<p>Consider yourself lucky. Almost all of my interviews were 30 minutes or less, and the interview for one of my top choices lasted 15 minutes. Part of this was probably because the interviewer came to the school and interviewed a whole bunch of people. </p>
<p>
Yes, this is always a bad idea. We do our best not to do that. One of the things that differentiates MITâs alumni interview program from those of most of our competitor schools, is that we are graded on the quality of our interview reports, and the regional chairs act very quickly on those whose interviews are not up to scratch. These 15 minute interviews are not up to scratch. They are bad. However, that being said, if the interviewer notes in the report that it was a 15 minute interview, then MIT knows how to value that interview report. In this case, it would result in less value being placed on the report. It would almost be as if the candidate had their interview waived. It would not harm their application in any way.</p>
<p>Now you have me worried. My daughterâs interview was 30 minutes. The interviewer was 15 minutes late, but still @Mikalye, you said less than 45 isnât a good sign! yikes- </p>
1 Like
<p>No, I said that a 30 minute interview is often (but not always) a sign of a poor interviewer, which is a very different thing than a an interview that went poorly. No need for any âyikesâ.</p>
<p>Just had my MIT interview! My EC was really nice and informative. Mine lasted exactly for 1 hour and 22 minutes (I was timing it lol :)) I think it went really well. PM me if you have any questions</p>
<p>My Dâs interviewer was interviewing a few students, one after the other. Apparently he mentioned that they have been told not to go beyond 45 minutes. Reading some posts above, a 45min time limit does not seem to correct. She was the last to be interviewed, starting from about 4pm onwards, so I suspect the interviewer wanted to just wrap it up and go home?? I hope MIT knows how to read reports that are perhaps giving a completely different picture of the candidate compared to what the school counselor and school teachers may have to say.</p>
<p>@Mikalye Were there any times where you didnât recommend an applicant? If so, why?
@ruar12â I wouldnât worry too much. The length of the interview doesnât really matter; itâs the impression the student gives to the interview thatâs important.</p>
<p>@zgamergirl, yes, look at some of my previous threads on interviews. There are a wide variety of issues, including for blantant example, the inability to communicate in spoken English.</p>
<p>tl;dr: I think I had a bad interview. Is there anything I can/should do?</p>
<p>My interview did not go at all like most of the others in this thread. It started off pretty bad because my EC had an uncommon first name, so I didnât know her gender. When I googled her, there was a description that referred to her as a âhim,â so I accidentally prefaced my first email by calling her the wrong gender.</p>
<p>It got worse when I arrived, though. My interview, in total, lasted 23 minutes. I was asked super generic questions, like âWhy MIT?â and âWhy should, out of 20,000 applicants, should MIT admit <em>you</em>?,â and my interviewer seemed extremely bored. At one point, I talked about how I really enjoyed pure mathematics, and she accused âOh, so you donât like applying what youâve learned?â</p>
<p>Also, I scheduled the interview on the last possible day because my school had not had anyone else apply to MIT in many years, so my counselor didnât know how to use the MIT application to submit my transcript, so I was waiting to find out if she would be able to do it by the application deadline. (I know that I could still schedule the interview early if I was applying Regular Decision, but I MIT is my top choice - by a wide margin - so I was planning on using my other college interviews as practice, if I could.) This actually came up during the interview; she asked my why I waited so long to schedule the interview and claimed that waiting until the last minute is not something MIT smiles upon.</p>
<p>When she asked me if I had any questions, I asked her about the UROP, and she answered by comparing it to being an indentured servant. When I asked her if she had any advice for someone about to start their undergraduate education, she suggested that I not be disappointed when my life doesnât go as planned - I think she was implying my plan was to get accepted to MIT.</p>
<p>Iâm getting a bit worried, since MIT has kinda been my #1 goal for the first 16 years of my life, and now it seems like the interview went extremely poorly. Iâve heard that the interview is one of the most important parts of my MIT application (and the numbers seem to support this: the acceptance rate for students that interviewed was roughly the times the acceptance rate for students that didnât in 2008). Does anyone have any advice for me, or should I just suck it up and finish my application?</p>
<p>@sesquipedalian4 Sorry you feel like you had a bad interview. I donât think you jeoperdized your application and I definitely suggest that you just keep chugging on at the apps regardless of how you feel about the interview. </p>
<p>A few years ago one of my older children had an interview with an alum who spent a great deal of time talking about how wonderful another candidate she had interviewed from the same school was. According to my child, she asked him very few questions about himself. Instead she asked him if he knew this other student and when he said yes, she talked in great detail about how amazing this other student was. He walked out of there feeling that she knew no more about him than before the interview. He, on the other hand, learned a great deal more about his classmate!</p>
<p>My daughter is a Junior at MIT. She thought she had a horrible interview too. The interviewer was intense and asked many hypothetical questions such as the desert island question and what book you would bring. Things worked out for her.</p>
<p>@bsalumâ Man, I wish my interviewer asked those kinds of questions! That would have been so much more fun.
Definitely if I were to be allowed to bring a book SERIES, probably the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy âTrilogyâ.
Or a book on how to build a raft on a desert islandâŠ</p>
<p>@ARandomGeek Hitchhikers- good choice</p>
I had a similar experience. My interviewer was talking to me how it often feels like a waste of time to end up having to work with people from âdumber schoolsâ. To be honest though, Iâm not sure if he was trying to test my reaction, whether Iâd agree or argue with him, but if it was a test, I didnât like it. Either way, I just smiled and acted cordial.
1 Like