<p>Last Thursday, a Yale alumni in my area called and asked if I could meet her for an interview on Saturday. Unfortunately I already had a prior interview commitment (Penn) and had to decline. Then she asked if I could do Sunday. I had a community service event and once again was not available. </p>
<p>I told her I was available Monday and pretty much the rest of this week though. She said she would call me back.</p>
<p>She didn't, so Sunday night, I called her. She told me she was waiting to hear back from the admissions office and would call me again. She didn't. So I called her last night, and she told me interview reports were due last Sunday and I wasn't going to have an interview. It isn't going to hurt me, she said. But clearly it's not going to help either.</p>
<p>So what should I do? Would it be appropriate to call her again and ask her to just interview me and submit the reports late? Should I contact admissions and tell them it's not entirely my fault I didn't have an interview since I didn't know the deadline was coming up and my interviewer didn't give me much notice? I don't want to be obnoxious. I don't want to sound whiney.</p>
<p>But right now I'm really freaked out and paranoid that my being contacted for an interview and then failing to have one is going to negatively impact my application. I'm probably a borderline case anyway, I don't any hooks. So an interview would really have helped. And I want to know more about Yale, hear it from an actual alumni's mouth! So what should I do?</p>
<p>It might look worse to demand an interview, or to interview late. What’s done is done. You might not want to hear this but take a deep breath and wait. It won’t hurt you at all, so why stress about it?</p>
<p>It’s not going to hurt you, but it’s also a missed opportunity. The interviewer probably didn’t blame you. You’re not out of the running because of this though.</p>
<p>It’s the interviewers fault not yours. They shouldn’t have called you 3 days before they interview report was due. Don’t worry about it, it won’t hurt you and alumni interviews barely count for anything.</p>
<p>There is nothing you can do at this point. Your application will stand on its own merits.</p>
<p>You should reflect on this experience, though, and see if you could have made the interview happen. Did you offer alternative times on Saturday? Did you consider getting coverage for your Sunday community service event? I know that if an interview was important to me I would be very accommodating and try to make it work, even on short notice.</p>
<p>"It’s the interviewers fault not yours. They shouldn’t have called you 3 days before they interview report was due. "</p>
<p>It’s not easy finding enough alum interviewers to interview the tens of thousands who apply to places like Ivies. It’s possible that the interviewer contacted the OP right after the interviewer was asked to interview the OP.</p>
<p>Calgal raises some important points for the OP to consider so as to be more flexible in handling future interview opportunities.</p>
<p>don’t worry too much… my interview for EA never happened because we accidentally erased a message from the interviewer… i gave up hope and then on decision night I was accepted so it all will turn out all right</p>
<p>i actually called my interviewer again last night and she told me that she’d already asked yale if she could submit the reports late and yale said no. </p>
<p>oh well, now i just have to wait till april 1st to see how it goes. i figure if i did have the caliber to get into yale, even if the failed interview hurts my chances there, there’s a good chance i’ll get into other competitive schools too. and if i never had what it took to begin with, an interview wouldn’t have changed that. haha this year truly has taught me a lot about letting go and not sweating what’s already done and just focusing on doing better in the future.</p>
<p>@calgal and Northstarmom, you definitely raise a really good point. i’ve pretty much been beating myself up over the last few days thinking how i totally could have just asked for an alternate time or just ditched my community service event. But at least now I’ll be prepared for future opportunities in college and when i enter the professional world. I’ve definitely learned an important lesson from this about prioritizing what’s important to me, and for that I’m grateful. however this turns out in the end, at least i’ve come away with this knowledge.</p>
<p>@Zenbadabing, I chose the Penn interview over Yale cuz it was scheduled three weeks in advance. It seemed foolish to sacrifice a decent chance at one school for a shot in the dark at a school like Yale. Regardless of the appeal of Yale over Penn, I didn’t want to go back on a commitment I had already made.</p>
<p>@Mythbuster, congrats and thanks for the encouragement=)</p>
<p>I’m impressed that you clearly view your word as your bond, and didn’t readily ditch the community service commitment for Yale. While it’s true that there probably was a creative way that you could have had the CS event covered while still being able to interview with Yale, I like the fact that you seem to be unselfish and to truly value community service instead of being someone who only does it to try to look good to colleges.</p>
<p>Wherever you land in college, I feel confident you’ll be an asset to the college. Best of luck as you await decisions!</p>
<p>OP – take a moment to think about the logistics of the interview process for elite Universities (these comments do not apply to elite colleges).</p>
<p>How many applicants does Yale see each year? Maybe 15,000? 20,000?<br>
How qualified are the interviewers to give a thumbs up to an applicant?
Does a thumbs up carry weight?</p>
<p>Use common sense. My gut tells me the interview really helps push 2% of the applicants over the top, has absolutely zero affect on 90%, and eliminates the 8% or so who refuse to participate, are rude, antisocial, reveal ethical issues, or make the interviewer uncomfortable.</p>
<p>so, you blew a 2% chance to get a boost, and avoided an 8% chance of getting nixed.</p>
<p>Looks to me like you should take those odds. You inadvertently played the best hand.</p>
<p>heyalb – do you happen to read the posts by HYPS interviewers on this board? Or the posts by adcoms? Do you seriously think an adcom is going to put a lot of weight on the report of one of at least a hundred alumni interviewers they’ve never even met? An adcom doesn’t need the assist from someone they don’t even know, and whose opinion is out of context.</p>
<p>the college gets to identify applicants who present great on paper but seriously badly in person… college wins.</p>
<p>The interviewee has no choice really… refuse the interview and you become one of the 8% that is nixed. But there is very little upside. It’s almost like the interview system exists just to idetntify and remove social outliers and application padders.</p>
<p>The best result of an interview process at HYPSM is to hope it simply goes away :)<br>
If OP had been discussing Swat, Amherst, Williams, Bowdoin, Davidson, Pomona, etc. etc. or even Dartmouth, my reply would be completely different.</p>
<p>If OP had been discussing Tufts, WashU, or maybe Chicago, I’d have answered yet another way.</p>