College Interviews

Hey so if anyone could answer my questions I’d be very grateful :).

  1. Do the alumni interviewers get all your common app details, e.g EC, books you read, websites you read etc…? If not what do they get?
  2. Do universities like the ivy leagues decide who to give interviews randomly or do they only choose people that they think have a chance of getting in. E.g imagine someone got 900/1600 on the sat would they bother giving that person an interview? P.S I know they don’t have enough staff to interview everyone but of the people they decide to interview would they pick someone with seemingly 0% chance of getting in?
  1. no
  2. random
  1. no
  2. random but they try to interview everyone

I believe interviewers tend to get only your name. You should always plan that an interviewer knows nothing about you other than the fact that you applied to the school. Ivy League schools assign interviews randomly and make an effort to interview everyone, but sometimes that cannot be done (e.g. people get admitted who did not get an interview).

Definitely depends on the school, but for my reed interview, my interviewer got my essays and some info. I didn’t apply to any ivies.

They usually start pretty much from scratch, besides maybe your major interests and a couple of minor details. The reason being is because they want to get to know the person beyond the application, so they want to come in with as little external biases as possible to evaluate you outside of those accomplishments, like get to know your personality, your character, what else you care about, and what you would bring to the college. Plus they are alumni, so they are already once removed, so there is no need for them to have access to that sort of information. The second question is pretty much dependent on the college.

http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/brown-university/810532-brown-interview-faq-and-answers-p1.html

You might be interested in this thread by a Brown alumni interviewer.