This morning I was lucky enough to receive an email from a Dartmouth alumn. I’m fairly excited, but have several questions. Does the interview affect my application in anyway, and am I more likely to get accepted? What kind of questions should I be expecting? How should I dress? And the basic does and don’ts.
Thanks a bunch
It’s not a sign that they’re considering you–they try to interview everyone.
The interview is not super important. They will for sure ask about why you want to go to Dartmouth, so be specific in your answer. Know how to talk about yourself–what academic subjects interest you, what you put as your intended major and why, what activities you have participated in during high school, and your impact on them. Prepare some thoughtful questions–make sure the answers to these questions can’t be easily found on the Dartmouth website. All in all, don’t stress too much about the interview; it is just a conversation. Dress nice, arrive on time, and be polite. Relax and smile! Most people have good interviews, so positive interviews don’t typically have a huge impact on decisions, but another small boost helps. I think negative interviews can impact you, but the interview would have to be really bad, so don’t stress out about it! And also don’t read too much into what the interviewer tells you. I had a really fantastic interview for Brown ED and my interviewer said I would be perfect for Brown, and he doesn’t see why they wouldn’t accept me. He said he would write me an amazing report and guess what? I was deferred. So the interview matters very little in the process.
Also I suggest maybe looking up your interviewer, and seeing where they work, etc. Maybe you can tailor some of the things you say to their interests. I couldn’t find much about my interviewer, but I did see that he went to law school on his LinkedIn and he studied history at Brown so I made sure to talk about my interests in government, history, and politics.
Good luck!
That is not necessarily true. As per their common data sets, both Dartmouth and Brown consider the interview as part of their admissions process. This does not mean that a good interview will trump the other things that they consider to be very important.
@sybbie719 I didn’t say that it doesn’t matter. Of course it’s a part of the process, but it doesn’t make or break your application. I think people stress out about it too much and in the end it doesn’t make very much of a difference.
Dartmouth is very upfront about the fact that the interview is both informative and evaluative
My D was an alumni interviewer for many years. IIRC, their report is pretty in-depth and they certainly do not write them like “they don’t matter”.
[quote=Dartmouth Ambassadors Program]
When writing your report, do:
Provide any insight and context that you learn which may not otherwise be available to the admissions office
Talk about the applicant’s intellectual/professional interests and the motivation for these interests
Highlight impressions or observations about the student and his or her potential contributions to the Dartmouth community
Include specific anecdotes or quotes
Assess the applicant’s personality, maturity, and ability to communicate ideas
http://dartmouth.imodules.com/s/1353/directory/index.aspx?sid=1353&gid=350&pgid=11060
[quote]
You can google to see the list of colleges where interviews are evaluative
@sybbie719 Once again, I didn’t say that interviews weren’t evaluative. I said that they are nowhere near as important as people make them out to be. You should definitely accept the offer if you get it, dress nice, prepare, leave a good impression but you are not going to get in based off of that interview. It may help, it may hurt, but not to a great extent.
Be honest. None of us really knows how much an interview matters – unless there’s an admissions person lurking out there, and I really doubt that. If I were the OP, I would examine posts by @sciencenerd123 on other threads before I would pay too much attention to anything s/he says. That’s just an observation.
@AboutTheSame Nothing I said is inherently wrong. Everyone on this website says that the interview doesn’t matter very much in the process. I never said it didn’t matter, I never said don’t try. I prepped for my Dartmouth interview. Of course I did. I arrived thirty minutes beforehand (and then waited for an hour and my interviewer didn’t show up so that’s great). You should do it, you should do well, but don’t stress out too much. That’s all I was saying. Of course you don’t know for sure. A lot of people on this website don’t know for sure, but everything I’ve read says that the interview is not going to be make or break. This person asked for tips, and I tried to help them when no one else did. Posted on 1/19, had 100+ views, no one tried to help until I did. Don’t ignore everything else I said, and just pay attention to that part. My Dartmouth interviewer said it was super casual, my Brown interviewer said he’d been doing interviews for years and he still doesn’t know the role they play. Of course they play a role. I never said they didn’t. But is the decision going to be made based on the interview? Of course not!
Also, it would be unfair if the interview mattered a great deal in the process because not everyone gets it. Just saying. @AboutTheSame
Also: (https://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/23/do-college-admissions-interviews-matter/)
Plus, this person asked for tips and I’m still the only one who actually gave them that so…
Just try to do well in the interview @vedwarsd1127. Everyone can speculate about how much it matters, but in the end it doesn’t hurt to do well, whether it matters very much or very little is irrelevant. I was just trying to reassure you and make sure you don’t unnecessarily freak out or stress too much about it.