<p>Great question, especially since I had the exact same thing happen to me today. I was, needless to say, quite shocked. My app was obviously good enough for Stanford without an interview, which makes me very uncomfortable about my Harvard interview.</p>
<p>For reference, posted by NorthStarMom: “However, from what I’ve been able to figure out, second interviews can occur for reasons like the following: the admissions committee is very split on the applicant, with both sides giving compelling reasons for a decision; Harvard is very interested in an applicant, but the interviewer had a negative report or gives a report that is so vague that Harvard can’t make a final decision; Harvard hadn’t rated the student that high, but an interviewer did for reasons that go beyond what’s on the application (such as if an interviewer was impressed by a student’s level of intellectual discourse, but the student’s grades/ recommendations didn’t reflect this); an interviewer didn’t submit a report (such as if the interviewer lost their report or became too sick to send it) or an interviewer did something so inept that Harvard wants a second interview in order to leave the student with a positive impression of Harvard whether or not the student is accepted.”</p>
<p>This obviously is particularly worrisome. And I didn’t think anything went wrong with my first interview (in fact, I thought it went excellently), although one part was kind of odd. I had written a paper about a subject that the interviewer was an expert in. I knew this going in, but didn’t mention that I knew because it wasn’t particularly relevant to the paper (which was significant for several reasons). I wonder if he thought I was trying to suck up to him and feign ignorance, which was not the case. I find that highly unlikely, but I can’t think of anything else to justify a second interview. My counselor mentioned that the interviewer’s reports may have been too extreme, thus discounting them, or that he was sick or something. But he was a copious note-taker, and said at the end that he had more than enough to describe me. I doubt either of these scenarios.</p>
<p>firefly, when did you submit your app? I submitted mine December 1st, and my interview happened on December 12th, so it’s been quite a long time since I’ve had one. Could this be a factor?</p>
<p>Snippet from the second interview email: “I realize you have already had your interview, but in a number of cases our local committee does two of these. So, I would like to meet with you sometime next week for this purpose. A second interview is usually shorter, so ½ hour should suffice.”</p>
<p>I’m really not trying to hijack your thread, lol. I just wanted to add info to see if we can both piece this together with insight from Harvard interviewers (e.g. NSM).</p>