<p>Is it true that if you applied to Princeton, you WILL get an interview?</p>
<p>Only if there's an interviewer within your area</p>
<p>ok and they contact you? because i would like one, but havent heard anything</p>
<p>yea i haven't heard anything yet either... i emailed em and they jus told us to wait :] i guess patience is the key?</p>
<p>I supposed so. Im waiting for my interview too.</p>
<p>I haven't been contacted yet either.</p>
<p>i applied ed and my interview wasnt until less than two weeks before they mailed the decisions--so be patient guys</p>
<p>Can I turn down the interview opportunity? After all, it is not mandatory! I feel that my application speaks for itself and after working my a$$ off on it, I do not want to screw up anything with the interview.</p>
<p>Will it look bad if I turn down the interview option? What are some acceptable excuses?</p>
<p>I just got my interview request, and I live in Alaska.</p>
<p>sickofFL- Do not turn down the interview. Schools really hate that. I've read (in more than one place, though I don't have a URL or anything) that people who turn down interviews are accepted at much lower rates than those who did interview or couldn't. I know that this may not necessarily be causational, but it really makes you appear very uninterested in the school to refuse an interview. And to address your concern, it is really hard to truly screw up an interview. As long as you don't express any truly despicable sentiments, it should have no affect on your chances. A lot of people in the ED round had their interviews a week before decisions were mailed, and you can bet the admissions people were not sitting around waiting for those interview results before they made their decisions. Which, yes, makes the interview a waste of time, but assuming you're not an outspoken proponent of baby-eating, it can only help (or at least do no harm).</p>
<p>Shu: I really agree with you. I wish i have read your comment earlier. I applied to Harvard ED and used some lame excuses for not requesting an interview. I got a rejection though my stats deserve at least a deferral. </p>
<p>I will have a phone interview with a princeton alumnus in 3 hours' time( I live in rural China where a face-to-face interview is impossible). Interviewer is calling from Beijing. Guess most of you have not heard of such arrangement before.</p>
<p>tryagainlx, 你住在中国哪个地方？</p>
<p>我不是中国人，也不是华人，而是一个会说中文的美国人 ：）</p>
<p>我去年在北京根接待家庭住了一年。。。海外学年</p>
<p>rural area of Shantou city, Guangdong Province.</p>
<p>啊。。。我没去过广东。</p>
<p>"Wo bu shi zhong guo ren, shi bu shi (something) ren, blah blah something mei guo ren. Wo something nien something tong blah blah de yi nien... "Umekai gaku nen (overseas school year? and here I lapse into Japanese)."</p>
<p>I'm pretty pathetic, hm?</p>
<p>haha. Are you a first/second year student of Chinese?</p>
<p>I told him I'm not Chinese or an overseas Chinese; rather, I'm a Chinese-speaking American. I spent last year living with a Chinese host family and studying in China.</p>
<p>Ahahahaha. Um. I speak Shanghainese conversationally (though I'm beginning to forget), but I really don't read/write any Chinese, and I don't speak Mandarin, so the romanization was a feat in itself. First or second year student, hm? See, that's why I said, "pathetic."</p>
<p>I took about a year and a half of Japanese in high school -- my foreign language studies got tragically cut short by schedule conflicts. I was pretty worried that it would kill my chances (since Pton strongly recommends 4 years) but it turned out okay.</p>
<p>Oh, and just so that I don't become a shameless thread-spoiler, I'll answer the OP's question.</p>
<p>No, not everyone gets an interview, and no, there is no screening because they send your contact info to alumni clubs and the alumni clubs don't know anything about you except your name, phone number, and address.</p>
<p>Frozen-tears: the kanjis for "foreign" are read (from like a half-dozen posts ago) as kaigai, not umekai, since both kanjis will take their onyomi reading in combination. (Yes, I know how obnoxious that sounds, but as a white person, these last few posts have given me a serious inferiority complex, and I was so happy to actually know something!).
Are you picking up with el nihongo again at princeton? Do you know anything about their program? I took Japanese for four years, and I don't know whether to continue with it or switch to Mandarin. Can you do both, do you think?</p>