<p>it sounds like all the prestigious schools have bad interviewers…is this true?
i had the most fantastic interview at kenyon with a current senior. i think that it works better that way rather than having strange old alums conduct them
but i haven’t had an awkward moment (yet)haha…</p>
<p>For a recent interview with the most prestigious school I applied to, I was supposed to bring my SAT scores and transcript. I got halfway there before I realized they were sitting at home on my table, so I called her, she said it was fine, and I turned around and was ten minutes late.</p>
<p>Then, when I got there, I apologized, told her I’d been rushing from tutoring. She asked me where I tutor and I was really confused, so I just said “…at my school?” We do it for NHS and I’m tutoring in biology." She went “…oh. I thought you were maybe tutoring in Harlem or something” (I live in a NYC suburb).</p>
<p>Yeah, she thought I was tutoring an inner-city kid. I was tutoring a friend in bio. It was awkward.</p>
<p>“i had the most fantastic interview at kenyon with a current senior. i think that it works better that way rather than having strange old alums conduct them”</p>
<p>It matters what you want in your interview. For instance, “strange old alums” are probably going to be similar to some of the professors you’ll have in college.</p>
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<p>Absolutely true. Only the perviest, breath-smelling whackos graduate from prestigious colleges and flood their alumni societies because they want to interview young and nubile high school seniors. But not to worry. I’ve heard that this applies to only the top ten USNWR colleges. Number eleven has actually cool and nice people interviewing. They only allow alums who are “hotties” to interview for them.</p>
<p>Puh-leez</p>
<p>T26E4 ^5 10 char</p>
<p>Me: Would you like a chewing gum?
I: No, thank you.
Me: (wriggling gum) It’s Juicy Fruit!
I: (laughing) No, thanks.
Me: Oh… But I insist.
I: O_o
Me: …
I: …</p>
<p>She took the gum in the end but didn’t chew it. Maybe she took it as evidence…</p>
<p>@ kuronata: Why on earth would you even ask if they wanted gum??? . . .</p>
<p>At a coffee shop with a “world’s best grandpa”-looking interviewer.</p>
<p>Him: Come on, what do you want? I can get you anything.
Me: (was drawing out my wallet) thank you sir, but you don’t have to. I can pay for myself
Him: Don’t worry about it. it’s my treat.
Me: no really…I have money (okay…could have avoided sounding like a whiny kid)
Him: nahh it’s my treat.
Me: really?
Him: yep
Me: okey then, * points to the most expensive in-house specialty* I’ll get that.
Him: stares at the menu longer than necessary. <em>nods</em>
Me: <em>gradually inches away</em></p>
<p>That was awkward. But the rest of the interview went amazingly well! I felt like i was his mini-me</p>
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<p>Haha, that reminds me of my Yale interview… I sat in the coffeeshop not recognizing my interviewer anywhere (forgot to ask what he looked like). Then I saw this young hot guy at the cashier saying that he was meeting someone, then they started talking about Cornell… I assumed he was my guy and shook his hand, then realized something was off when his name was wrong. Turns out he was interviewing someone else there for URichmond… then my Yale interviewer, an old silver haired guy, came up and I awkwardly followed him back to his table. Haha. Seriously, the Richmond guy could have been a model. I remember thinking he was too good looking to be a Yale alumni… (you think of old, greyhaired, etc.)</p>
<p>My interviewer from Carnegie Mellon asked me which other colleges I was applying to. I wanted to make his college sound better so I brought up this other school I was applying to and insulted it. Then he told me he went there for grad school. PWNED</p>
<p>I had my Uni of Chicago interview today.
I felt stupid, because I walked in, and intently stared at this woman who was staring at me wondering if could be my interviewer (even though I knew it was a man; you know, one of those frantic thoughts: He all of a sudden couldn’t come and sent his wife in lieu!), and then I walked around no one made any sort of recognition, so I went to sit down, seeing that the only open seat was next to her, so I asked if I could sit, but feeling a bit under the weather, my voice was more of high-pitched mutter-shriek, which she stared at me strangley for, and then said yes. Just as I sat down, a man a table away against the wall said, “You must be who I’m looking for… for the interview.” Who knows what he thinks of me.
