<p>So three people in my school have applied to columbia. One girl submitted October 1, I submitted October 5, and the third girl submitted October 31. The third girl got contacted for an interview today while myself and the other girl have not. We all live in the same county; in addition, myself and the first girl have far better stats (I am first in the class and she is 5th) while the third girl is somewhere in the 70s or 80s rank (although she is African American)</p>
<p>I know that most colleges dont prescreen before interviews but its making me paranoid that I missed an email or phone call? I checked my inbox several times to make sure but still nothing</p>
<p>you are not prescreened - you are not being singled out or in. we are not even told the student’s name and definitely not any race or your academic strength before selecting students, and only receive name and brief contact information as well as your major choices when we are assigned specific candidates. not nearly enough to prescreen, and one of the mottos of our process as interviewers is to be objective and interview as many candidates as possible. we do that to the best of our ability. </p>
<p>you may be contacted, or you might not be. i had a student that submitted the wrong email and so they never received my message for an interview (so heck you could’ve already been contacted). further you should realize that not every interviewer is equal - some go through their list more quickly than others. some don’t finish their list. there are countless reasons why you would not be contacted and someone else could. i think you should realize that when you have human institutions, that things work in mysterious ways and you have no control over them. being paranoid will only make your days worse. take a deep breath and be okay with it - the process will work out in the end. plus the admissions office has plenty of info on you already. the interview might help a bit, but also remember it could hurt.</p>
<p>lastly, i find your insinuation regarding the third girl to be very dangerous. and i would hope you consider the slippery slope you are implying. it is extraordinarily demeaning to single out a student’s race or rank in terms of trying to understand why they might be interviewed or admitted over you (you don’t know anything about that, you don’t know what columbia is looking for or sees in you or that student, so it is preposterous to be agitated as there are so many variables that you have not accounted for). in fact it shows a true misunderstanding of admissions. of course to an extent you are ‘competing’ because you know each other and you have formed a perception of where you stack up. but columbia looks at you individually first and foremost. and if you individually are compelling regardless of your rank, your race, or your interests, you could be admitted.</p>
<p>i congratulate you for being first in your class - but that says nothing about what you value, what you want to do, how you operate with other students, with teachers, how introspective you are, how intellectually-oriented you are. doing well in school is a part of the application process. it just so happens that those who are budding intellectuals and leaders usually happen to do well in school. but it is having the qualities that would allow you to succeed at columbia that matter most. because having those qualities are what will separate you from a run of the mill student who has good grades and test scores.</p>
<p>i hope that this will help you not worry so much. but also realize that you have to watch what you say here, and indeed what you say to your interviewer or on your application. however minute it may seem to you, it opens a window into what you value and indeed what you would contribute to a college campus.</p>
<p>admissions geek – is the interview usually designed to be a review of your resume to make sure you hadn’t exaggerated your qualifications or more of an esoteric conversation to hopefully determine what you value, how you interact with others, your intellectual depth?</p>
<p>we don’t get your resume, so uh it isn’t to check your exaggeration.</p>
<p>ostensibly a college interview is to get to know you better, and see how you articulate your interests. an interviewer who is unfamiliar with your resume will speak with you and write down observations. </p>
<p>how it is then used by the admissions office will vary. it could be useful, or useless, it could help or hurt your candidacy. it might confirm facts or refute your application, who knows. it will change depending on what information comes from it and how it meshes with what else is in your application, maybe what the admissions officer is looking will determine what they pay attention for, what the interviewer writes or doesn’t write, what they ask or don’t ask. because each interview is unique, how it will impact your application is unique.</p>
<p>Admissionsgeek- What do interviewers send to Columbia? My interviewer had a piece of paper with questions on it, and she was handwriting answers to them. Is this the norm? Or do you type up a “letter of recommendation” of some kind? Thanks</p>
<p>I didn’t mean to imply anything racially biased. I was just wondering if they have some type of program like that. for example, the national achievement scholarship was made solely for african american students. I didn’t know if colleges had similar programs. sorry for the way I worded that. I actually support affirmative action, I was just wondering if any of that made a difference in assigning interview. jeez calm down</p>
<p>As far as I’m aware, the interview process is generally random, but based on when you submitted your Part 1 Application (I got called for an interview before submitting my part II app).
