<p>Lotf629, yeah thats honestly the truth. It worked out well I hope, his reaction certainly was priceless because he thought I had no idea how to do it, as I was dressed to the nines as a preppy white kid. Later on we also touched upon the subject of high art in the media, and had an in depth discussion concerning the modern classic "A Shot at Love With Tila Tequila."</p>
<p>"NSMom, if I'm an international applicant, will I ever get interviews? "</p>
<p>That's totally up to Harvard. When it comes to internationals, whether they get interviewed depends upon the availability of interviewers and whether Harvard admissions asks alum to interview you. It is possible to be admitted without having an interview. Due to the lack of alum interviewers, a much smaller proportion of international applicants get interviewed than is the case with applicants residing in the U.S. This is true even though the Harvard admissions staff travels abroad to interview students over the summer.</p>
<p>Harvard would not want you to be interviewed by a close friend of your family as that would not be an unbiased interview.</p>
<p>A friend of mine from Bulgaria couldn't get an interview there so Harvard flew him out to interview him...Guess they really wanted him.</p>
<p>(He's a freshman there now)</p>
<p>My friend went for her interview and her interviewer was late, so she texted him to let him know where she was. She typed a little too fast so she ended up saying:</p>
<p>"Hi, this is Coco Randa. Just letting you know that I am here."</p>
<p>He introduced himself to Coco Randa and apparently had a "jolly good laugh."</p>
<p>Oh no, I absolutely win.
So I'm in my Swarthmore interview (yeah tako) and she asks if I could do anything (as a job) in the whole world, and money was not an issue, what would I be/do? I say "well I hate to sound like a beauty queen " <strong>weird look from interviewer</strong> "but I would want world peace" (flip out inside) "Um, I mean I would want to make the world a better place" Then I procede to explain all the bad things in the world, and in doing so, I begin to CRY.
What WHAT? Cry? Yeah. Cry. In my interview, after I told her that my dream job would be, and I quote, "world peace."
Not going to Swarthmore, that's for sure.</p>
<p>My story is similar to the OP's...I had an interview with Bowdoin and we were out to lunch. By the end of the interview I hadn't even started my drink because she kept me talking the entire time...as we were getting up to leave she made a comment about how i must have been nervous because I didn't drink anything. I was about to say something but she said, I'll have the waiter get it in a cup for you to bring with you. Before I said it was okay she was asking the waiter for another cup. Soo..then I had to sit there with her after we had said good bye, thank you, etc waiting for my drink to go. But the waiter misunderstood and brought us another drink...my interviewer got sort of upset and made them go back and get what she had asked for. </p>
<p>The whole fiasco lasted about 10 minutes of awkwardly standing and waiting for the drink I didn't even want after we had said good bye...I had no idea what to say and the 10 minutes felt like the longest 10 minutes of my life!</p>
<p>to halima, Is crying necessarily a bad thing during interviews?</p>
<p>Halima, at least u didn't start crying and say, "I'd like to thank the Academy, God, my family, the director, the crew, and everyone else. Thank You Thank You" lol</p>
<p>@jkmar21: glad to know it, I'll remember that story for a whiiiile. I even have a picture in my head.</p>
<p>@legendofmax: those last comments of your interviewer were among the most offensive things I have heard in my life. >: ( I've sometimes heard people suggest that a tragedy can put your college ambitions in perspective, but never before the other way around. What a jackass. I don't even know why I'm posting about it except to say that I'm sorry you had to sit there and be polite.</p>
<p>I was part of a group interviewing with an doctor for a Summer Internship at a Hospital. After we had all told the doctor that we were interested in medicine, the doctor turned to this kid sitting next to me and asked why he wanted to be a physician. The kid looked confused and replied "No, I want to be a doctor". I had to bite down on my lip to keep from laughing.</p>
<p>My interviewer asked me what subjects i liked the least and i said i didn't really hate any but i felt that econ was the most impractical, that i would never need to know market shifts, trends, etc. unless i wanted to be an economic analyst. I said i felt like a 4th grader that always complains, "ugh... math, when am i ever going to need that?" Turns out she was an econ major. She said she understood and felt the same way sometimes but it still made things realllllly awkward.</p>
<p>legendofmax,
Your Yale interviewer was totally out of line, and you should tell Yale's admissions so that no one else is subjected to that person. No school wants an interviewer to act like that, and admissions appreciates it when someone has the guts to honestly (and nonanonymously) describe an experience like yours.</p>
<p>Admissions offices at places like Yale have ways of discretely managing to not use incompetent interviewers or training them so that they act in an appropriate way.</p>
<p>I'm surprised there isn't a system in place for the large colleges to do a "How's my interviewing" to rate the interviewers like people can do for drivers. I'm sure the biggest problem is that people would put lower marks for bad reasons, but it could help out weed out the big problems like mentioned in this thread.</p>
<p>Interviewer: What is the thing that we need to eliminate in order to make this world a better place?
