Interviews - What's More Fair?

Applying to College
1

Let’s say you are an admissions office worker and you have 3 alumni willing to do interviews in a given city. Each of them is willing to do 6 interviews, but you have a total of 34 applications for that same area.

How do you assign the 18 interviews?

Randomize them?
Assign the interviews in order of application date (earliest first, latest out of luck)?
Give them to the most interesting applicants?
Give them to the most questionable ones?

2

Randomize them…

3

I don’t work in admissions but I’d first try to accommodate students who contacted admissions and requested interviews.

4

Is that based on the theory that they want to go there more?

5

@JustOneDad‌: For some universities, the process works like this (which somewhat differs from what your post implies):

  • The university (admissions/alumni affairs) provides a Zip code segregated list of applicants and their contact information – but NOTHING (e.g., GPA, standardized test results, EC, etc.) more – to an area alumni volunteer interview coordinator. This list is not prioritized in any manner.
  • The local coordinator then assigns interviews to individual alumni volunteers in his venue.
  • Subject to schedule availability, the alumni then contact applicants, arrange a mutually agreeable time and location, conduct the CONVERSATION with the candidate, and provide the university with a recommendation and a brief substantiating report.

In this system, Admissions really does not prioritize nor does it determine which volunteer alumni will interview which applicants.

6

@JustOneDad‌ - I’d simply give the nod to a student who took the time and effort to reach out and ask and who would clearly like an interview either because he/she thinks it will help his/her case or because he/she has an interest in learning more about the school. There are many applicants would would just as soon skip interviews (ex. my son is very quiet and was just as happy that his top choices did not offer interviews) so it seems to me that it is silly to push interviews on some who may not be interested while skipping over others who took the time to express interest in having an interview. That is just my personal opinion and I don’t work for any admissions office.

7

I’m sorry; I didn’t intend to mislead anyone about how it is done at any particular school. I am more interested in how applicants think the available interviewers should be allocated.

8

@happy1, colleges don’t pass “requests” by students to the local coordinators. They data dump the contact info and that’s it. It’s really up to the discretion of the local volunteer.

I think first in first out, proximity to volunteers and then possible “interest”. If there were “iffy” students (and without info from your admissions office, I don’t know how you’d discern that), they’d be last for sure.

9

@T26E4‌ That must depend on the college. My D’s request to admissions for interviews were definitely acted upon. She was contacted by one local coordinator and by one alumni interviewer (from two different schools) who said that they were given her contact information by the admissions office because she requested a local interview. Both schools arranged for her to interview (one with an alumni and one with an admissions officer when she was in our area). She applied to LACs so perhaps larger universities work differently.