<p>So I was thinking about my own interview and it ended up being really fun. I then thought it'd be good to share interesting stories (good or bad).
I'll start. My interviewer actually attended my high school!</p>
<p>I had my interview back in November when I applied SCEA. The day or two before my interview I got laryngitis. During my interview I basically whispered/tried to speak with a slight grumble. It must have been pathetic, when I got excited my voice would crack so much that no noise came out at all. </p>
<p>It was also awkward because before I could introduce myself I had to apologize for not being able to shake his hand. (He was a doctor, though, and appreciated that I didn’t want to give him AIDS.)</p>
<p>All in all, the interview actually went really well! The Harvard Yale football game happened to be on TV that day, so we watched it for a little while (interview was at his home). It was cool.</p>
<p>My interviewer looked and acted exactly like Robert DeNiro from “Meet the Parents” and was ridiculously intimidating. He had us do the interview in his living room, with him on one couch and me on the other (both of the couches were facing each other) and wrote down my responses very carefully on a clipboard he had. And his questions were unconventional too – he asked me about a lot of current events goings-on and my opinions on them, quizzed me on things related to the classes I told him I was taking this year… Definitely the hardest interview I had in terms of the conversation, because he didn’t really let it flow both ways and it was more of a strict Q and A thing. I think it might’ve been because he was old and more traditional of an interviewer though.</p>
<p>Mine was really fun actually.
I asked him so many questions I think he liked it, he was a retired lawyer.
He told me about the awesome toga parties. hahaha
He changed my mind of Yale being a “elite-only” school to a more home-oriented school.
I learned a lot from this interview. Even if I dont get admitted to Yale, I think it was a great experience to talk to someone who has learned so much.
It was snowing that day and I couldnt find his house .____. that was the scary part. I was like OMMMGGGG IMA BE LATE…</p>
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<p>That’s better than hitting a car in the interviewer’s driveway. As I was pulling out of my Dartmouth interview, I saw that the female student interviewing after me had parked her car within inches of mine. I pulled halfway out, and if I hadn’t decided to look out of the window for a second, it would’ve been scratch-city for sure.</p>
<p>^Yeah that wouldn’t have been terribly fun. </p>
<p>Ironically at mine, the interviewer pretty much punctuated every good thing she told me about Yale with a couple bad or negative things. The strategy worked though— it was so refreshing compared with the salespeople I’m used to.</p>
<p>My on-campus interview went very well. We basically talked about Yale, cooking, and singing the whole time. The only funny things I have are that I almost forgot her name and that the cramped elevator was extremely slow and make things awkward.</p>
<p>My alumni interview, however, was really not how I expected or wanted it to be…because it didn’t exist. :P</p>
<p>Mine was fun–it was at the interviewer’s house, very relaxed, and we spent a while talking about writing (she had written romance novels when she got bored as a stay-at-home mom and had a great self-deprecating sense of humor about the genre). We also talked about the value of taking a class that kicks your a** and figuring out new ways of processing the material.</p>
<p>My interview went much better than I expected. The only day that the interviewer was available was the day I had to volunteer at my school’s carnival, so I had to show up at the interview in my school shirt and jeans. She didn’t seem to mind and we talked for about an hour and a half, but it really didn’t feel that long at all. I don’t know why I was worrying about the interview so much in the first place!</p>
<p>My interviewer has a PhD in Physics and teaches a class called “Physics on the Back of an Envelope” at a local college. I knew this information going in and as a perspective math major who has also taken physics in high school, wondered whether he was going to quiz me. We got onto the subject of statistics and the odds of winning the lottery. Sure enough, he made a physics question of this by asking me how high all of the lottery tickets would reach if stacked one on top of each other (obviously I had to make some assumptions about the size of the lottery). I did the math out loud for him and I think we connected in some geeky, nerdy way.</p>
<p>My interviewer has a PhD in physics. He went to the same research convention that I was at (AGU) and we were able to easily connect, discussing our papers and research. It was pretty fun. It felt like he was one of my close friends.</p>
<p>Mine was at a Starbucks, and my Harvard interviewer from the previous day had given me the impression that I always had to have a suit on for the Ivies (he was this multi-millionaire investor…). So, I walk into a starbucks with a thousand dollar suit from a wedding ages ago, and my interviewer is sitting there with jeans and a t-shirt… I just asked him to assume I always wear a suit lol.</p>
<p>Mine was a psychiatrist. He asked me my greatest hardship in life, and I felt like he was analyzing me.</p>