<p>Do I need to schedule interviews for the schools I am applying to? How much weight do the schools place on the interview? I know MIT practically requires an interview. I didn't think about interviews for the other schools.
Here is my list:</p>
<p>Penn
UChicago
Notre Dame
Northwestern
Harvard
Stanford
Yale
Cornell
Brown
Columbia</p>
<p>Thanks in in advance for the help!</p>
<p>Google the Common Data Set for each school, section C7, to see what weighting they put on showing interest.</p>
<p>Most of those schools have some sort of alumni interviewing system. None (besides MIT) are mandatory. You don’t schedule them – they contact you. Just check your email and voicemail. Maybe. </p>
<p>Most of those colleges have limited volunteers so an amount of applicants will not get interviewed. That’s why it’s not mandatory and are the least important factor – often not a factor whatsoever.</p>
<p>I was accepted at 2 Ivies. One interviewed, the other didn’t. Don’t sweat it.</p>
<p>If you want to laugh about it, find the you tube video of the Fresh Prince getting an auto accept at Princeton following an on the spot interview.</p>
<p>I hope that is not your entire list, just the list of schools with interview potential? Otherwise, where are the safeties?</p>
<p>If a school offers interviews, take advantage of them. It is another way to demonstrate your interest in the school and to provide additional insight into you as an applicant.</p>
<p>@T26E4 If the interviewers contact me, then i wont be able to schedule my interviews in one weekend. Then my ivy league master plan is ruined. :(</p>
<p>I always imagined that I would kick my parents out for a weekend and turn my house into a brothel crashing my moms Mercedes in the process. Then I would invite the interviewer over to see my business brilliance. Of course he would receive some complimentary services since he IS an esteemed alumni of an Ivy League school… </p>
<p>But I guess plans change.</p>
<p>@beantowngirl
Yes you are correct. I am not confident enough to compose my list entirely of Ivy Leagues and top 10 schools. </p>
<p>My entire list:
Penn
UChicago
Notre Dame
Berkeley
UCLA
UCSD
Northwestern
Harvard
Stanford
Yale
Cornell</p>
<p>Maybe
UTexas Austin
Brown
Columbia</p>
<p>Notably, UCSD and possibly UTexas Austin would be my safeties…</p>
<p>Assuming you are IS for Cal UT will cost a pretty penny. I hope your parents are willing to pay for that.</p>
<p>I most likely wont attend UT Austin. I have at least 10 other schools Im applying to. I’m sure ill get into at least a couple of them.</p>
<p>rocnation, for some interesting reading, find the thread called Picking up the Pieces about a student named Andison from a couple of years ago. It’s probably in the Parent’s Forum. It might motivate you to add a few less lofty schools to your list.</p>
<p>@boysx3
To you and whoever else thinks my list is unrealistic, let me decide that. I am my own worst critic so I know if I am getting in over my head. The way I designed my college list is to apply to the ivies and other top 20 schools because they are a crapshoot for pretty much everyone. I want to have no regrets. That being said, my list isn’t unrealistic or foolish–just optimistic and hopeful. </p>
<p>I have UCSD as a safety which I am 100% sure I will get into. I am quite confident I will get into at least one of the other “lofty” schools I am applying to. So I didn’t ask if my list was unrealistic, I asked if I needed to worry about interviewing for the schools on my list. Excuse my rudeness but you have not contributed to the conversation–merely attacked my list. So if you do know the answer to my question or know where I can find it, please let me know. I appreciate your concern but I am not looking for criticism regarding an irrelevant topic. </p>
<p>No hard feelings
Thanks!</p>
<p>rocnation, I am not attacking your list, I am only a parent who wants to make sure you have choices–good choices, happy choices–to make next spring. I don’t want you to feel like you are “settling” for UCSD if the dice don’t roll your way. You deserve more than that, and while the odds of being blanked aren’t necessarily huge…they exist. So please just take a look at the thread I suggested.</p>
<p>AS far as interviewing…it never hurts to interview, if you can. Some schools have admissions reps or alumni contact you to set up interviews in your home town, some you can set up when you are making plans to visit schools at your convenience. Some schools even permit phone interviews. It’s different for each school, and each school weighs interviews differently, so check the website for each school.</p>
<p>Out of curiosity, what interests you about the schools on your list, other than their rankings? It’s an unusual student who would be interested in Notre Dame as well as Berkeley and UCSD, or University of Chicago and Columbia as well as Brown.</p>
<p>And I love your reference to Risky Business…it was filmed at my husband’s high school ( unfortunately…no longer there).</p>
<p>@boysx3
No hard feelings! Thank you for the concerns though. I will look over the article when I get home.</p>
<p>The colleges I have chosen are primarily for their business rankings. Berkeley and Notre Dame both have renowned business schools (Haas and Mendoza respectively). UChicago and Northwestern were thrown in there as a homage to my parents/grandparents. I was born in Chicago but I currently reside in southern California. I wouldn’t mind going to either one. Wharton (Penn) is my top choice but I am not expecting too much.</p>
<p>Stanford and the Ivies are my “hopeful” schools. I have heard of kids getting into Harvard (arguably the hardest Ivy) and getting rejected by Cornell (with the highest acceptance rate). I think that Ivies are all looking for different kinds of people so I should apply to as many as I can, without sacrificing quality of essays, so that I can increase my chances. </p>
<p>At that caliper of schools, much of the admissions process is seemingly random. I may get lucky and get accepted to at least a few of the schools but if not, I have the UCs and USC as my fall back. </p>
<p>I am pretty much guaranteed a Presidential scholarship to USC (Pending national merit finalist). Marshall is a pretty strong business program so I definitely wouldn’t mind going there.</p>
<p>And not to sound overly confident but I feel pretty good about my chances at Berkeley. My stats are above the averages (GPA, SAT, and SAT II), my extracurriculars are of Berkeley caliper, and I’ve spent thousands of sleepless nights working on my essays. My lit teacher, private counselor, and whoever else has read my personal statements, have all rated my essays favorably. So I do like my chances at Cal and USC.
