<p>My son is about as far as you can imagine from a pleasedtomeetcha type. He’s the one wearing the “I’m not anti-social, I"m jut not user friendly” t-shirt. He’s the one leaving the party early because he can only take so much of dealing with crowds. He did fine at his Harvard interview - not chatty, but he answered questions. I believe MIT uses interviews to weed out people who are too weird or too introverted. I don’t think they are weeding out Jews.</p>
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<p>I was waitlisted at H years ago and absolutely think I blew the interview, despite the fact that I left there naively thinking it was the “easiest” one I’d had yet and most likely for informational purposes after all (which it was not). The interviewer started out by making some small talk, asking how I’d gotten up to the interview etc. After that she asked me if I had any questions. And that was pretty much it. Looking back, I realize that she was waiting for me to be proactive and take charge of the conversation once it was clear that she was not going to do that. It was not so much that I was so shy or reserved by nature, but I was certainly too passive in that situation. On the other hand, it’s likely that wasn’t the only factor.</p>
<p>I’m not suggesting that weeding out Jews through interviews goes on now. I was referring to the old quota days, before World War II.</p>
<p>younghoss, the word discrimination, by itself, does not imply unlawful discrimination. If it did, the adjective would be superfluous. I never suggested that admissions discrimination against the shy – which clearly exists – is unlawful. Just, in my opinion, unfair and misplaced.</p>
<p>…</p>
<p>I don’t try to weed out shy kids. I’ve given some of my best write-ups to kids who are shy and some of my worst to kids who were very outgoing.</p>
<p>BTW, the Jewish and Catholic quotas at Harvard and Yale didn’t end until the mid-1960s.</p>
<p>I know they aren’t weeding out Jews, what I really meant, is I don’t think they are weeding out anything they shouldn’t be weeding out. I think it’s okay to week out a pathologically shy person, not a normally shy person. One of the reasons I don’t do Harvard interviews is that I don’t think I have the skills to make a kid who is somewhat ill at ease or nervous feel better. I’m sort of a weird combination of shy and outgoing.</p>
<p>IMO, Most of the IVY’s are great universal universities producing outstanding lawyers and financial types. For those who are specific for what they want to do in life, ie engineering, these schools are only average</p>
<p>I can’t remember how most of DS’s ‘interviews’ went, What I do remember is that the interviewers could not reply to their engineering environment.</p>
<p>TG, DS was not accepted at those schools where engineering are not their strong or minor suits.</p>
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I would say this is not unique to Harvard – it’s true of almost every college in the country, and especially for large state schools. Most schools don’t weed out the painfully shy and the students either sink or swim. </p>
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While this sounds oppressive to me (all those leaders – where are the followers?) I do agree that Harvard has the right to create whatever type of campus it wants, and the rest of us have the right to criticize.</p>
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Clearly shy is less valuable to Harvard and they are making an effort to weed out shy kids through the interview process. </p>
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I think it’s completely normal for an eighteen-year-old to be shy and silent in a situation like this. The interview itself is a high stress situation for many kids, even though the interviewer doesn’t intend it to be so. It’s incredibly presumptuous to make a judgement about a student’s personality, or future ability to fit in, or to assume that a particular kid would be miserable at a college based on an interview with a stranger.</p>
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Maybe. But peer schools like Stanford somehow manage to assemble an acceptable class without interviews. Are their students weirder?</p>
<p>Oddly, the only person from my high school who attended Harvard was, and still is, painfully shy. But she enjoyed her time there.</p>
