<p>My son is going to be interviewing on campus in August. What clothing is appropriate? Is this a shirt-and-tie occasion, or are khakis and a polo more suitable? He'll also be meeting an engineering professor and going on a tour of the wind tunnel the same day if that makes any difference.</p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
<p>Definitely not a suit & tie occasion. </p>
<p>Khakis and polo sounds right. Even nice jeans would be acceptable. (Clean, no holes or heavily worn spots, not saggy, no visible underwear)</p>
<p>You’re going for neat, clean and presentable. </p>
<p>Save the suit & tie for professional school and job interviews.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t wear a kilt in a wind tunnel but otherwise … in another era - meaning mine - if you were interested in engineering, it helped if you had a plastic pocket protector. The times they are a changin’.</p>
<p>^^And a slide rule case hanging off your belt…</p>
<p>I’m an incoming freshman at UR and did an interview. Suit pants or khakhis with a collared shirt will suffice. Just in case, he should also bring in his activity sheet.</p>
<p>WOWM…Your “Definitely not a suit & tie occasion” made me chuckle. My son wore exactly that last year for his on-campus interview. His exact words after the interview was “Mom, I was way overdressed!” He said other students also there for interviews were more casually dressed, and that they were probably thinking “look at that guy so overdressed”. I told him, I bet that’s not what they were thinking at all. My son walking in with a suit and tie probably caused an internal panic in each of the other kids, and they were likely thinking, “ruh-roh…I’m underdressed”. Anyway, I think somewhere in the middle is probably right. Being overdressed didn’t hurt (I’m happy to say that my son is an incoming freshman), but being underdressed might have. The way I look at it is that this <em>is</em> like a job interview. There were over 17,000 applications received for the class of 2017, and only about 30% got accepted. If you really want to attend UofR, this is your chance to make a good impression.</p>
<p>I think it really means they look at the person, not the clothes. </p>
<p>Growing up, on the wall next to my bed, was a poster of Albert Einstein with the words, “Hair. It’s what’s under it that counts.”</p>
<p>OTOH, I know of a Rennaissance winner who showed for his scholarship interview in shorts and hoodie…</p>
<p>I really don’t think that for college admission interviews how one dresses makes a huge difference. (If you’re not in the ballpark to begin with, wearing a suit to your interview isn’t going to get you accepted.)</p>
<p>Be yourself at the interview. If yourself is a suit & tie kinda guy–go for it. But a suit & tie isn’t a requirement, or even expected. </p>
<p>BTW, according to NCES, UR’s acceptance rate was north of 35% for the 2012-13 cycle.</p>
<p>[College</a> Navigator - University of Rochester](<a href=“College Navigator - University of Rochester”>College Navigator - University of Rochester)</p>
<p>Lergnom–love the Einstein quote.</p>
<p>Acceptance rate for 2013-2014 was 31%</p>
<p>Are you precognitive?</p>
<p>The admission cycle for 2013-14 hasn’t started yet.</p>
<p>31% is correct for the Class of 2017 according to this NY Times site: <a href=“2013 College Acceptance Rates - Interactive Feature - NYTimes.com”>2013 College Acceptance Rates - Interactive Feature - NYTimes.com;
<p>More applicants, less acceptances.</p>
<p>NCES is the official site for data reported to the Dept. of Education. UR reported having 16,033 applicants to Dept of Ed.</p>
<p>I like the NYTimes, but sometimes they get things wrong. Like a front page story on open range issues in Arizona that featured multiple interviews with residents of a town that’s at least 350 miles from the Arizona border and in another state entirely. (And no interviews with AZ residents.)</p>
<p>WOWM…The NCES site says “Undergraduate Admissions Fall 2012”, so is that number (16,033) for the Class of 2016? The acceptance letter from Dean Burdick stated right in it that there were over 17,000 applications received for this incoming class (2017).</p>
<p>The advice my school gave me was to look nice, but not overly done up. Khakis and polo would be perfect.</p>
<p>The real statistical highlights in those numbers are they are getting a lot of applicants, but they are relatively often losing the choice to other schools. The yield isn’t bad but it’s not super. But the reason why can’t be analyzed unless you have a breakdown of who went where and then ideally why, meaning money offered, location comparisons, etc. This would be a fairly difficult analysis to get right.</p>
<p>My point is these numbers tell bits of a larger story, but those bits aren’t particularly telling. A school much large can attract only a relatively small number more in applicants, admit a larger percentage and have a higher yield, etc. </p>
<p>Here’s an odd way of phrasing a question from data like this: what if UR’s admissions methods generate admissions who are more torn between UR and other schools? That is, if UR admitted based on a straight ranking system of SAT’s and grades would that feed a loop in which people with that level of SAT and grades applied, were admitted and accepted? Beats me. If UR indeed looks at more, then they put themselves into a variety of competitive situations that can’t easily be summarized in 2 or 3 statistics. And remember, these statistics are themselves massive combinations of complicated data. As in, who applies is a number but that stands for who, with all the characteristics “who” can be.</p>