<p>Example: My interview (he was a grad student; the interview was on campus) asked me about some of my extracurriculars. When I mentioned my community service, he cut me off and asked:</p>
<p>"Why would you waste your time with that?"</p>
<p>to which I replied </p>
<p>"Well, ermm, yea... it was kinda a waste of time..." (extremely nervous at this point)</p>
<p>and then he graciously said "Well, I was only joking."</p>
<p>And then I gulped as I realized how I had just called one of my most important activities a "waste of time."</p>
<p>Gulp. Hopefully I rectified myself - I wouldn't know, as I don't remember anything about my interview other than that.</p>
<p>don't worry about it too much. It sounds like the grad student who interviewed you felt bad that his joke didn't go over well.</p>
<p>College interviews are not tests designed to see if you fail; they are a chance for the interviewer to get to know you. Anybody who has worked on a hiring team before (me! more than a few times, in various situations) knows that it's often the little things that make an applicant stand out. For example, I was part of a team interviewing for a position that had almost nothing to do with academic prowess, and yet it came up during the interview that the applicant was taking Turkish classes for fun While her Turkish skills would have no use for the job she was applying for, we decided that we liked the kind of person who would be as risk-taking and playful as she was, to take up a relatively obscure language for fun. I think we would have thought similarly of an applicant who likes to participate in marathons or an applicant who invests a lot of time into community service.</p>
<p>You should have laughed and said "Yeah, so was I."
=]
Don't sweat it... don't stress about things that are already behind us. If I didn't live by that I'd be doing something equivalent of pulling my hair out right now(my hair is too short to be pulled), my grades are just depressing... haha.</p>
<p>I think he just wanted you to argue, justify the importance of your action. I failed at this too. Have the confidence to say THIS IS WHAT I DO AND THIS IS WHY! No worries, this isn't the end of the world- you can still get in.</p>
<p>Hmm, thank god everyone says that the interview never makes or breaks an app. Otherwise, this could have been a serious body blow, because it says one of two things about the OP:</p>
<p>1) He/she does not know how to defend an opinion and cannot maintain intellectual integrity in the absence of external approval
2) He/she did community work purely as a resume filler and does not have a real passion for it</p>
<p>Eh, you could've done worse. For my interview, I tripped and fell over the table at Panera, knocked over a coffee or three and landed in an old woman's lap. It could have gone better.</p>
<p>Or maybe the OP realized it was a joke (and nothing else) because he knew what the situation was like before and after the exchange. </p>
<p>It was an offhand "joke" by the interviewer, and nothing else. I'm fairly certain that the exchange was not his attempt to make me "maintain intellectual integrity" or justify anything. </p>
<p>Don't over analyze things - I made this post not to put myself to the scrutiny of others, but to post what I thought was a fairly humorous experience that others could (possibly) relate to. </p>
<p>Try writing the GWU honors essay - "the truth suffers from too much analysis."</p>
<p>thank god your interviewer talked to you about normal things. my interviewer was like what would you do if there was a pink elephant under you, which i didn't mind, but it is really hard to argue with a grad student about physics when he has taken quantum physics and all you've done is taken a test on F=ma. =FAIL for me.</p>
<p>Hey! I was just interviewed by Newstone. I'm not sure if he isn't easily exciteable or anything but I was just worried because he didn't ask me as many 'open-ended' questions as I thought he would. Which meant that he let me elaborate on my extracurriculars and academics, but not much in the way of free-thinking. </p>
<p>Is he always like this or did he just write me off as 'do not admit' right away?</p>
<p>SOB! Now I'm worried. He was nice, I just dont know what he though of me. It's comforting to know I wasn't the only one he interviewed this way.</p>