<p>Hmm. (10Char)</p>
<p>either way works equally well.</p>
<p>Well, if the interview’s a turn-off, you’ll save $$$ by not submitting the profile until later… I don’t think any of the schools my kid applied to looked at the profile ahead of time.</p>
<p>Submitting a profile can help steer your interview towards an interest. For example, a coach, music teacher, etc., might meet you during the interview day. At a minimum, I suggest letting the school know your primary interests [e.g. an academic subject, a sport, an EC, etc], and they will typically set you up with someone to chat with on that interest IN ADDITION to the interview with the AO. In our situation, we feel those chats with additional people were instrumental to get our kid accepted…</p>
<p>Interview first. Make a list of everything you want to get across about yourself before the interview, and try to cover as much of it as possible in your interview. Then, cross off the things you did cover. That way you know what you still have to communicate and emphaize in your profile. Also, no matter how certain you are now, you may still change your mind once you visit the school and will have wasted money and time.</p>
<p>Profile first. Some schools won’t do interviews without them. It gives the interviewer a foundation to start the interview.</p>
<p>Some people treat interviews as a “look see” (that’s what college nights and view books are for). Look/see’s have turned into a huge time waster for the school and the interviewer. So many won’t interview any student who hasn’t submitted part I of their application for college.</p>
<p>Btw - an interview does not necessarily mean everything you discuss will make it into the file. So don’t treat the profile as filling in for what you didn’t say in the interview – the preferred order is:</p>
<p>profile,</p>
<p>then supplement/fill in with interview.</p>
<p>I agree with alex that alerting the school to special interests and setting up brief visits with coaches or faculty is a great idea–you do that when you call for the interview. And while I agree with Exie that the usual order of business is profile, followed by interview, and that’s the way we did things, I honestly don’t think it made a bit of difference in the interviews–and none of the four schools required it.</p>
<p>If you interview in the summer, the profile app isn’t up and running yet. My son interviewed in the summer and had very good results.</p>
<p>I really don’t think it matters which you do first.</p>
<p>Usually people who’ve had a favorable outcome don’t think it matters. But for the 90% of students who did not get a favorable outcome, it just might have for a subset. Outcome is often based on how good an interviewer is at discerning or drawing out information that is not readily available. I’ve often had to recommend some students be “re-interviewed” and some interviewers be taking out of the system for that reason.</p>
<p>Looking “under the hood” of the BS process can sometimes be enlightening. True, there is no one-size-fits-all scenario. But giving yourself every fighting chance can be a good thing.</p>
<p>To each his/her own, though.</p>
<p>Exie: do you think there might be a difference between college and bs interviews? I’m basing my judgment on our pretty clear sense that the interviewers did not open our son’s file before the interview. The profile stuff–ec’s, athletics, awards, etc. didn’t seem to have any relationship to the questions he was asked. Nor did any of the guides–except at one school, where they asked about special interests on the phone when we were setting up the inerview–share any of my son’s areas of interest. So I just can’t see that it mattered. And as rbgg points out, those who interview in the summer don’t even have the opportunity to submit the profile ahead. I can’t imagine schools doing things differently for students who interview later.</p>