<p>“I think it’s completely normal for an eighteen-year-old to be shy and silent in a situation like this. The interview itself is a high stress situation for many kids, even though the interviewer doesn’t intend it to be so. It’s incredibly presumptuous to make a judgement about a student’s personality, or future ability to fit in, or to assume that a particular kid would be miserable at a college based on an interview with a stranger.”</p>
<p>It’s also completely normal for students to get SAT scores of 500 on each section. However, Harvard and similar schools aren’t seeking that of normalcy for their student body.</p>
<p>"I would say this is not unique to Harvard – it’s true of almost every college in the country, and especially for large state schools. Most schools don’t weed out the painfully shy and the students either sink or swim. "</p>
<p>I think that some colleges are good places for students who are painfully shy and passive. There are colleges that pride themselves on being nurturing and helping unconfident, shy students blossom. </p>
<p>There also are colleges that don’t pride themselves on having students run extracurriculars, but think that advisors should be doing the bulk of the work including selecting the student leaders and transporting and mentoring students through activities such as off campus conferences. Ivies aren’t like this, so look for students who are more assertive, independent, and confident.</p>
<p>“Personality – fit, however is important. Harvard isn’t a school for the passive and painfully shy. Perhaps the best asset of Harvard is its active, involved, smart student body. It would be a miserable place for a passive, shy student to be.”</p>
<p>This comment certainly demonstrates why almost none of the country’s top universities or LACs put a lot of weight on the report from an alumni interviewer. Alumni interviewers do the best they can, but they are not adcom officers. They don’t have special knowledge of what is going on within the admissions process itself and they aren’t given special information about decisions as they are being made. Most schools, I believe, see their reports as an additional but not crucial bit of information about an applicant as well as, let’s face it, a way to make alumni feel involved and needed. </p>
<p>These colleges, much as we might dislike thinking so, aren’t all the same places we attended some thirty, twenty, even ten years ago. “Fit” isn’t fixed in time, it shifts and changes, and we can be thankful for that.</p>
<p>And I’ve got to say, I know a brilliant man whom I would describe as “shy” and, in some ways, yes, even “passive;” he went to Harvard, doesn’t have much to say about the place. But I suppose it taught him what he needed to know, given where he is today…</p>
<p>I am aware of the definition of the word discrimination. I even gave examples of the word that are thought of as having a very positive meaning. I know too though, that it is rarely used in a flattering way. I could say “Company ABC is a discriminating employer”, meaning they are highly selective, and choose only the very best employees; but most would think I meant they used illegal hiring practices.
Where I disagreed with your statement(post 92) Donna was that I don’t see preferring outgoing people over shy people in an interview as so automatically unfair. When you say a shy person is discriminated against that indicates somehow a shy person has rights that are violated. While the weight of an interview can vary, if a school chooses to conduct them, and a student chooses to attend them, the impression one makes on the other is genuinely relevant. Their religion shouldn’t be, their ancestry shouldn’t be, but how well they answer questions is a reasonable measure of how well a person does on an interview. I think it can be one of many legitimate factors a school can use to select students it wants; and a factor for the student to evaluate the school too. We may like some more than others after interviews. If the poise, and responses aren’t a fair measure, what is? I might really want to be on that school’s b-ball team, but I don’t offer what they’re looking for. It wasn’t unfair discrimination- they just selected others that they thought would better suit their wants and needs.</p>
<p>If you had said “shyness should not be a factor in college admissions” I may have somewhat disagreed, but would let it go. To say preferring outgoing personalities is discrimination, well, no, I can’t see that at all. Every protected minority that has truly experienced discrimination is likely to be insulted by your nonchalant use of the phrase.
