<p>We're a year away from having to worry about all this, but I'm curious about the MIT interview. We live in northwest Missouri, about 50 miles from Kansas City. Would there be an interviewer in Kansas City that would be assigned (if that's the correct term) to our son? The next closest "big city" would be Omaha.</p>
<p>If there are no interviewers within a certain radius of an applicant, does that eliminate the possiblity of an interview since MIT does not do them on-campus?</p>
<p>I go to boarding school so I can’t go anywhere far by myself, and there’s little beside corn fields and cow dung around my school in rural Pennsylvania. I assumed my interview would be a phone interview, but I’m not sure.</p>
<p>Your hometown might actually have a closer interviewer than you think. I’m pretty sure that interviewers are split up by geographic region, rather than by state boundaries, but I think Mikalye or cellardwellar can tell you this for sure.</p>
<p>I have never heard of phone interviews being conducted - darkblademaster, if there are a lot of students from your boarding school applying, maybe an interviewer would come out there? Otherwise, if you can’t reasonably get to your interviewer (maybe a teacher or someone can drive you?), you can waive your interview without it affecting your chances of admission.</p>
<p>My interviewer lives 100 miles away from me - MIT still assigned me to him. It worked out fine in the end; my mom and I made a day trip out of it and went shopping while we were there :)</p>
<p>I’m guessing that MIT’s interview “radius” is greater than or equal to 100 miles - your son should be fine for getting an interview.</p>
<p>To the OP’s question. There are more than a dozen EC’s in the Kansas City area, and a wide variety of EC’s elsewhere in Missouri. My midwestern geography is not good enough to know whether there is one close to you, but it is likely.</p>
<p>We really, really, really try to avoid telephone interviews where we can. We have had applicants applying from the middle of nowhere in my large region, and the options for the student were to have their interview waived, or to do a telephone interview. When you genuinely live nowhere near an EC, then the interview will be waived without penalty, but if that describes you and you really want an interview, then it is rare but not impossible to do a telephone interview. The interview state is usually the very first line on any such interview report. I have conducted one telephone interview in the past eight years. We really prefer the face-to-face kind when that is at all possible.</p>
<p>Thank you, Mikalye, for your response. Kansas City is no problem for us. So that’s good to know for next year. One of our son’s strengths is talking to adults about his love of math and science, so he will think the interview is an awesome opportunity.</p>
<p>DS many years ago interviewed with the local MIT guy. </p>
<p>But what happens when the MIT guy couldn’t answer anything about the department or area of study that student wants to explore? What happens when the MIT guy is a lawyer and the prospect wants to be an engineer?</p>
<p>Does the MIT person give a report back to the admission office and on what criteria? Objective or subjective?</p>
<p>It seems to me, that there are an infinite variety of prospects and like infinite variety of interviewers. All of the pairings will be mismatches.</p>
<p>Um, the interview is so that MIT gets to know more about the applicant, so of course the EC sends something back to MIT. All the objective criteria are already being sent off by the applicant anyway, and judging from the other interview thread it seems some ECs explicitly tell interviewees not to bring any test scores, etc. Anyway, I suppose that the EC will simply have a more general conversation with the interviewee on, well, MIT.</p>
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<p>That is rarely the case. The interview rarely goes into depth about specific departments, largely because the student rarely actually knows what they are going to major in (there are exceptions of course). So if I meet a student who has a deep and abiding interest in Chemistry, it is still not clear whether they will major in Chemistry, in Chemical Engineering, or in Materials Science, or if they will develop a huge interest in something outside of their high school interests and major in that. Subjects like Economics, Meteorology, Cognitive Psychology, and Linguistics are rarely taught in high schools, but are all possible majors. A huge percentage of MIT students change their mind about their major course of study, and that is just fine.</p>
<p>Besides, when you get to campus, we all live together. There isn’t separate housing for the Architecture majors (though you do see hammocks strung up occasionally in the Architecture studios). The engineers, scientists and music composition majors all share living space. If you think that a chemist cannot relate to an economist, then you do not really understand MIT. </p>
<p>Mismatches are very, very rare. Having an interviewer who may have a different choice of major than the one you intended at 17 is quite common.</p>