The first thing he asks is, “So what questions do you have for me?” Kind of unprepared start off this way, I forgot my list of questions and ended up asking what dorm he was in. But when I said it, I was still a bit flustered and quite nervous, so I more said, “House… what you were in? … Which!!” But he understood, and then talked about how his house was destroyed. Lol.
I was really embarrassed because he asked me what I like about Biology, and I went on to talk about my AP Bio class I took last year, and how we did some gene splicing, making bacteria glow. His job involved doing some similar things, so he asked me exactly how we did it, and I totally forgot (this was well over 7 months ago!) and I mumbled something about Lac z, interons, and plasmids… but he just gave me a strange look and I laughed nervously. Other than that, he did a lot of the talking. He didn’t ask me anything. He asked what I wanted in a college, but that was about it. Instead he just kept asking me if I had any questions. But the interview lasted a full hour and a half!</p>
<p>We were talking about musical theatre, and my Harvard interviewer said “what’s your favourite show?” And me, being honest, I said “I feel like I should say something by Sondheim, but actually it’s Wicked” and he said “OH! Steven Schwartz came to campus and we performed Children of Eden for him!” And without thinking, I made this face like…“ew”. And I totally froze, because he had been talking about how into theatre he was so I was terrified I’d basically just slagged off his department and his leisure activities and a show he liked. Luckily, he said he hated the show too!!</p>
<p>bump!!!
Love this thread</p>
<p>I had an interview for Clark university and she was going to meet me at school in my guidance office. The problem was that it was around lunch time when the our school gets real rowdy. I also had my friend interviewing right next to me who had better grades than me so i was a little worried. </p>
<p>I went first which was probably the worst mistake. She asked me about my career goals,and why i would like to go there, then all of a sudden all hell breaks loose outside our room. This two kids are fighting of some nonsense and happens to take inside the guidance office. The room has a see through window so as i am trying to talk to her, she can see the kid punching the other one. Once it finally broken up my guidance counselor apologizes for the ruckus.</p>
<p>My interview no longer continued to be interested in talking about my academics. When i was trying to salvage the rest of the interview, a probation officer had to use the room for one of the kids that was fighting had violated his probation. End of story, friend got accepted and i did not, kid was later handcuffed and shipped off to juvenile and my interview made a swift escape.</p>
<p>Halima, that takes the cake</p>
<p>so my interviewer for dartmouth was like, oh i decided to go into business rather than gov because although gov is cool and all, it takes forever before you get where you want to be. i don’t want to spend my life doing their b*tchwork</p>
<p>and then i was like, oh. yea that b*tchwork</p>
<p>and then there was an awkward silence</p>
<p>Nothing too embarrassing. I had my first college interview as a phone interview. It wasn’t bad but it wasn’t great. I sounded like a dummy with my seemingly limited vocabulary :P</p>
<p>Well I think blahblahblah is interesting. blahblahblah is also very interesting. I want to study biology because i find it very interesting. i think the school is very interesting. I find medicine very interesting. Yeah I think that is very um… interesting.</p>
<p>Can you tell what word I overused? 
yeah for every one question he asked, I inserted at least one interesting in my response =/ i should work on that haha. i was kind of nervous so i couldn’t really think of nice sounding sentences and words :P</p>
<p>012345567 - fascinating, exciting, intriguing are backup words for when all I can think of is the word “interesting”</p>
<p>This is an old one…over 30 years ago…I lived in a small town so the Princeton interviewer was the only P grad in town and interviewed all the hopefuls (2 or 3 a year). He was also a colleague of my Dad and the whole interview was about how great the contacts are from P, how going to such a prestigious school would change your life, how it was the key to his success…blah blah…and I blurt out, "but you are here in little-nowhere town and my goal is to leave… No I did not get into P (waitlisted) but I felt better when D said…oh so and so is a jerk and everyone knows it…</p>
<p>D2 assumed her interviewer was a woman because of his name. Ooops! The interview isn’t until Friday but she’s worried again because she doesn’t know how to pronounce his first name.</p>