College admissions aren’t based on everybody equal, first-come first-served basis. There are reasons for their selections.</p>
<p>I’ve been reading this discussion for the last few days, and it has really taken a wrong turn. These are huge generalizations - how “shy” is too shy? What does “outgoing” really tell us? Can an interviewer gain enough insight from an hour long talk to decide if the student will succeed or fail at a particular college? I think not. </p>
<p>An interviewer probably can weed out the fringes - the nearly catatonic or the hyper manic and that’s it. 99% of the population falls in between. Most of us know unreliable and dim outgoing people, and thoughtful, intelligent shy people. Or the other way around. </p>
<p>Shyness or gregariousness aren’t valid markers for success at Harvard or anywhere else.</p>
<p>Can an interviewer gain enough insight from an hour long talk to decide if the student will succeed or fail at a particular college? I think not. …Shyness or gregariousness aren’t valid markers for success at Harvard or anywhere else."</p>
<p>When it comes to Harvard, 85-90% of applicants have the ability to succeed academically (i.e. eventually graduate ) at Harvard if accepted. Consequently, the interviews aren’t designed to weed out people who can’t succeed: The interviews are designed to help admissions select students who’d most contribute to an active, diverse (in all respects) class and who’d be able to get the most out of the academic and EC opportunities a place like Harvard offers.</p>
<p>Given a choice between bright student who could carry on a conversation with an interviewer and a bright student who became tongue tied, more than likely the former student would get the nod. The former student also would probably be more likely to take advantage of the various EC opportunities as well as the opportunities to interact with professors who were tops in their field.</p>
<p>There are times, too, when an interview will reflect whether someone is likely to academically succeed. One example: The student who became so rattled during her nonconfrontational Harvard interview with me that she burst into tears. </p>
<p>She didn’t get into Harvard (and that’s probably more due to her stats-- which were sky high for her horrendous school, but were very low for Harvard – about a 3.1 gpa, 550 average SATs). She did go to several tier 2 schools before finally graduating after having a rough time due to emotional instability. Almost 20 years later, she is now a very successful, confident, professional and also is in grad school at a top 20, but she wasn’t emotionally ready for a school like Harvard when she applied as a h.s. student.</p>
<p>One additional thing that alum interviewers can pick up: Whether the student lied on their application. Sometimes the student in person is nothing like the student on paper is.</p>
<p>For example, one student whom I interviewed brought in his college admissions essay, which was absolutely excellent revealing a remarkable command of the language as well as remarkable insights. In person, however, the student’s depth of thought and command of the language was superficial and trite. For example, when I asked the student to tell me about their favorite book, the student gave me a synopsis of “The Odyssey” including a description of “tragic hero” that seemed to have come from Cliff Notes.</p>
<p>The student proudly also told me that they had done a speech in a national conference. When I asked for more info, it ended up that the student had been in some kind of training session offered to all children who had accompanied their parents to a professional conference. As part of the training session, each student made a one minute speech.</p>
<p>I think that this is an example of why some colleges find interviews to be a valuable part of their admissions process.</p>
<p>You use the example of the student bursting into tears as an example of an extremely shy person, but it may be that she had other, more complex problems that would have made her a poor choice for Harvard or many other schools. Perhaps your interview helped weed out this student, although her poor stats probably had more to do with it. Let’s not confuse a “natural reserve,” which I would call shyness, with emotional problems or other personality disorders. </p>
<p>Two students with similar stats - both high achievers - one reserved (shy) and one outgoing. Is there a natural preference for the outgoing student? Should there be a preference for the outgoing student? Does the student’s “outgoing quotient” tell us anything about the student’s potential for greater success?</p>
<p>No, it doesn’t. This particular personality trait as demonstrated in a college interview, doesn’t amount to a hill of beans as a predictor of future success.</p>
<p>I think this was the point of many others on this discussion.</p>
<p>“Two students with similar stats - both high achievers - one reserved (shy) and one outgoing. Is there a natural preference for the outgoing student? Should there be a preference for the outgoing student? Does the student’s “outgoing quotient” tell us anything about the student’s potential for greater success?”</p>
<p>In the U.S., there is a preference for people who are gregarious. Gregarious and extroverted people are valued more in our culture than are introverts and nongregarious people. Having such personality characteristics is an asset when it comes to college admission and career advancement, something that isn’t the case in countries like Japan that don’t highly value those traits. </p>
<p>At top colleges like Harvard, being “successful” is viewed not only academically, but socially-- how well the student takes advantage of the vast academic and extracurricular opportunities the school offers, and later in life, how the alum affects their profession and community. This includes their taking on leadership positions.</p>
