Hello! I am a senior in high school, planning on applying to UChicago Early Decision this fall. In a few weeks, I am visiting the campus and have scheduled an interview. My application won’t have been submitted yet, and I contacted the school rather than having them contact me. I am not sure if the interview will be at all helpful to the admissions process in this scenario…thoughts?
My son was in the exact same position as you last year. He was worried that the interviewer would know nothing about him, so he brought a “resume”. The interviewer put it under his binder and began peppering my son with questions for ~40 minutes. The interview was apparently pretty tough with some unexpected questions, but the interviewer did provide some constructive feedback which was nice. I think most people on CC will tell you that interviews don’t matter much or at all, but nobody except the admissions officers can definitively answer that question for you.
Won’t hurt unless you do something crazy like launch into a racist rant or start screaming obscenities at the interviewer. Unlikely to help you wrt odds of admission (ED already shows you’re serious about the school). So relax, have an interesting chat, ask any questions about the school that you have and that the website doesn’t answer. UofC has been pretty clear that the interview is optional. Focus on writing interesting essays — that’s the most consequential thing you can do at this stage to strengthen your application.
I’ll disagree with @exacademic who seems to believe the interview is entirely worthless. While I don’t think it can hurt you I do think it can give you a very slight bump and admissions offices seem to agree.
I don’t think it’s worthless. I just don’t think it has an impact on admissions (unless the interviewee does something egregious). Applicants have so many things to stress out over Senior year. This just isn’t one of them. Hence my relax and enjoy it advice re the interview, coupled with a reminder that time spent on essays has a much greater likelihood of improving your odds of admission.