Looking forward to my Stanford interview this weekend. What kind of feedback do they give back to the Stanford admissions committee? There’s a lot of competitive applicants from my school applying to Stanford and the interview is a way I can distinguish myself. If I get positive feedback from my interviewer, how much of a boost will it give my application?
No weight over any other interviewer IMO. Positive feedback will likely be all too common as the majority of applicants will be admissible.
Just be yourself – it generally doesn’t work out well if you try too hard to impress.
In general alumni interviews don’t carry much weight – the interviewers are not uniform, not always well trained etc. And as noted above, most applicants will be strong and will get positive feedlback.
Make sure to have questions to ask them…half of what the interview is for is for you to ask them questions
thank you for the responses! I was hoping the alum interview would carry more weight lol
The interview is away to sort of fill in the gaps of your application…I had a student who didn’t have much in terms of ECs, it turns out it was because he watched his little brother after school. But as we talked, I realized he had turned it into a leadership opportunity…his parents were divorcing and he realized his brother was falling through the cracks…so he started to make sure his brother got his homework done and also signed him up for a rec baseball league.
The importance of the alum interview really varies greatly from school to school. In Stanford’s case, it didn’t even offer interviews in Ca until last year, and Ca was where nearly half of its applicants and alums were at. One former Stanford admission officer told me two years ago that alum interviews were more for engaging the alums than for evaluating the applicants. I imagine it may still be the case.
On the other hand some schools like MIT, specifically say alum interviews matter.