<p>There are schools that view success as only whether a student graduates from their college. Such schools aren’t going to probably care about whether a student is gregarious, confident, a leader, etc. The schools will focus more on whether the student is likely to graduate from their college, something that admissions officers at the very top colleges don’t have to fret about much since 93-97% of entering freshmen will graduate from their college.</p>
<p>Anyway, it’s up to the schools to determine what characteristics they want admitted students to have and it’s up to the schools to determine what they view as successful students and alum.</p>
<p>I want to distinguish between being shy and being passive. Shyness is a feeling, not a behavior.</p>
<p>There are plenty of successful, happy introverts at Harvard, but they tend to be self-confident and resilient, just like the Harvard extroverts. Bill Gates is no social butterfly, but he believes in himself. People who are easily discouraged or intimidated, who take “no” for an answer, are better off at another school. Extroverted students fall into that group as often as introverts do.</p>
<p>Schools, especially the selective private schools that Harvard applicants tend to apply to, vary enormously in their suitability for a self-doubting student. That’s a huge selling point of Bryn Mawr, for example, which lives up to its billing as an ideal environment for students to learn confidence and find their own voice.</p>
<p>As a Harvard interviewer, I’ve never given a student a thumbs down, because they have all been nice, bright kids I’d have been pleased to have in my class if I were teaching high school. I haven’t encountered rudeness or lying yet (those would be instant dealbreakers). But I have said that a student did not compare well to other applicants I’ve met – usually because they didn’t appear to have any academic passion, or hadn’t given much thought to their college selection. A shy kid who quietly described his fascination with the supercollider research Professor Bigshot does at Harvard would likely get my highest recommendation, as long as I get the sense that he’s pro-active enough to show up in Professor Bigshot’s office hours and ask for a research position. If he’s terrified of me, how is he going to take advantage of access to Professor Bigshot?</p>
<p>“In the U.S., there is a preference for people who are gregarious. Gregarious and extroverted people are valued more in our culture than are introverts and nongregarious people. Having such personality characteristics is an asset when it comes to college admission and career advancement, something that isn’t the case in countries like Japan that don’t highly value those traits.”</p>
<p>This is a gross generalization that doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. My experience is that with the exception of certain fields, gregariousness is not a requirement for career success. Intelligence, perseverance, tenacity, creativity, and talent come to mind as much more important. I would also argue that there are many extroverted individuals would find the difficult and tedious work in engineering, research or mathematics stifling. </p>
<p>Of course, there are exceptions such as actors, politicians, salespeople, etc., whose jobs clearly require them to be outgoing. But, do you really consider these particular careers to be more successful? With the exception of politicians, I’m guessing that Harvard actually produces a very large number of introverted graduates. </p>
<p>The point is that gregariousness is no measure of future success. </p>
<p>Perhaps you’d like to discuss your definition of success?</p>
<p>It’s completely inappropriate for an interviewer to schedule an interview in their home, IMO. Complete strangers should be met in public places, no matter what elite school they came from or job they have. Those of you with daughters, imagine they were on a “matchmaking” site like Cupid.com. Would you tell them, “Meet in public on the first date . . . unless they come from a school on USNWR’s Top 20 list”? Of course not. This is a basic safety issue.</p>
<p>No offense to the interviewers on here. I’m sure most interviewers are great, reliable people, but there are rotten apples throughout society. You and I can’t identify them just by looking at them, high school kids can’t, and Harvard can’t either.</p>
<p>"“In the U.S., there is a preference for people who are gregarious. Gregarious and extroverted people are valued more in our culture than are introverts and nongregarious people. Having such personality characteristics is an asset when it comes to college admission and career advancement, something that isn’t the case in countries like Japan that don’t highly value those traits.”</p>
<p>This is a gross generalization that doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. My experience is that with the exception of certain fields, gregariousness is not a requirement for career success. "</p>
<p>I think that in most careers, one has to be able to have some kind of positive social interaction with one’s peers. Someone who only speaks when spoken to is probably not going to go far in most fields. This doesn’t mean that one needs to be the life of the party, but one needs to be able to relate to and interact with people in what most people would perceive to be a normal way.</p>
<p>So much of getting ahead in professions --even professions that aren’t in fields that seem related to gregariousness – is being known and liked by others.</p>
<p>Maybe it’s time to start the “Merits of the Harvard Interview” thread.</p>