As for what interviewers submit, my interview told me that he submits about a 1-2 page letter about your interview, what you’ve told them, and why s/he thinks you would or would not be a good choice for Columbia. In my case, the interviewer did ask me for a resume about 2 weeks after the interview took place.</p>
<p>One more thing about interviews in general: they’re not that important to be honest. They’re a lot of fun, and they’re typically confidence boosters, but it probably does very little to strengthen your application. The admissions office explicitly states that it is never the deciding factor. </p>
<p>And as for something from my own experience - my aunt used to interview people for Harvard. There were two students in particular she interviewed. One didn’t have as good stats as the other, but she said he was an amazing person and she wrote a long letter about why she thought he should go to Harvard. On the other hand, the other student had really high grades, top of his class, etc., but she thought he was a psychopath and wrote as much in the letter to the admissions office. What ends up happening? The kid with high grades gets in but the other didn’t. Whatever.</p>
<p>stupefy - what you support and how you write it are two different things. i hope you recognize this fact. your tone was far from innocent. and if you wondered if it had something to do with Achievement Scholars, you should have made that clearer. </p>
<p>consider - if you had written that to your interviewer they might have been bothered and written a poor review of you…so always be aware of how you present yourself.</p>
<p>and was it not you that was “paranoid?” i think the point was that you needed to calm down.</p>
<p>one thing to note - harvard unlike columbia gives information to interviewers; that might cloud their own interpretations. columbia does not operate like that. it is truly a blind date.</p>
<p>i chanced upon this thread since i am extremely interested in columbia and i feel the need to reply. i think stupefy mentioned the fact that her fellow applicant is african american because purely statistically speaking, the bar for urm applicants is generally slightly lower (this is not true at all institutions obviously, but this is also merely generally speaking).
admissions geek, what you say can be helpful and you seem to be implying that you are an interviewer, but i’m not sure if your tone and diction in your posts is exactly highlighting your professionalism and desire to help those who have questions about columbia.
the college process is difficult, daunting, and scary. many an applicant is left in a state of stress and paranoia. stupefy, your question is not surprisingly or exceedingly paranoid; many applicants have similar questions and thoughts, and this website is what these questions are for.</p>
<p>please iheartmiles - no i don’t think that stupefy merely mentioned this because the bar is slightly lower, this is naive on your part.</p>
<p>to say i am 1st in my class and she is 80th and imply that there is a slightly lower bar would be a stretch, it in fact implies a larger gap and plays into our imaginations of affirmative action. to put this within the context of freaking out furthers this interpretation. in fact it is far more reasonable to conclude from her first post an antagonistic relationship surround race or at least surrounding the idea of Affirmative Action than what you would gather from stupefy’s later comment. (you yourself coach your words very carefully to make it seem indeed that a gap between white and black is not so large - so then the obvious question, do you think that 1-80 is large? do you think that one could reasonably infer that this is not a comment on the unpredictability of affirmative action and indeed on admissions more generally?)</p>
<p>i am not going to go toe to toe with you on questions of professionalism; one person’s professionalism is another person’s antagonism. i am quite honest and forthright with my personality and my information and very clear in how i hope to come across. i will be smart to some, or a smart ass to others, but in the end i think it is unmistakable that stupefy’s original language was misguided.</p>
<p>if you have to re-explain your thoughts you musn’t have written them correctly. and though i am well aware of Achievement Scholars and the idea (i found that from stupefy to be uncannily aware and i do applaud her for that) i think that if you wish to defend the appearance of her original position, you would be at a loss.</p>
<p>thank you stupefy for correcting your post on 11-18. and i know that iheart gave you support, but i don’t think we should offer false praise in any form. you are bright, clearly, but even bright folks fail (as i certainly have) in communicating their thoughts.</p>
<p>and lastly iheart - if you have any doubts on the quality of my posts, go through them, see how often i help students and answer difficult questions. and if for some reason you wish to come to the same conclusion that on the margins i am unprofessional and unhelpful, please do so. otherwise - realize your own bellicosity. you are no less prone to pettiness. i hope, at least, that my petty antics are clothed to some degree with pedagogy in mind.</p>