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<p>Yes, many schools, including my alma mater, have changed their official policy on this within the last 2-3 years.</p>
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<p>Allow me to “Xig” that for you:</p>
<p>I can think of several good reasons not to do an interview anywhere! </p>
<p>At least from the vantage point of the applicant. Obviously some seem to get kicks from being part of the admission process and pretending to be part of the DECISION process.</p>
<p>I did my interviews on campus, but I remember applying for a summer internship through an alumni mentoring program and I went to the man’s house. I don’t think a to e thought twice about it. It was convenient for him. It was a terrific internship, I wound up working at the Federal Reserve Bank in my hometown.</p>
<p>Concerned7, the solution for you or your child is simply not to interview. It’s not required by the vast majority of schools, and given your fears of rape by the interviewing alumnus, it seems like a waste of his time and yours.</p>
<p>Concerned wrote: “Why even allow the slightest “risk” of this”</p>
<p>This and other reasons is why my alma mater and many other schools ask interviewers not to meet at either home. 1) to preclude any hint of impropriety and 2) to remove any hint of social pressure from a) having an alum come to your house (and the family feeling the pressure of evaluating eyes) or b) to go to an alum’s house and being perhaps off-put by that person’s possessions/position.</p>
<p>Thus the request that interviewers use a neutral location (cafe, restaurant, library, office, etc.).</p>
<p>That’s the party line and I understand it and support it. However, like I said, I had to veer from it twice when I was caught w/o babysitting last minute, described the scenario plainly to the two students while also offering postponement. Neither opted for a change and one was frankly, one of the best interviewees I had in 20+ years… all done at my dining room table as I was keeping an ear out for my kids finishing their homework.</p>
<p>Would I feel funny about sending either daughter to an alumnus’ house for an interview? No. I’ve counseled many people who are victims of abuse and other crimes, I have taught my kids to use their head and be wary – but am also knowledgeable that I cannot nor will ever control for every fathomable scenario. I’ve known of job interviews where the “creep” factor was present across the table. I know of study groups or visits to TAs where the red flag came up.</p>
<p>A college alumnus/alumna interview is not one that is remotely on my radar. </p>
<p>But if one has followed the flow of this long thread, I think all sides have been presented and ultimately, it’ll remain the decision of the student/family how to proceed.</p>
<p>I met an interviewer at her house once. She lived in a nice part of town and my mom dropped me off and picked me after an hour. It was no big deal. Go with your gut. Always trust that.</p>
<p>Thank you T26E4! You said exactly what I was thinking.
My school also requires interviews to be conducted in neutral, public locations and I think that is a reasonable policy.</p>
<p>There are downsides to public locations as well though. Some interviewees may be less likely to want to share certain information in a noisy, public setting for one. If the location is a cafe that’s frequented by others the applicant knows well, there’s a chance that a friend or acquaintance might interrupt or overhear something. This may especially be true in more isolated or rural areas.</p>
<p>I would imagine most collegs nowadays have policies and guidelines about where it is/is not appropriate to conduct interviews. This is to not only protect the college from possible adverse situations as mentioned above but recognizes the realities of the society we live in. If this college doesn’t have such guidelines (for whatever reason), it is certainly reasonable to indicate some other public location is more preferable (coffeshop, bookstore…etc.) You can invent a reason that it is more convenient to both parties.</p>
<p>I think it’s reasonable to have a policy of having interviews in public places, but I don’t really think the reasons behind it are reasonable, if that make sense. That’s because it has nothing to do with the realities of the society we live in (in which the risks of interviewing at somebody’s home are much smaller than the risks of driving to Starbucks), but rather the perceptions–unreasonable ones–that people in our society have of reality.</p>
<p>And we expect these terrified children to go off to college by themselves?</p>
<p>My daughter had an interview last year at someone’s house. It didn’t seem that odd at the time just convenient for all.</p>
<p>Turned out that both spouses had gone there - so she asked both of them questions. Their three year baby coulddn’t answer much though</p>
<p>Several years ago, my son had an interview for Brown at the interviewer’s home. My husband drove him and ended up being invited into the house and staying in the room for the interview. The interviewer was a family man, and his family was home at the time. At the end of the interview, the wife and children became part of the conversation as did my husband. Maybe unprofessional, but my son got into Brown. The interviewer made it clear how small a part of the application process the interview was. From the results the interviewer received, his recommendations pro and con seemed to count for very little. Have a good time at your interview. Especially at schools where it is optional, I don’t think it counts for more than a chance to restate what the admissions committee already knows about you.</p>
<p>(MaryMac15535’s mom here) Back in the mid-1970s, an admissions rep from the college I ended up attending interviewed me at my home - but my parents were in the next room (with an open doorway between) the whole time. My daughter has done 2 alumni interviews - one at a coffeehouse in a supermarket, and the other at the interviewer’s office on another college’s campus. There was another interview she had to decline due to distance & schedule conflicts, where she was offered a choice of the interviewer’s home or office. (Unfortunately, the interviewer was heavily pregnant and unable to travel to a neutral location within driving distance of our home.)
In general, I would feel uncomfortable having my daughter interview in someone’s home without a parent present. A public location, on the other hand, would have plenty of people around to notice if anything inappropriate or unsavory were going on - the vast majority of whom wouldn’t know either my daughter or the interviewer, and wouldn’t be paying attention to the content of an interview conversation.</p>
<p>It’s actually pretty normal. I’ve had four interviews, three of which were at the schools themselves and one at some guy’s house. My friends all thought it was kind of weird, but the interviewers are nice, not creepy, and having it at their house can almost make it more laid back.</p>
<p>Hello I think that</p>
<p>Hello yeah I think it’s pretty normal as well</p>
<p>I feel sad for people who see every innocent gesture, ie interview in a home as a potential rape scenario. Wow.</p>
<p>I went to the interviewer’s house for 2/3 interviews!! Of course they were women, so my parents had no problem with that…</p>
<p>A parent here – social customs have evolved, and it is more normal now (in my opinion and part of the country) to hold a semi-social 1:1 meeting like an alumni interview in a public place. Both parties have good reasons for it. The older/male/less vulnerable/person with the power in the exchange can protect himself from false accusation, by holding the meeting in public. If it’s too much trouble, well, volunteering is a certain amount of trouble. It’s also possible to neutralize the venue, if the interviewer cannot leave the house, by briefly explaining the constraint and telling the interviewee that a parent or companion is welcome to wait in another room.</p>
<p>I realize that some of this is generational – an elderly (and much revered) member of my own profession once kissed my hand on a job interview – but anybody who graduated from college in the 1980s is a contemporary of my own, and I would expect them to see current expectations pretty much the way I do.</p>
<p>If the interviewee were my daughter, I would probably want her to politely suggest that the meeting take place at the Starbucks. If that suggestion is declined, there is probably nothing wrong with the GC asking the admissions office if it is truly the college’s practice for alumni interviewers to call unaccompanied 12th graders into their homes for interviews.</p>
<p>I’ve seen it noted on this thread that interviewers want to help you get into school. I always thought that interviewers wanted to help the school put together the best possible class, which does not involve them ultimately advocating for all interviewees.</p>
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It goes both ways. I find interviewers as a whole to be more advocates of the students rather than act as a neutral set of eyes and ears on behalf of the college. I think I used to be strongly in the former camp. Now I’m strongly in the latter camp.</p>