<p>Guys, I had my interview yesterday and it went really well. I'll pass down my experience if anyone wants or needs it. I'll post it later.</p>
<p>I have my interview tomorrow. I'd like to hear about your experience.</p>
<p>Ok, here it goes.
Well first let me start by saying that the interviewer was my teachers brother. She knew I wanted to go to Columbia so she called her brother and told him to come and give an interview. He is the one who looks at the applications from I guess the bronx or the nyc area. But the point is he is a high rank in the admissions process. So he first came to my class and like any representative of any school talked to everybody in general about Columbia. After ten minutes of talking he said that he should start interviewing the people who are going to get interviewed (5 people) I was third to go so he gave everyone a paper that had potential questions that he could ask. After the first person was done I asked her what it was like she told me that he asks 5 - 6 questions from the sheet. So I immediately study the sheet and got just an idea of what I would say.(DO NOT MEMORIZE ANSWERS, TALK AS IF IT IS A CONVERSATION) So here are the questions on the sheet he gave us, which maybe helpful because it is specific questions from columbia itself. The stars are the ones I got asked
1. What are your long and short term academic goals and how are you planning to achieve them?
2. If given a chance to be head of your secondary school; what changes would you implement and why?
3. What motivates you? How do you work under pressure? What are your strengths and weaknesses?* (important one, make sure you know your strengths and weaknesses)
4. What are your interests besides schoolwork? To which of your non- academic activities are you most committed? How has this affected your academic coursework?
5. What do you have in common with your closest friends? How do you differ from them?
6. How important is diversity in the type of educational environment you seek?
7. What specific book, article or journal have you read in the last year that had a significant impact on your thinking or perspective?*
8. Was there a movie, exhibit, performance, or play that you've been to in the last year that had an impact on your thinking or perspective?*
9. What do all the colleges you are applying to have in common? How is each unique?
10. What is appealing to you about Columbia in particular?* (BIG ONE!!!)
ok the first thing he asked was tell me about yourself. He asked me question #10. I told him how columbia is the oldest college in new york and fifth oldest in U.S. and I want to be part of that history. He loved that answer because he said to me "Wow, that is good I like that you did your research." DO YOUR RESEARCH MAN!!!!. Know about the school they like to see you know more about the school rather than it is an IVY LEAGUE school. I also talked about the program I am applying to at Columbia College.(5 year B.A./B.S.) I talked about my engineer passion based on the programs I did that were on my resume. Its your choice to bring your resume. MAKE EYE CONTACT ALL THE TIME. AND IF YOUR INTERVIEWER IS A JOKESTER LAUGH WITH HIM/HER. I think the reason he liked me so much was for the following: research, eye contact, i was joking with him too, i treated the interview as if it were a informal conversation, honesty, we had some things in common(for the exhibit question he went to the same exhibit i went to.) He also asked what other colleges are you applying to. And he knew most of them. So just be your self and remember do your research, be calm, think before you speak, do not be afraid of the interviewer, he is trying to help you get in to the school, all you have to do is show him that you have the potential. Well that's all I can think of. If you have questions just post replies. Good luck.</p>
<p>Did the interviewer ask how many words per minute you type?</p>
<p>lol no he didnt</p>
<p>:-)</p>
<p>Yea I did my interview on Friday. He asked the average questions, but then he asked weird questions like what my worst qualities were and questions about Iraq. Kinda caught me off guard but in the end he told me I did great so I was happy.</p>
<p>i liked my interviewer because he was sarcastic and made me laugh... which kinda eased the tension of the situation...
he asked the usual... why cu... about my major, interests, and what columbia would like to know that was not as obvious or present in the application.</p>
<p>My questions:
1) Why Columbia?
2) What subject did you take that interested you?
3) What book did you read you found most interesting recently?
4) What do you think of the Core Curriculum?
5) (This was a question with a localised context, since I'm not from America) Basically asking me to analyse my Prime Minister's recent speech on the local political system.</p>
<p>Fairly simple questions, I was as honest as I could be.</p>
<p>
[quote]
4) What do you think of the Core Curriculum?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I like this one because it's a trap question for two reasons: 1) it tells you who are the kids who know nothing about Columbia and haven't done their homework and don't even know any sort of details about the core beyond it being a bunch of classes you have to take, and 2) someone who views the Core as a means to an end really wants to go to a place like Brown.</p>
<p>yeah i got the Core question in my interview. she asked me if it was a drawback at all to applying to columbia. i quickly made sure i said it was not, as someone who goes to such a prestigious college like columbia doesn't want to graduate as just an expert in their major, but as an all-around worldly and knowledgeable person.</p>
<p>Oh, I wish I had read this before my interview a few days ago. I thought it went relatively well, but I didn't leave it feeling very confident at all. One of the questions my interviewer asked was whether or not I follow the news and if so, could I talk about an event that I have been following. Well, I blanked. I ended up talking about a local event and my overall response was pretty lame. Ah, I would've much better liked having an experience similar to Valentino's (my interviewer wasn't sarcastic or otherwise "fun" at all. she was actually pretty serious and seemed too tired to really listen to what I had to say.). Yeah well, I guess the lesson in that is you can't expect everything to work out the way you want them to.</p>