<p>When trying to decide who should get the alumni interviews (if the number of alumni is limited), how do they decide? Is it based on who turned in the application first, or is it supposed to be chosen randomly?</p>
<p>I'm concerned because I live in a well-populated area and turned in my application around November 15th. I still haven't been contacted, while others at my school who turned theirs in a week ago have. </p>
<p>I've also seen on some threads here that if I haven't gotten an interview, I should contact the local Harvard association--how would I do this? Should I email the admissions office?</p>
<p>I'm just getting a little worried because I submitted all my applications quite early and am still waiting on Penn, Harvard, Yale, and Duke interviews.</p>
<p>don’t worry… they contact you whenever an alumni is free to interview you. maybe because it’s well-populated they just have a lot of students to interview. i’m not an expert but if you browse on this forum there’s more detail. oh, and i submitted my application in early december and i haven’t received an interview yet either.</p>
<p>“I’ve also seen on some threads here that if I haven’t gotten an interview, I should contact the local Harvard association–how would I do this? Should I email the admissions office?”</p>
<p>Do not do that. If there are enough alum volunteers in your area, you’ll get an interview. If the admissions office definitely wants you interviewed (which could be for a variety of reasons, none of which would guarantee you’d be admitted), you’ll get some kind of an interview. It may take until the second week of March to get your interview. Your contacting the admissions office or tracking down the regional alum who’s coordinating the interviews will not help you get an interview, but may irritate the admissions office or alum volunteer due to their being swamped with work.</p>
<p>It is possible to be accepted without an interview if it wasn’t possible to schedule you with an interviewer.</p>
<p>Northstar, why would the admission officer get irritated for an applicant requesting an interview or asking clarification on the process? after all, it is their job.
Also, maybe it is better to irritate them than go unnoticed and straight to the reject pile</p>
<p>Our local Harvard Club president specifically asked us, at a recent gathering, to contact him if one hadn’t received an interview request but that their application in for 30 days. Of course, you’d have to have the Club contact, not admissions. But…your question in admissions is possibly just being answered by a part time working student anyway. I do not think it is a problem just to ask. If you don’t, and let’s say they tried to contact you but have a wrong phone number or e-mail or it went to spam (like my D’s!). Then you’re not being proactive if you don’t ask them, and they’ll wonder why you didn’t respond. So…don’t bother them over and over. But, with 20,000 plus kids…some will fall through the cracks and it’s not bothersome to ask a simple question, especially when you’re in a metro area and you’ve waited a long time. One lives in No-city, SD and sent their app in last week? THEY might want to wait a bit.</p>
<p>“Northstar, why would the admission officer get irritated for an applicant requesting an interview or asking clarification on the process? after all, it is their job.”</p>
<p>Because they are really busy, and I’m fairly sure that how students get interviewed is answered on the web page. Getting an interview isn’t due to being a pest.</p>
<p>If you have a question, e-mail probably would be the best way to contact admissions.</p>
<p>And – yes, do check your spam filter!</p>
<p>“Also, maybe it is better to irritate them than go unnoticed and straight to the reject pile”</p>
<p>I don’t think that calling to ask unnecessary questions is going to help anyone get into Harvard. E-mailing with important updates – major awards won since submitting one’s application, for instance --could help one get the kind of attention that would result in admission.</p>
<p>I actually meant contacting via email not phone. Being in deep Africa I couldn’t afford the cost of a call anyway. You are certainly right that they must be really busy.
Regarding updates, I imagine that they make decisions continuously so it could very well be that your fate has already been decided. Do you think that an update could really change a negative decision, or would they even bother to reconsider the case ?</p>
<p>Thanks everyone! (: I think I’ll wait for a little bit and see how it goes. If I still haven’t gotten interviews with any of those schools, I might followup. There’s nothing in my spam folder, but I’m wondering if they may have spelled my email address wrong or something.</p>
<p>They don’t make final decisions until mid March. They are sorting applications now. I think they begin making admission decisions around the beginning of March., but everything can be changed until shortly before letters go out, which is near the end of March.</p>
<p>I posted this last year, too. Our S, a Harvard sophomore, was not contacted for a Harvard interview until the middle of March, 2008. He received an acceptance email afrom Harvard at the end of March.</p>
<p>Last year I think several kids posted who were in this same situation. Don’t worry about it; not having been contacted for an interview yet means nothing.</p>
Do you mean they stack up 30000 applications until mid march, and make decisions in march only? this would mean making 2000+ decisions a day! Is this realistic?
I heard from one adcom from Cornell that in their case, a team of two reads the application and they make the decision right away.</p>
<p>Harvard doesn’t make the decisions the way that Cornell does. Applications have multiple reads. Changes still can be made in admission/rejection/waitlist up to about the day the notifications are sent.</p>
<p>I can imagine that with 30,000 applications now and possibly more students applying who are obviously unqualified, there may be some changes in Havard’s system, but I would bet money there still are multiple reads for most applicants. I doubt that students savvy enough to be using CC would have stats that wouldn’t meet Harvard’s minimum qualifications for admission, which are roughly a 3.0 unweighted and 1800 test scores. In fact, I’d bet that anyone reading this has stats far higher than Harvard’s minimum.</p>