<p>For those of you who've already done interviews, tell us what it was like. Mine was with coincidentally, an alumni of my high school, so we had a lot of commonality between us, and that made the conversation flow along nicely. The interview went on for two and a half hours, when it was supposed to be only one. I really felt I engaged with the interviewer and vice versa; it was like taking to an uncle or an older friend. When I asked him what my chances were for Harvard, he said that he couldn't really say since he had seen many top-notch applicants get turned away.</p>
<p>For all those sweating over the interview, my advice is to be yourself - be spontaneous and natural as possible. You will find the interview surprisingly easy, even fun - as I did. Good luck! ;)</p>
<p>My interview was this morning and it was great!! It was at the Harvard Club in Manhattan with two interviewers, an '08 grad and an '06 grad. It was for about 50 minutes, which is pretty standard. First they wanted me to verify my name, address, and test scores, and after that they just prompted me with questions about my favorite classes, my extra-currics, how I've spent my summers, etc., and everything just flowed from there. They were genuinely interested in everything, especially the '06 grad because she's a journalist and I'm going to pursue journalism and communications. We even talked a lot about the Harvard Crimson. Anyway, it was a nice, laid-back interview that pretty much tested how well I was able to keep a conversation going...really nothing to worry about. :)</p>
<p>This will be my SECOND interview with a person in the medical field aka I have no chance of connecting with them in terms of career ambitions/interests. Interstingly, this will also be my second Asian interviewer from a top school.</p>
<p>I HAVE A QUESTION!</p>
<p>For Harvard, do interviews actually count a lot for admissions? Or are they considered rather trivial?</p>
<p>My interviewer told me that the interview was incredibly unimportant in comparison to other things on the application....Then again...why would an admissions committee tell us that?</p>
<p>The interviewer was INCREDIBLY nice, and the interview was a direct result of how understanding/awesome they were (and my awesome replies to questions!)</p>
<p>That's really not at all an adequate description of my interview.</p>
<p>The interview was a conversation in form, and it was essentially the interviewer asking about interests, and not just the ones that were put down on the application.</p>
<p>The interviewer wanted to know if I had questions about Harvard, but also asked me what I was planning to study at Harvard, and what I thought that study could let me do.</p>
<p>My interviewer was so fantastic, she was very genuine and acted entirely interested in everything I was saying. She did ask standard interview questions, but we both kept going off topic so it really turned into more of a conversation. It lasted about an hour an 45 minutes and was really relaxed.</p>
<p>On the other hand, my interview was extremely negative and my interviewer would not stop talking about his experiences there and at other places. he bashed Harvard a lot too. :( it depends on who's your regional interviewer.</p>
<p>Baelor~ she asked about a EC's, why harvard, what sets me apart, The Great Gatsby, and the rest of the questions were more conversational based on other things I said. Honestly, I don't know if my experience would be standard though...we sort of realized we were insanely similar early on which made the whole situation super informal and slightly ridiculous.</p>
<p>my interviewer was a pastor, and we talked about our mutual love for latin for pretty near 20 minutes. he gave the latin oration at his harvard graduation, and i have won multiple awards in latin, and i want to study abroad in italy so... but the one question i was not expecting was "what should harvard know about you that they cannot find from their application?" so i kinda stuttered through that one. it only lasted 45 minutes, and i think it went well. he was a really nice guy.</p>
<p>^^with the Gatsby thing it wasn't like a quiz or anything...just for my region we filled out a pre-info sheet and it asked our three favorite books and I actually didn't write Gatsby but my interviewer thinks the question is lame so she instead wanted to know why Gatsby was all the rage and so many people choose it as a favorite</p>
<p>My son had his interview on Saturday. He said he spoke for 1 hr and that the interviewer was very nice. My son talks a lot outside of home but does not speak much with us. All I could gather from him is that they talked about bunch of his interests and stuff. I get a feeing that in most cases a <em>good/neutral</em> feedback probably does not matter much in the whole scheme of things, but that a <em>bad</em> feedback can be damaging.</p>
<p>It was lovely. My interviewer was this cute little Asian doctor and we talked about HARVARD! He asked me the requisite questions: SAT scores, class rank, etc. And then we proceeded to talk about his life at Harvard, why I'm applying, where I see myself in ten years, and all that silly stuff. He was extremely complementary! (He said that I was an outstanding applicant and that he would be surprised if I didn't get in!) But I kinda laughed it off in my head because he obviously has not seen some of the results threads here on CC.</p>
<p>All in all, I had a great experience, he was a really nice and REALLY interesting guy. I had fun talking with him.</p>
<p>Wow here are very interesting stories・・・I'm so fun with seeing you guy's interesting stories;) To me ,interview with alumni of Haravard seems so difficult task but I saw your stories and it makes me so relax!!</p>
<p>Ugh. Why couldn't I have gotten my Yale interviewer again? This guy was this gruff intellectual who was not afraid of having absurdly high-level discourse with me. I mentioned interest in philosophy/economics and mentioned having read Marx - and he happened to have worked in finance for 30 years and was a philosophy professor for 18 years. He went on this lecture about Hegel and explained the current economic crisis in an international context. He was a very smart guy, but I don't have the philosophical or economic knowledge to keep up and it was really daunting. I did an okay job talking about my interests but I've just regurgitated this stuff so much that it feels stale. I needed more preparation for this. Hopefully Yale works out.</p>