90 % of the applicants), then this wouldn’t make a difference.
If you are borderline, this might become part of the conversation.
Thank you @fireandrain that helps quite a bit! I go to a public high school where most of my research on schools is done alone, so sometimes I miss things. It is impossible to research everything. That being said, I should have done more research for Brown, apparently! Thank you for the words of wisdom!
just for my own curiosity, @annamatisse when you say you didn’t know what the open curriculum is did you mean:
A) You didn’t know that Brown doesn’t have distribution requirements, allows you to take any course pass/fail, has no +/-s for grades, failed courses don’t show up on your transcript and you can create your own concentration
B) You didn’t know that everything described in A was called an “open curriculum”
Because those are pretty different mistakes.
@iwannabe_Brown I knew generally most of A, but the research I had done on the school focused around certain departments primarily, which never mentioned the name “open curriculum.” I am somewhere in between A and B.
In the interview, she asked if I had heard of “open curriculum,” and, once I said I didn’t think so and she began to explain, I made sure to look like I ‘recognized’ it and expanded a bit on it. When she asked about another area I would like to study, I quickly came up with a legitimate answer by speaking about how I would love to take psychology classes and explore animal-assisted therapy (which worked well, since she was a psychologist!). I think I covered it well, and hopefully she will chalk it up to me not remembering the term because of nerves! 
I’d say the fact that you didn’t know what the open curriculum was seems a bit concerning… but I’m sure it didn’t completely blow your chances. It’s not like your interviewer is going to write “THEY DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT THE OPEN CURRICULUM” as her entire writeup. And then again, if you did all your research alone on the website and never visited Brown/ went to an info session, I guess I can understand why you wouldn’t know about it.