<p>Do you need to interview at Columbia? How do you schedule? Before or after you submit your application?
Mbe</p>
<p>You don't need one, and you can't schedule it. After you apply, if there is an alumni interviewer available in your vicinity, s/he will contact you to make an appt. If no one does, you're not expected to have one.</p>
<p>And, just noticing that you life in NJ, there's very little chance that there won't be an available interviewer.</p>
<p>Garland's first paragraph is completely correct. The second paragraph is wrong. In the NY area there are plenty of interviewers, but an absolutely enormous number of applicants (particularly for RD, since every kid in the area seems to want to throw an app CU's way). There's no guarantee you'll get an interview even if you're in a major metro area where thare are lots of alums. If mbe is applying ED, it is more likely he'll get one.</p>
<p>What I find interesting is: Five out of the seven people who applied to Columbia from my HS were interviewed. All five of them were rejected. The two that got in are the same people who didn't interview. That is a little crazy.</p>
<p>My guess-the 2 who didn't interview were probably auto-admits.</p>
<p>What is an auto admit?</p>
<p>In adcom language, an applicant who either has a very strong hook, and/or whose stats and personal qualities are so outstanding based on the app that they are automatically admitted without the app having to go to committee rounds.</p>
<p>An auto-admit wouldn't get pulled from the interview database. Everyone who sumbits a Part 1 goes into the interview database. They may or may not have been auto-admits, but it is not true that they didn't receive interviews because they were auto-admits.</p>
<p>As I've posted before, an interview CAN hurt you. It is simply not true that it can only help you. Even a mediocre/average interview hurts you a little bit.</p>
<p>I hear that interviews play a big part in waitlist decisions. I can't say how much of an impact it had in my particular case, but I had a very good interview (my interviewer gave me a copy of her remarks a few months after I got in), and I got in off the waitlist. I would say get an interview by any means. It could be your saving grace, and it wouldn't keep you out unless you were just really obnoxious or something (you wore a Princeton sweatshirt to your Columbia interview, or came off really arrogant, etc.).</p>
<p>Every decision is made at the margins, and it really isn't true that interviews play a "big part" at any stage. They CAN keep you out or push you in, as the process is based on so many different factors. If you're mediocre in your interview, it can keep you out because the next person had a better interview.</p>