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<p>If he was feeling that confident and entitled to his eventual admissions success I’m surprised he bothered to show up for the interview at all. Why not just “pass” on the whole thing?</p>
<p>coreur, I wondered as well why he even bothered scheduling the interview. He could have easily said, “no thank you, I am going to pass on having an alumni interview.”</p>
<p>I think IJustDrive put it very well,</p>
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<p>The first rule of having a good interview is to be courteous. If you schedule an interview show up and then respect the interviewer’s time. I believe that 99% of alumni interviews do it because they enjoy meeting the applicants and they want to be able to write a glowing report. They realize the applicants are young, can be shy, awkward or say the wrong thing. All of that is easily overlooked, but bad manners are much harder to overlook.</p>
<p>One thing I’ve learned is that parents who drop off or pick up are almost as anxious as their kids are about how the interview went. I’ve been asked point blank, with the applicant standing there, “So how did he/she do?” Having been the anxious parent standing outside waiting for my kids, I sympathize. I now make a point of telling every parent whom I meet, “You have a wonderful son/daughter and must be very proud of them. It was a pleasure to talk to ____ today.”</p>
<p>I think it lets everyone know that they didn’t ‘blow it.’ They can’t ‘blow it’ unless they are like the arrogent jerk who said ‘pass.’ (Response to his parents, “I really appreciate ‘arrogent jerk’ making time for the interview today.”)</p>
<p>D had about 8 interviews during this most recent college admissions season. 7 of them went great; the one that did not was conducted by a Human Resources manager. Some of the questions she was asked definitely sounded like HR-types of questions rather than college admissions questions. (sorry, I know this is supposed to be the interviewer’s thread, just wondering, I guess, what they think?)</p>
<p>That “pass” student must have been just as obnoxious to the coach, and as unaware about the impact of his behavior.<br>
You wonder about some kids if they behave like this when they know they are being evaluated-how do they behave when they feel completely free?</p>
<p>Basic rules of courtesy should be the bare minimum; shelf-lifes absolutely correct. And while everyones probably thinking duh, no brainer, Im remembering an interview I was conducting when the students phone went off. Instead of diving for it and turning it off with an apology, he answered, started a conversation and seemed fully prepared to go on at some length until he saw my raised eyebrows. Up until then Id thought he just seemed unusually self-confident (came from a nearby boarding school noted for its very privileged students, let me know right away about his early acceptance at Yale) but I certainly wasnt going to hold that against him. However the phone incident left a very negative impression which I mentioned in my report. So any highschool students reading this who think they are terrible interviewees because they get nervous and stumble a bit, dont worry! Being nervous is the norm! Its being at the other end of the scale self confidence edging over into rudeness thats a problem.</p>
<p>^ Priceless feedback.</p>
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<p>Unfortunately (or fortunately) most of the kids in this category will not recognize this comment as directed to them.</p>