qailah - whew; I hope you are right, on both counts!! I’m sure it’s true in terms of the interviewer; everyone, including their “boss”, paid job or no, understands Stuff Happens on some level. Thanks, all, for setting me straight about McD. I grew up where there was none, and just have never, ever used them. I’ve been in them a couple times, all really terrible experiences. FWIW. I would literally not know what to order there except coffee, which dd doesn’t drink either. Her problem I suppose should she be asked there and expected to display reciprocity. But my sympathy leaks forth too much, I suppose… that’s most of the source of my angst about the meeting place. If you don’t drink soda, or coffee, or eat hamburgers (can’t) – what would you order there? Again, trivial and not my problem, as has been amply pointed out here.
Well…it’s too late to change that email now…but here is what I would have suggested my KID write:
Dear College,
I had an alumni interview scheduled with Mrs. Suzy Q. Unfortunately the timing did not end up working out for Mrs. Q. I have been unable to contact her to reschedule.
I would very much like an opportunity to have an interview with an alumnus from your school. Is there any chance you could connect me with someone else?
Sincerely,
Possible student
You say you are from a large metro area. If that is the case, perhaps there are other alum interviewers in town.
OP., I’m getting the sense that you’re not from this country. I assure you, even “nice parts” of any town has McDonald’s, that they sell more than fried foods and soda or coffee-there are salads, broiled or baked chicken, milk, juice, and even water available. The idea that you think that only “low class” people enter the doors of McD’s speaks to your own biases and it’s not pretty.
For the record. my D is also very busy and doesn’t drive yet, so I spend quite a bit of time driving her to meetings, interviews, mentorships, etc. Sometimes they are in Starbucks, sometimes at places of business and sometimes in fast food restaurants. The only time they’ve been at a private home was after she’d worked with the person for quite some time and we’d met them several times. The choice of location is usually one of convenience, not for a “cultural” reason. And yes, meetings DO get canceled at the last minute, the adult in question HAS forgotten, and sometimes there are even emergencies with no response. It’s life, we move on.
Since you’ve sent your email, I suspect that it’s being shared around with a lot of snark and headshaking. Hopefully it won’t impact your D.
The only part of this interview experience that sounded weird to me (and I’m surprised no one mentioned it although maybe I missed it) is this (emphasis mine):
Is this something that is mentioned elsewhere on the admissions site? It could be real for this particular school (especially if it’s rolling admissions) but for example at Brown - where I interview, the above is a flat out lie. It would certainly be inappropriate for an interviewer to pressure an interviewee into a given interview time frame (presumably one more convenient for the interviewer) by threatening to impact their chances of admission - particularly if it’s not based in reality.
As others have stated, the McDonald’s location was totally reasonable (I do all of mine in a starbucks because it’s the closest place that makes sense) and the late cancellation while rude, is not out of the ordinary.
I think that it is very poor form for the interviewer not to respond to your D after being essentially an unannounced no-show at the meeting.
Nothing else about the situation is strange.
It is unfortunate that your D scratched herself from a race for the interview, especially for her team, but I would gather that the interviewer had no idea she went to such lengths.
If she still wants an interview with this school, she should email the Admissions Office, say that her first interviewer was a no show and that he/she hasn’t responded to her since then, and ask for a new interviewer.
I’m a top five percenter with two prep school educated children, and frankly I like McDonald’s coffee and ok, chicken mcnuggets on occasion. I wouldn’t even think twice if an interviewer wanted to meet my son there. My son would probably try to talk him into Chipotle though.
I’ve done interviews for two top schools for many years, and I agree with the consensus here that there was nothing strange about what happened. The interviewer should perhaps have been more definite that the scheduled appointment wouldn’t take place but probably assumed the student understood that. Nothing wrong with McDonald’s, either—some of them are actually somewhat “upscale” these days! For what it’s worth, my son had an alum interview last year for a top Ivy that took place at the interviewer’s home, alone. This was unusual, but since the interviewer was also very elderly and lived up a long, winding road some distance away from “civilization” (though with plenty of other houses on the same street), understandable. I drove him up there because he didn’t have his license yet, and it was dark. I waited a couple of houses away in the car. If I’d had a daughter, I would have done the same thing. Everything went fine. I was relieved when the interview was over, though—not at all a fan of driving winding, unlit, two-lane roads through the hills at night (even after a trial run during the day, which I did beforehand just to see where exactly the house was located).
yup yup Consolation - I don’t actually know whether the interviewer knew dd’s choice about scratching but I agree she likely doesn’t know. All these concessions that happen in all directions, as mentioned elsewhere here, it’s all just stuff that we all of us absorb all day every day and don’t make a big deal about. It’s the totality and the circumstances that, as I’ve tried (badly, evidently), to convey, that just added up as off.
