This is interesting to me. If true, that might suggest that during the regional or full committee meetings, if the committee comes across a good candidate they did not think to interview earlier but then want more information on then the admissions officers might contact them directly for an interview on short notice. Of course, interviews with the admissions office are always a positive sign as they have access to your application - they are unlikely to “waste” time interviewing poor candidates and the majority of people I know of with admissions office interviews were accepted.
It is possible. But I should note, I know of IMO, IPhO, etc. medalists from other countries who were still interviewed - who would almost surely count under the “exceptionally strong candidates” banner. Obviously, we are working with a small set of data here, but I do not personally know of such exceptional individuals accepted without an interview from a limited interview country.
If they exist, this would be extremely rare given the information we have and the past several years’ worth of decision threads on this forum where every international student from a limited interview country stated they had an interview, fitting the description you mentioned of someone stating “Interviews are done only after pre-screening in our country. But there have been some admits without interviews. They are very very rare”
1/ Harvard will not care that you are conservative. There are, in fact, conservatives on campus. The question for the admitted applicant is whether s/he will feel comfortable in the minority.
2/ Will Harvard look at your Twitter feed? I doubt it. There are too many applicants. That said, they will certainly look into reports about inappropriate social media behavior, as happened last year, and resulted in 10+ accepted students having their offers rescinded. But their behavior totally different than yours.
Having said that, you should assume that prospective employers will look at your social media.
@skieurope@Telluric I worked on my common app essay for about 4 months, making it very smooth and grammatically flawless. I also made sure each and every sentence served its purpose and got it proof-read and edited by my English teacher (few sentences were altered and the essay was shortened from 750 to 650, but no new words were added by the teacher whatsoever. My originality was preserved in that manner.) However, I had to write the Harvard Supplement in 1 day (because my previous supplement wasn’t as strong in my view). Even though I showed it to my teacher and he approved that it was very good, I couldn’t get it edited by the teacher. Also, there was no word limit, so I didn’t have that ‘need’ to boil the essay down, which definitely resulted in few under-crafted sentences. Now as I read the supplement, I found a few grammatical errors and sentences that could have been conveyed in a better way. Could such discrepancy be a red flag? Or will they understand it?
I’ve said here often that if a college rejected every applicant that had a typo, they would not be able to fill their class.
That said, there is usually a difference in quality in an essay that has been edited over time versus one that was written in a day. Is your the exception? Maybe.
@LilFairy Did the alumni ni particular seem to focus on any aspect of your application? Did it look like the admission office wanted him to explore some aspects of you through in-person communication? Or was it super casual?
For instance, in case of @crimsondream22 , the admission officer Skyped her to know more about the condition of women in that particular province of Iran, which was probably an important piece to her application and without which the admission officer probably felt she couldn’t be judged.
This is why I tell people no to reread their essays after they click submit. It only causes anxiety and it’s not like you can do anything about it. Good luck.
@SouvlakiHotelFoxtrot Delhi, and I think I’ve met you somewhere @nekanorneki Didn’t focus on any one thing, and I don’t think interviewers get access to the application itself.
@desie1 I was one of the applicants who’s data was accidentally released. I’m a little frustrated I haven’t received any sort of apology from Harvard or my local alumni club.
Guys please stop stressing about these interviews (especially the internationals). While I do realize that getting one may be an indication of possible admission (for internationals at least), there’s nothing you can do from this point but wait. If you put your best application forward, sit back and allow the pieces to fall in place. There’s plenty of excellent schools to also consider so Harvard is not the end all be all.
Good luck.