I had my interview last week, and it was incredibly weird. The man I interviewed with was insanely nice and accommodating, but it didn’t really seem like he wanted to get to know me. He just asked about everything I do, and then told me a lot about why he loved Georgetown and chose to go there. There were really no typical interview questions. The guy just said, “I like to make sure our area is represented. I’ll do everything I can for you.” This seems fine, but it’s kind of weirding me out a little too. Anyone have any idea what to make of this? Right now I have great stats and extracurriculars to work with. My only caveat is a super low Math SAT countered by a near perfect CR. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks so much.
There are some interviewers who become a bit partisan as regards their area, especially if they haven’t had any of their interviewees admitted in the last few years or otherwise feel like their region is underrepresented.
Some interviewers are also new and/or less good at eliciting information from applicants that wouldn’t otherwise appear in the application, for whatever reason.
If you feel like you didn’t get the opportunity to communicate important information that you wanted to get across, you can either email the interviewer with that information or email your local committee chair, explain the situation, and ask whether you might be able to get an interview with a different person. It just depends on how strongly you feel about it.
Just because some alum agrees to do interviews doesn’t mean that they have it all figured out. My best estimate is that a third to a half of interviewers from “top” schools have some sort of underlying issues significant enough for someone to describe the interview as “weird”. However, yours wasn’t.
In fact, he seems pretty normal. He’s just volunteering because he thinks it needs to be done. Interviewers have relatively little impact on your admissions. He will say you were pleasant enough, mention some of your strengths he thought stood out and that will be that. That’s pretty much “everything he can do for you”.
Why is that “weird”?