Me: Prejudice and racism. It's the cause of so much trouble and is utterly unfair, blah blah (forget what I said exactly)
Interviewer: Do you see a lot of it in your everyday life?
Me: Not really...
Interviewer: So you just think it causes a lot of trouble elsewhere in the world?
Me: No! I see it! Just not in excess!</p>
<p>I talked about places I had traveled to compete in my sport, and randomly added Spain to the list.
I've NEVER been to Spain, and especially, never competed in Spain.</p>
<p>And for some reason, out of all the countries I listed, the interviewer came back to Spain. "So You've Been to Spain?". I was scared that she was going to ask about it more, but she just wrote something down and left it at that. It was awkward that she asked that about Spain, the one place I hadn't been.
I don't know why I said it, it just sort of came out of my mouth.</p>
<p>This was in my interview for Georgetown.</p>
<p>well, my Penn interviewer bought me a muffin -- a delicious blueberry muffin at that. Then we started talking, and I guess I got on a sugar high at one point or another, and I basically blurted out that I'd been ridiculously nervous about the interview (and I meant it). Told him how I prepared a list of 20 or so questions/conversation topics to talk about in case the interview got stale, how I was reading a friend's econ notes so I wouldn't feel completely out of my depth, how I was memorizing events from the news for the past week, etc.</p>
<p>He ended up making fun of me and calling me an overachiever.</p>
<p>I mean, geez, getting made fun of by the interviewer? >.< Haha, cool guy though.</p>
<p>my interviewer from vanderbilt is a young and hot and a recent graduate from vandy. we met each other at a starbucks on a friday night so everything was really casual. then, one of his drunk friends came up to him and was like, "HEY ___! and helllloo (refering to me). dude since when you two start seeing each other. man, she's young. that ****'s illegal man." then my interview was really embarrassed and annoyed and told his friend that he's in the middle of an interview. haha lets just say the interview was a little awkward from there on.</p>
<p>Oh boy there were some doozies when I was applyin to undergrad schools.</p>
<p>Princeton interviewer and I talked about nerdiness and its endearing qualities for a while, which was pretty amusing. we talked about how all the math and physics majors he knew (and he was one) loved video games. So then he talks about a video game club at Princeton and I said jokingly, "was that your favorite club?" He suddenly turns upset and says (because I was pretty fat at the time) "we also had an eating club, that probably would have been your favorite." yikes..I guess my comment was inappropriate and he returned fire, but his rebuttal made me laugh, and he didn't like that either.</p>
<p>CMC Interviewer was this Asian lady, relatively recent grad, so pretty young. She opened up with (I kid you not) "guess what ethnicity I am?" She was Asian, that much was clear, but I couldn't figure it out. So I just guessed, "Chinese?" Her response: "No, thats not the only country in Asia, you know..."</p>
<p>Harvard Interview: So you like to speech and debate huh? what do you like best about giving speeches?
Me: "Well my favorite aspect of debating is (I go on for 20 seconds and shes smiling at me)...oh wait, you asked about speech huh? hmmm I only do that because waiting a whole tournament for a few debates gets boring."</p>
<p>MIT Interviewer: "Alot of the classes I took allowed a cheat sheet of shorts, where you put all the info you can onto one page"
Me: "Yea, i dunno though, I dislike the idea. I think that promotes the ability to do well in a class without learning the material, by relying on formulas or tricks to solve problems.
Her: "It was the thing I liked best. I thought it forced us to learn all the material of the course before the final..."
Me: "Oh, well that works too.."</p>
<p>For all you that are nervous about awkward moments in interviews or the fact that you may have not said something perfectly right, relax. An interview is meant to showcase your personality; personality by definition is not machine. It's not spouting the best multisyllabic response to a sincere question. It's not being completely safe and risk-free. Being relaxed and being yourself can lead to some amusing moments, but overall it will help the interviewer get a sense of who you are. And it relieves your own stress- its easy to be you, hard to be someone you aren't. In my case, despite my examples (and there are more of course), I got into a good number of those schools. In fact, I spoke with some of my interviewers afterwards and many appreciated the fact that I acted natural. Best of luck homies.</p>
<p>Great thread haha.</p>
<p>I haven't had any interviews yet, though a few are coming up :(</p>
<p>Northstarmom, what would you say was the best response you got for the question "Why Harvard?"</p>
<p>Really funny thread!!!</p>
<p>A Brown alum friend interviewed a prospective who answered the Why Brown with "My whole family went to Penn...and I hate my family!!"</p>