interview

<p>Obviously your mileage may vary, but I regularly have parents travelling with their offspring to the interview. It's never an issue, and I try to pick interview locations with decent shopping nearby.</p>

<p>My S drove my D for her interview to the interviewer's house. He was asked to come in. The interview took nearly an hour and went very well.</p>

<p>Thanks! That makes me feel loads better.</p>

<p>question, do E.C.'s have to turn in their interview report by November 1st? Do you think October 27th is too late to have an interview? like is there enough time for my E.C. to write a report about it between that and November 1st?</p>

<p>I don't believe they do (although I'm sure Mikalye will give the definitive answer). The application deadline is Nov 1, but the admissions officers don't stop reading applications until sometime in late November, and selection isn't until the first week of December. If your SAT scores or interview report aren't in MIT's hot little hands by November 1, there is still plenty of time for the information to get there and be included in your file.</p>

<p>ok thanks!</p>

<p>Yes our deadline is 1 November. Yes there is occasionally some leeway, but not vast amounts, and I wouldn't want to count on it (but again when an EC screws up, the admissions office does not blame the candidate). </p>

<p>Talk to your EC. If your EC knows that his/her report is due in on 1 November and wants to interview you on 27 October, then clearly they have enough time. It takes a few hours to write up a report, sometimes a bit longer, but it definitely does not take weeks. We can file the reports online. So technically, I could interview someone on 1 November and still get the interview report in on time.</p>

<p>That is why the deadline is 20 October to SCHEDULE early action interviews, rather than to hold early action interviews. Technically 1 November is the last day to have an interview, but I do not know of any EC's masochistic enough to schedule one for that date.</p>

<p>All of this applies only to early action interviews. 1 December is still the deadline tp SCHEDULE regular action interviews, and 15 December still the deadline to hold them.</p>

<p>T-2 hours and counting!! I'm trying to figure out good responses to questions like "Why do I want to go to MIT"....and to come up with good questions of my own :P</p>

<p>Oh yeah, PS: should I take like my resume or like a list of activities or anything? He didn't specifically ask for it, but other people on the forum have been talking about it...</p>

<p>ehh.... T-20 hours.
man, im kinda nervous. :P</p>

<p>whew........ I just got back. It went pretty well, imo. The Ec was a total n00b - it was the 2nd interview he had ever done. </p>

<p>We talked about the problem sets, the freshman seminars, the professors, research, his work at JPL, the stuff I worked on at JPL, school, SAT scores, favorite book (woot, thank you AP English Lit!!), Al Gore and the Peace Prize, and most importantly - PRANKS!! Plus he went to my high school (and graduated Class of '00 - or MIT Class of '04) so he was really young and knew all of my teachers and stuff :) YAY!</p>

<p>So don't stress out...and bring a resume/activity list, my EC was happy I brought one, so that he could see all of my Extracurrics later when he was writing the Recommendation...</p>

<p>I had to meet mine at his workplace. There was high security, so it took a few minutes to get in. But I was already 30 minutes early :)</p>

<p>i had my interview today at 5. overall, i think it went really well. it lasted for an hour. i wish it could be longer because my interviewer had to leave at 6 for a formal black-tie dinner. she was really involved in the conversations and seemed really interested in all i had to tell her.
she interviewed 3 students from my school before in the 1990s, all of whom got into MIT. she even wrote a thank-you letter to my math teacher and mu alpha theta sponsor to thank him for having taught such wonderful students. she was one of the founders of mu alpha theta state convention in louisiana in 1960s and she was pleased to see i restarted the chapter at my school.
overall, i thought it was a great interview. now i really look forward to mid-december, though i hope im not jinxing it by being confident like this.
best of luck for the rest of you.</p>

<p>ye i just had mine. about 70 minutes...it was really chill. At the guy's house. I don't really know what constitutes a FANTASTIC interview, but i can say mine was pretty decent. No talk about grades or anything, just normal conversation, no awkward moments. It's not too bad at all, for those of you who have upcoming ones. Lol, only bad part was when I accidentally referred to the business school as Stern...i thought about correcting myself but he seemed to not have really noticed so I just thought whatever, and by then it would have been weird.</p>

<p>Mine is on the 27th (applying RD.) I'm really excited, slightly nervous as well, but mostly can't wait for it happen. My EC sounded really casual over the phone, emphasized that it's not going to be a formal interview so I shouldn't fret over that, and just asked me to prepare a short resume. She lives 2 hours away though so it's going to be one long drive to the interview, I hope traffic's steady that day, I'd hate to be late! Now what I need is to think up good answers to certain cliche questions and come up with a list of questions that I'd like to ask her. </p>

<p>By the way, did any of you know what your EC's major was BEFORE the interview? I'd like to know but I don't think it'd be very appropriate to ask about that over the phone.</p>

<p>I don't think it would matter what your EC's major was. Well, at least not as a prepatory issue. </p>

<p>A resume? You mean your academics? Isn't the interview supposed to focus on those things beyond what would have been presented in the application?</p>

<p>i asked him during the interview. I would think it would be a good conversation piece.</p>

<p>Also Eluhan is right the interview is really just looking at your personality and to gather from you things not on teh app. Not once did he ask about grades or scores. I asked him beforehand whether or not to bring a resume or something, but he told me to only bring myself.</p>

<p>i guess it's different for everyone. my interview was actually more formal than i'd expected, not quite a relaxed conversation, just a lot of talking on my side heh. I brought copies of research papers I'd written; they were fun things to discuss; he'd actually never interviewed an applicant who'd done original research before, so I that really interested him. I was glad I brought them.</p>

<p>Like cory123 said, it would make the conversation more interesting to know my EC's major, but it won't affect my preparation. And by resume I was referring to basic extracurriculars, scientific/academic achievements, and so on... It's not grades/scores-centered, although I got the sense they would be discussed, perhaps not in detail, but probably in some context.</p>

<p>i just had my interview yesterday. mine was only about 40 minutes... is that bad? i don't know. i was kinda nervous going in but we really hit if off and i left feeling pretty good about the whole thing. he was awesome cuz he'd been to mit as an undergrad and stanford for grad school and his wife went to berkeley and now he's teaching at UT Austin (we interviewed in his class room). so he had personal experience with EVERY school on my list and said that any one of those schools would be good. haha. and we ended up having alot in common so it was pretty comfortable talking to him. i'm sure who your EC is makes a huuuge difference though. i still haven't submitted either part of my application. and i didn't take in any kind of resume list.</p>

<p>I had my interview today! My EC was really nice, and it was amazing how calm and relaxed I felt. We chatted about superconductive materials, so it was obviously a good time.</p>