My son was admitted in Mechanical Engineering at IIT with (25K per year scholarship) and was invited to attend scholarship weekend in Feb for Camras Scholarship.
Background: My son has been swimming for about 10 years and would like to swim for college. We were invited by IIT swimming head coach last weekend for recruiting trip. The people were very nice and campus is small but pretty although the engineering building is small and old. The scholarship weekend will give us more time to explore the campus. We already got offer from Iowa state and scholarship to cove the tuition. However, Iowa state doesn’t have men’s swimming. Son really wants to get Camras scholarship to attend IIT and represent IIT for swimming. He would be one of the top swimmers if he could join the IIT team.
Because of swimming, he is very interested in fluid dynamics. He did research in Fluid dynamics lab at U of Iowa this summer. His GPA 3.89 (unweighted). School doesn’t rank. awards include USA swimming Scholastic All-american; age-group state record holder; age-group national top 10; AP scholar with distinction; National honor society etc. He serves as Athlete Rep in our local swimming club and also in Iowa Swimming technical planning committee.
Question: what shall he prepare for the scholarship weekend, especially the interview? Do you think it would be helpful to prepare a presentation of his research, e.g. a few PPT slides, for interview?
by the way, I always have a specially feeling about IIT because my PHD advisor (member in academy of engineering and science) was graduated by IIT.
No, don’t prepare a powerpoint presentation. The Interview Weekend is designed to familiarize applicants with the university so they can see if Illinois Tech is a good fit. The second goal is to make sure that the students who get a Camras are the kind of students who will be leaders on campus and give back to the rest of the student body. I have done many interviews over the years and what I look for is a student who has passion for their studies and what they do outside of academics and who can express it in an articulate manner. I want to see if the student can hold up their end of a conversation and can initiate discussions. I don’t want to see portfolios, promotional videos, or powerpoint presentations.
The Rettaliata Center is the main building for the Mechanical Engineering Department and, yes, it is from the late 1950’s originally. However, a lot of it was rebuilt last year and it is probably oneof the nicer academic buildings on campus now. The main problem we have is that the campus was designed by Mies van der Rohe and thus is hard to change without a lot of discussion because of it’s architectural significance. That being said, there will be a new academic building on campus by 2018 and your son will have the opportunity to use it extensively.
@xraymancs My daughter participated in the scholarship weekend. I am curious if you can share any details of the post interviews decision making process? Did each interviewer have a certain amount of scholarships they could award to just the students they interviewed? Or do all the interviewers meet and work through a selection process? Thanks.
The interviewers fill out a Camras interview report to the admissions office. They make all the decisions taking into consideration the reports but also their own impressions of the attendees. For Duchossois and Crown, I think the process is somewhat different and the faculty make the final decisions but these are more extensive interviews.
Personally, I interviewed 10 students and they all were quite impressive.