I’m struggling with what to have D ask to show interest. I feel like most questions are either unanswerable, or the answer is already on the school’s website. Suggestions?
Here are a couple my kid’s have asked when they had Zoom interviews with a current/former student interviewer:
What is one of your favorite things about your school? What would you change?
Favorite class and/or professor – a class I should not miss if I attend X school.
Ease of double majoring, involvement of non majors in music, theater, ultimate frisbee, newspaper - tailored to your child’s interest.
^^^ All great topics.
Other things to talk ask are
A. work/social life balance
B. intensity of interaction between faculty and students,
C. opportunities for work in labs or otherwise with faculty and the level of work (independent work, perhaps opportunities for presentations of publications, etc)
I would add that your kid can also ask questions which seem unanswerable. These questions can easily lead to a short discussion, which is also good, IMO
More good questions that a lot of people don’t think to ask:
-who teaches lower-level (intro) classes? (Professors vs. TAs?)
-what does the average course load for a freshman look like?
-are students assigned an academic advisor? or is there just general advising?
It reminds me of a joke:
Back in Eastern Europe, in the shtetles (small market towns where Jews were forced to live in the Russian Empire), marriage was arranged by a matchmaker, and part of the job was to prepare and introduce the potential couple, so that they could meet each other and form opinions.
The boy was having trouble.
“What should I talk about?” he asked the matchmaker. “Well, it is polite to ask and talk about family” was the response.
“And then what?” the boy asked. “Well” said the matchmaker, “you are young and thinking of marriage, so you should talk about love”.
“And then what?” the boy asks again. “Well, if family and love aren’t enough, start talking about philosophy” says the matchmaker.
So the boy and girl are introduced, they’re sitting next to each other, in silence. Then the boy remembers “Ah! I should ask about family”.
He turns to the girl, and blurts out “do you have a brother”. She blurts back “no”.
He thinks, “well I guess now I should talk about love”. He turns to her again and blurts “do you love lokshen (noodles)?”. The girls again blurts out “no”.
“OK”, he thinks, “I’ve covered family and love. what was next?”
He turns to her and asks, “so, if you had a brother, do you think that he would love lokshen?”