<p>There were close to 450 interviews in Houston area last year with 30+ admissions in the end, not any higher that the overall admit rate. So an interview is no where close to being equal to an admit.</p>
<p>the interview is offered to everyone that applies without regard to stats or likelihood of acceptance. it is based solely on alumni availability as far as i know. (not the case with international students though, according to other posters on CC.)</p>
<p>I am in NorCal and haven’t been contacted either. Maybe they just have too many kids applying from the SF Bay Area to process them all?</p>
<p>Submitted 10/10/11, contacted 11/8/11, interviewing this Friday. Don’t flip out, folks- this is most definitely run on a club-by-club basis. I know for a fact that interviews have been going on in other parts of the state for several weeks now, but learned today that they have only just begun in the city I live in. I was totally freaked, having applied almost a month ago… but these things have a way of working themselves out :)</p>
<p>yeah…I was freaking out before.But I just got contacted for an interview today. Interview this Friday~!!!</p>
<p>no interview yet. submitted 11/1. upstate ny.</p>
<p>Guys, would it be a train wreck if for my interview I wore a collared polo and khaki shorts? I look really awkward in a dress shirt</p>
<p>I think shorts are inappropriate. Polo and slacks should be better.</p>
<p>Contacted for an interview yesterday. Will have one next Monday. Submitted my app Oct 25.</p>
<p>To those of you who have already had an interview, what type of questions do they like to ask? Those that test intellectual ability/require a creative response, or just some questions about you?</p>
<p>@collegeinfo1994: It’s not a job interview for a consulting firm. They won’t be (or should not be at least) asking any brain teasers. Rather, expect questions along the lines of: </p>
<p>‘What books are you currently reading outside of the classroom setting?’
‘What are you looking forward to in your college experience?’
‘Describe a challenging situation you’ve experienced and how you did you deal with the challenge?’ etc etc. </p>
<p>I usually let the conversation flow naturally, and I rarely stick to a script of questions. I’ve done this enough times I that I don’t really even carry a list of questions with me anymore. I’m much more interested in how you carry yourself in a casual conversation with a relative stranger and whether you have interesting things to say and whether you show any genuine curiosity. I’m not all that interested (nor is the admissions office) in whether or not you can correctly estimate the number of marbles that would fit inside the room in which the interview is taking place. </p>
<p>Anecdotally, from my own interview experiences [from when I applied to colleges] as well as from talking to friends and colleagues who also interview for their respective alma maters, this approach is by far the most common, and is also what the admissions offices expect. We’re not representatives from Bain or McKinsey.</p>
<p>@collegeinfo1994 - look at this thread</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/harvard-university/448149-how-your-harvard-interview.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/harvard-university/448149-how-your-harvard-interview.html</a></p>
<p>Thank you for the replies. I asked because a friend of mine told me that her interviewer asked her questions like “How’s your sense of humor?” “Tell a joke.” <–automatic freeze up, haha.</p>
<p>Also, my interviewer told me not to bring anything (resume, abstract, test scores,etc). But, I know that Harvard asks alumni to give an “academic/intelligence rating” for each person, so I was thinking he would figure out that factor through questions instead.</p>
<p>@collegeinfo1994: Yes, there is an academic rating. It’s a bit strange of a rubric, as that particular category is a combination of SAT scores, your grades/class rank (if available), and other intangibles such as ‘intellectual curiosity’ and ‘love of learning’. I’m not sure why the adcoms want interviewers to roll all those things into one, as they already have access to the first two. I honestly believe interviewers really shouldn’t ask about SATs and GPA at all, and focus entirely on how the interviewee presents him or herself during the interview. Nevertheless, since that’s what the admissions office asks for, I just follow along and give them what they want. So what I usually do is to calculate a not very scientific average of what the scores/grades are and what I think of the interviewee subjectively based on his/her answers to questions such as ‘the book question’ I mentioned earlier in the thread. I really do wish the adcoms would decouple the two parts. </p>
<p>(However, I can still rate an interviewee on individual traits such as ‘love of learning’.)</p>
<p>“How’s your sense of humor?” “Tell a joke?”
I would have died.</p>
<p>^haha. It’s fine. I’m not sure what I would say in a situation like that… -_-’</p>
<p>Thank you, Windcloud! That clears thing up…you’re right, they definitely shouldn’t ask interviewers to include GPA and SAT scores.</p>
<p>Windcloudultra: asking for academic info is a personal choice - you don’t like to but other interviewers do. Having some idea of the academic prowess of a candidate can help direct the interview initially. Taking a look at what a student has written in an essay or a paper can be very helpful. If you don’t want to know the academic facts and would rather just go with your impressions from an hour’s encounter, that’s fine - but for other people, like myself, we like more information in order to put together our views. Particularly for very strong candidates, this information can be very helpful. But certainly there is no one approach that suits all interviewers.</p>
<p>@dar5995: </p>
<p>I mean, I do end up asking for that info, because the form requires it. Perhaps you’re right. Of course there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to the interview process, and different interviewers prefer different methods. </p>
<p>However, I do feel that knowing info such as SAT scores influences how I approach the interview, and probably colors my impression of the applicant [and while I hate to generalize my own biases to other interviewers, let’s not pretend this isn’t the case for at least some interviewers]. Unlike a job interview, where the interviewer is often also the decision maker (or at least a member of a committee) and needs to have all the info, this situation is different. I see it as an opportunity for me to add a different perspective to the applicants’ portfolios, and I feel as if I’m doing them a disservice if I conduct the interview having an initial impression based on test scores and grades. </p>
<p>I’m guessing in majority of cases, even if the interviewer is denied certain information about an applicant, the interview impressions/results would probably still corroborate/correlate with the grades and test scores. However, I’d like to think that it’s in the minority cases that interview reports can really make a different. </p>
<p>In any case, I’m not here to dictate how other interviewers approach their jobs. I find a way to make it work, and to work around my biases. I usually only ask for test scores/grades/GPA at the end of the interview, when I’ve already jotted down lots of notes and impressions (I’m sure there are others who do something similar). Of course, knowing the extra info can still influence how I write my report, but at the very least, I have some material/observations from before to fall back on.</p>
<p>Submitted October 25; haven’t been contacted. Maryland. Concern?</p>