In particular, as Iwannabe_Brown said, that weird stuff about “if-you-don’t-do-this-now-you’re-screwed” sort of tenor. Please understand, my conveyance of this information is second-hand, I wasn’t part of the communication that implied this, dd was. And – trying hard not to be helicoptery, I can’t vouch for the veracity of this sense and/or where it might have gone astray. But that is indeed what I understood from dd to be the nature of their negotiations about interviewing. And I felt pretty shocked by this too. If it is true, I actually didn’t know it at all and wish I had earlier – this could be my bad for not being more with it and online, and, say, part of this community at all. But it also, retroactively, contributed to the sense of “is this even actually real”? Because as mentioned, for at least one ivy this is just plain not true. It was sort of surreal, the whole thing.
Anyway, it didn’t seem to me like it is or should be true? Perhaps it’s just wistful thinking on my part because I really had no idea that these admissions chances could be gamed by getting one’s application in early, and/or hurt by having not done so. But I naively thought they were due next week, they had an open door til then, they closed the door after then and started looking.
So this person, again, contacted dd; was told, evidently, by the school to contact dd and arrange an interview. If dd wanted an interview with them, I was unaware of it. (I am actually probably improperly distantly involved with all this).
So again, these are all little bits and pieces that added up weirdly, to me. But I hear everyone that the McD piece is just not part of anything that’s weird. And lol sseamom, I am from this country, born and bred, but really not of it in the mainstream at least. I just blinder the stuff I don’t like and don’t know much about it. Malls and chains are not part of my existence and as a result, I’ve obviously created some incorrect presumptions. Does this mean I have to somehow visit a McD to try to haul myself into the 21st century? Shudder…
sseamom - for the record, I know that folks of all classes do indeed enter and partake of and enjoy food from McDonald’s. By the same token, there really are people in this country who are oblivious to it entirely (case in point being me). I didn’t know the location of this McD or any McD and had to google it. It is definitely true, though, that the neighborhoods around various private schools here do not have McDonalds present. Therefore for an interviewer who themselves happened to live near these locales, they would have to drive out of their way to a McD to conduct an interview there which is silly and unlikely. By passive likelihood, therefore, I believe that folks from upper-scale 'hoods are significantly less likely to be having an interview in a McDonalds. So for this reason alone my classist umbrage is likely true. That I have any at all is causing several here to consider my biases “ugly”. Which may be so, but does not make them wrong.
I would bet dollars to donuts that the hundreds of private school primary-school classmates of dd’s (some of the richest people on the planet) have not been asked to take an interview for this school at McD’s. That said, you are all – every one of you – IMO completely correct that all this has no place in my difficulty with the specific situation. Thank you for helping parse this out.
Haven’t read the whole thread (just parts) but suspect that we are hearing what happened 3rd hand through the filter of a HS’er. I too have done alum interviews. It’s common to find a convenient time/place and usually in a public place (I use Starbucks usually). I suspect the student is not accurately portraying what the interviewer said about the urgency of the meeting and the possibility that if not that their application could be negatively affected, as rarely are alum interviews all that significant in the application process. Agree that the letter is too long, has unnecessary negative comments about McDonalds, etc. A simple "my daughter was scheduled for an alum interview, but the interviewer failed to show for this meeting. There were some aspect of this process that made us a bit uncomfortable. As this is a new experience to us, is there someone I might speak with briefly to clarify the procedure? Thanks and happy holidays ".
Done.
@jym626: perfect. sigh. I need you for script-writer.
I read a lot of essays, sirila. Am getting pretty good at the cogent writing thing 
OP, I guessed you might be from another country because you said you came from a place with no McD’s. As they seem to be everywhere in all income areas, I thought that perhaps you’d grown up someplace other than the US (though they exist in other countries as well). And really, you have no idea where other kids from other neighborhoods have their interviews. My D has met with people all over Seattle-despite not even going to school IN Seattle-so you just can’t make assumptions.
