I’m an international student from Italy. A Yale alumnus contacted me for an interview but it’s over 200 miles away from where I live. My parents can’t drive me and going by train would take like 6 hours and three trains (I checked). Will it hurt my chances if I explain the situation and refuse the interview? Will I be automatically rejected?
Ask for a skype interview.
Ask if you can do the interview over the phone or skype. I’ve often “met with” students that way when they weren’t able to travel.
No one expects you to travel 200 miles for an interview.
If you think an in person interview would help your chances for admission, I would move heaven and earth and go to that interview. In person is in person. It’s a chance to shake a hand, lean in, hear an inflection in the interviewers voice and have your non verbal cues be seen and felt by the interviewer. So, yeah. If I had an opportunity for a face to face with a Yale alumnus (or any interviewer for a colleg of my choice), I would seize that opportunity. So, to answer your question, yes you should catch a bus or train or beg a ride from a friend or family and travel that 200 miles for an interview opportunity.
Very few college interviews matter. I would ask to do it over skype. I don’t think they would expect you to travel 200 miles for an interview. He/she was probably the closest alum they could find for you.
Did the interviewer specify the location of the interview? If he lives 200 miles away, can he come to you or meet you halfway?
I’d try for a face to face interview. If it doesn’t work out, then Skype is the way to go. I do interviews for another college and many other interviewers do use skype. I don’t as my calendar is filled already with close by interviews.
The alumnus has placed you in a difficult situation. Three trains & 6 hours is asking for a bit much for a meeting that can be cancelled at the last minute. Assuming that you are 17 years old, I also think that it would be unwise for you to travel so far in order to meet with a stranger.
Viewed from a different perspective, this is a chance to exhibit grace & poise in dealing with a real world situation.
The alumnus didn’t do this. Typically the school reaches out to alums who have offered to do interviews and gives them the name and contact information for the student to be interviewed. Surely the alum does not expect the student to travel 200 miles for an interview. Again, contact the alum and ask if a google duo or facetime or skype interview can be arranged. Its done all the time. And perfectly understandable. No need or benefit of a direct handshake.
Actually the alumnus schedules the interview after being given the name. So, while I see the point of the above poster, the alumnus could have made suggestions for a more convenient meeting place or method of interviewing.
"If you think an in person interview would help your chances for admission, I would move heaven and earth and go to that interview. In person is in person. "
That’s the great unknowable, though. If you asked 10 people with a passing knowledge of how admissions works if an in-person interview could be a critical factor here, you’d get conflicting answers.
OP - might make sense to post this question in the Yale specific forum.
As a Yale interviewer, we do Skype type interviews all the time. I am confident the alum interviewer will understand your situation. The only info we get are name, city, high school, gender, academic interests, email and telephone. I suspect the alum in question just hit the email link to get the ball rolling and really didn’t see/consider the distances.
We lived in Germany and travelled 25 miles to visit a Princeton Alum for an interview…but that is much less than 200.
One thing you could do is to say that you live in City X and how far would the alum be willing to travel or should you do the interview via skype? Definitely try to use skype with a video component over just a phone interview.
I also do alum interviews and as I am a volunteer and I do multiple interviews the answer for how far I would be willing to travel is : not very far
I second the Skype idea. Most schools offer them.
@Publisher of course the alum schedules this, but as an alum interviewer myself, I am sharing how we are notified of students we are asked to interview. They don’t always check to see how far the student and alum are. They usually, at least here, try to find someone in the same county without realizing that it may not be as close as someone in a neighboring county. Regardless, when the student contact information is sent to the alum interviewer, the interviewer typically then reaches out to the student to arrange the interview. In this case, Skype is the most sensible option.
I know & understand all of the above. Not sure why your post was directed to me. We are in agreement.
The OP Only said that the interviewer reached out to schedule theInterview. Nowhere does it say that the interviewer expected them to drive 200 miles. That may have been a faulty assumption on the part of the student/OP and whoever else is assuming the student is expected to travel 200 miles. That’s highly unlikely.
@publisher I am responding to your post #9. It is highly unlikely the interviewer had any expectation that the student would travel 200 miles. It is most likely this was the student’s assumption. When I schedule interviews that are not very nearby, we typically discuss a location that is convenient for both of us. In the OPs case, it won’t involve travel unless one of them just happened to have upcoming travel plans near where the other is located. That would be fortuitous but unlikely.
@jym626: I think that we are in agreement.
But, it is not quite clear as to whether or not the interviewer gave the OP an address for an interview. Sometimes interviewers do offer alternate interview times at a specific location. But, in this case, it is unclear.
@felicia9820 - you last checked in an hour ago. Please provide the specifics of what/how the alum proposed to handle the interview.