If you like, you can look at my old posts where I posted up my stats.
So basically, UCSD is a last, last resort. </p>
<p>Risky Business was a great movie! I believe it was filmed in Evanston (Northwestern is looking pretty appealing)!</p>
<p>You realize that the business schools are for grad students. Neither Harvard nor Stanford’s business schools allow undergrads to enroll in classes. In fact, they don’t even allow them to audit classes. Not sure about the other schools on your list and their policies. Stanford and Harvard do not offer business undergrad majors either. Check out Wharton if that’s important to you.</p>
<p>And I interview for Stanford - interviews are not mandatory, they are done by alums, and they count very little (which is appropriate since we don’t get your application and we can’t effectively compare you to other applicants.) I suppose if you were truly obnoxious, that might get the adcoms attention, or if there was significant information that you hadn’t included in your application, it could make a difference. Otherwise, it’s an opportunity for you to learn more about the school and what it has to offer.</p>
<p>M’s Mom
Yes I know this. I never specified that I would attend Harvard or Stanford business. Those are graduate programs. From my schools, these are the business programs:</p>
<p>Penn - Wharton
Berkeley - Haas
USC - Marshall
Cornell - Dyson
Notre Dame - Mendoza</p>
<p>For the schools on my list without business programs, I will take economics.</p>
<p>As others have mentioned, interviewers will contact you for several of the colleges on your list. I’d check the websites for all of the schools, however, just to make sure. It never hurts to be thorough.</p>
<p>When I was applying to college, MIT, Harvard, and Yale offered regional interviews where I lived (CA - Central Coast). My Harvard interviewer brought some pretty cool football pics; he was on the team with JFK. I remember him boasting about how he tackled the future President…as he dragged his tie through his eggs. It was a breakfast interview.</p>
<p>I’d guess that the interview carries very little weight…but, as an alumnus/interviewer for one of the colleges on your list, I don’t have any “real” inside knowledge of the college admissions process. The local alumni association sends out a call for interviewers. I show up at a cattle-call for college applicants, conduct 20-30-minute “conversations,” and write up a few paragraphs on each student.</p>
<p>Your chances are good at several of the schools to which you are applying. As you know, the top-tier schools look for a lofty GPA, a challenging course of study, SATs in the 2300-2400 range, and an “exceptional” portfolio of extracurricular activities. (I put the word exceptional in quotes because I’m not sure what passes for exceptional/impressive/outstanding nowadays.) The top schools have their pick of high-achieving applicants. Yale gets some pretty good students, too. ;^)</p>
<p>Good luck!</p>
<p>Bartleby007
Tacking JFK would definitely be a conversation starter! Unfortunately my SAT isn’t in the 2300-2400 range (2240) but I have a 4.7 weighted 3.9 unweighted (class rank 12 out of 662) GPA which hopefully is in the Ivy League level and I think my extracurriculars are pretty good.
I hope my essays are good enough! </p>
<p>So nervous!</p>
<p>@rocnation951:
I bet that you’ll do quite well in the admissions process. You’re GPA and SAT scores are high. If you wanted the best shot at the elite colleges, I would have advised you to take the SAT again in order to post a score in the upper range. A few 800s on SAT subject tests would also help.</p>
<p>I’m not familiar with your extracurricular activities, but they need to show a depth of involvement/accomplishment that makes your application stand out from the crowd.</p>
<p>Best of luck with everything!</p>
<p>Even if the CDS says interviews count little, if the interview report comes through to adcoms and reviewers, you can bet it will be read and considered. The interviewer is often the one person on the “team” who will have met a candidate. In some cases, his or her enthusiasm can make a difference in perceptions.</p>
<p>If you have scheduling issues, work this out with the interviewer, respectfully, and meet your commitments.</p>
<p>If you guys are interested, I posted a thread with most of my stats (this was a couple months ago).</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/what-my-chances/1365837-help-me-out-chances-cal-upenn-others.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/what-my-chances/1365837-help-me-out-chances-cal-upenn-others.html</a></p>
<p>Check it out!</p>
<p>If I may, I’d like to disagree with lookingforward’s assertion: “Even if the CDS says interviews count little, if the interview report comes through to adcoms and reviewers, you can bet it will be read and considered. The interviewer is often the one person on the “team” who will have met a candidate. In some cases, his or her enthusiasm can make a difference in perceptions.”</p>
<p>The fact is interviewers vary incredibly. What a positive/negative report do is confirm the “gut” feeling that the majority readers have about the applicant already. And these are only effectual for those on the bubble – some have already been pushed ahead and many have already be rejected at this point. In my 20+ years of interviewing, I can recall 2-3 students who were admitted or waitlisted whom I wrote decidedly neutral reports. Obviously, the admissions committee saw enough for these people that they felt my interaction with them and subsequent report did not douse their enthusiasm.</p>