That said, I think jym nailed what you should have said. The ONLY thing about the entire fiasco that sounds even bit off is the insistence on the timing.But as you got it all 3rd hand, maybe even that wasn’t communicated as you think it was.
…“There were some aspects of this process that made us a bit uncomfortable…” This is the part that’s perfect. It’s what, as others have noted here, got side-lined by my to-many-offensive umbrage at the McD part. It’s rather a good object lesson in how too much can distract from the real point.
Pity it’s not us writing those essays! Learned a lot here … lol.
Here’s the funny thing: I knew this. That’s why I said nothing for as long as I did; I was trying to let my own annoyance at the class-thing die down. It isn’t relevant, truth status notwithstanding. It made me too angry to be cogent.
OK, here’s another Q: is there any significance to the school contacting interviewer to contact kid for interview? Was kid supposed to have been doing this? I actually have zero idea how this was supposed to have worked: I don’t remember from my own youth, it’s likely irrelevant to now anyway. And (more my-bad), I’d forgotten all about it and hadn’t inquired of kid. This is presumably something that a college counselor could have and/or should have been helpful advising. Yikes more reasons for subliminal guilt. Should I have been paying more attention to this. I suppose at the least, it would eliminate the retroactive wondering: is this real. If the contact goes from kid -> school there’s no wondering about veracity.
This conforms 100% with my predictions: http://healthland.time.com/2011/11/07/fast-foods-biggest-customers-not-the-poor-but-the-middle-class/ It’s the upper class abstinence that’s the issue, not the lower-class presence.
Sorry to refer to “class” so specifically. It makes everyone very uncomfortable (me included), I know.
I’ve seen alunni interviews go several different ways, always starting with kid requesting interview by whatever means the school specifies:
- Kid gets an email response from the school with one or more alumni interviewer names and has to take the initiative to reach out to them directly with a request.
- Interviewer selected by the school contacts kid directly by either phone, email or in one case postcard, and kid has to follow through.
Locations have typically been coffee shops or hotel lobbies.
Not 100% clear what you are asking, but from reading over the years what different alum interviewers do, it seems each school has its own process. Someone here said they were given a list of names of potential interviewers. That’s not how ours works. My school either sends a list of locations of the interviewees to the local alums who have offered to do interviews and asks who can handle which one, or they send an email directly to an alum volunteer and ask if they can schedule an interview with XX student who lives in XX. My personal challenge is that the school doesn’t know our metro area, and seems to sin ply be going by the county we live in. And even though I am in county A, I might live very close to some students in county B or C than someone on the far side of my own county.
So what’s the significance of the school contacting the alum? None. Usually it’s a matter of the student having indicated that they want to schedule an alum interview and the school following up Somme schools are more organized about this than others, and some have more alums/alum groups in some areas than others.
What’s the annoyance at the class thing?? Am missing that. That the alum (who could be 60+ or 23 yrs old) picked a McD’s? That’s much ado about nothing. Some meet at libraries Ina. Room, some at the alum’s office, some at a fast food place, coffee shop, etc. There have been several thread in the past about the potential creepiness of meeting in an alum’s home, and we as interviewers are advised agains that anyway.
Maybe the interviewer owned the McDonald’s.
LOL!
I was thinking it could have been close to where he worked or otherwise would be on that day and time.
When we arranged an interview the interviewer was a little far from us. We split the difference and found a Starbucks just off the freeway. (Turned out the Starbucks was crowded so they went next door to a sandwich shop)
Your perception…and has no basis in actual fact.
We live in an upper middle class neighborhood. And, perish the thought…we also go to MacDonalds too. In fact the two I frequent the most are also in upper middle class suburbs, not all that far from Starbucks.
Your insinuations about class, and how,they relate to interviewers, and the places,they might or might not choose are…well…offensive.
Once your kiddo goes to college, she will be out of your bubble, and will meet all sorts of people from all sorts of backgrounds. I hope she doesn’t judge them in the basis of where they grab a quick bite to eat.
For the record, I will sometimes drive out of my way to get MacDonalds fries. And love those Shamrock shakes!
Hard to believe you dont know many others who might eat at McDonalds on occasion…at least.
There’s a thought, Planner
And my iPad sure is taking liberties with its autocorrect today. Hopefully most is readable. Eg- some meet at libraries in a room. Don’t know anyone named Ina Room.