I am an alumni interviewer… I may be the nearest interviewer to you at 30 miles away. I also am not paid as I am a volunteer and have a bunch of other students to interview. We are told to let it be convenient for us…after all, it is much closer than driving to Chicago/whereever.
I do, however, always meet in a public place and buy something from the establishment.
Which interviewers turned your kids off so much that they completely lost interest in those schools?
I would actually be pretty happy with an interview 30 min away, haha. I am an international applicant and I actually had to go to other cities for 3 of my interviews. The furthest was 2 and half hours away, but I was happy to do it bcs I was very interested in the school.
But the worst interview I had was over Skype. First, the alumnus was doing something else doing the interview and I could tell he wasn’t really concentrated in our talk. At one point he actually started walking around to do something in his job. And he was in a very noisy place. I kept hearing machine noises and I couldn’t concentrate.
He also asked me all the questions alumni are not supposed to ask: what my grades were, where else I had applied to, what my SATs were… He even wanted me to send him the Morrisby profile test I took in 10th grade. And at one point he said “why don’t you apply to a cheaper place?”
My daughter had a similar negative experience several years ago with the Cooper Union rep at a National Portfolio Day. She waited as the next-in line for more than 30 minutes as the interviewer talked to the preceding student about everything, looked at every little piece of her portfolio. Finally at one point he looked up and realized that there was an actual line of several students waiting to be next. But since time was then running out that day, he gave each of the waiting students a cursory 3-5 minutes of his time! FRUSTRATING! We traveled to Chicago for this!?
While I’m at it, I can mention one very annoying alumni interviewer that my son encountered. The interviewer disparaged my son’s application and his record compared with some others who had gone to H from the same high school. The interviewer had also apparently taken it on himself to contact teachers and counselors at the school to get comparative information. We had never heard the names of those other students, so maybe it was many years earlier (5-10?).
The interviewer seemed to have given himself the role of member of the admission committee. He came off as a know-it-all with a closed mind. My son had no rapport with him. It happens that my son had won major awards for journalism and debate, and had test scores that approached the maximum possible points. So he couldn’t understand where the interviewer’s negativism was coming from. It turned my son off completely as it fed into the stereotype of H grads being overly self-important. (We had no idea who he was, what his accomplishments may have been.)
This was in portland, oreogn NOT Chicago…just letting yall know. @mackinaw It seems like that interview had nothing else to do…that is just inexcusable.
My S3 had a terrible interview with Wake Forest. It wasn’t enough for him to revoke his application, but it did move right to the bottom of his list. According to him, the interviewer was an elderly man at least in his 70s, and while he was talking about his work with his school’s gay-straight alliance and the charity for homeless gay youth he set up with his boyfriend, he said his interviewer was pulling faces of disgust and was very cold to him after he mentioned he was gay. It didn’t help with Wake’s stereotype of being old-fashioned and homophobic which was already a concern of his. I was worried it would put him off all the southern schools he was applying to, but he’s now a happy freshman at Duke.
Not sure whether this counts, but my D2 had a problematic/amusing interview with Grinnell. She had it at Starbucks and the interviewer spilt hot coffee all over her! And my DD was wearing white jeans. The interviewer was so apologetic and even gave her money for the dry cleaning that it actually moved up a few spots.
Vassar. Casual “informative” alumni interview. Daughter waited nervously at the agreed-upon meeting place for 45 minutes past the agreed-upon time, then called the interviewer, who had apparently decided to stay out of town for an extra day and neglected to inform my daughter. She either forgot she was supposed to interview her, or just blew her off.
Then she rescheduled for the following week and mistakenly assumed my daughter was making a racist comment about the school’s diversity after hearing the first half of a sentence, that, if it had been completed, would have demonstrated the very opposite. Ugh.
She probably should have complained but was afraid it would affect admission. She didn’t get in anyway, and at that point didn’t want to bother.
Kenyon. My daughter interviewed at multiple LACs. Some were with students, some with admissions staff. All were great conversations about her, the college, her passions, books she’d read, etc. All except for Kenyon. She was asked what vegetable did she see herself as and why? Whether a lion or a monkey would win a fight and why? One idiotic question after the next. When the questioning was over she was then told how Kenyon was much more academically superior to Denison - the school we had just come from. She couldn’t get out fast enough and we laughed all the way home. We still laugh about the whole experience.
Ok, off topic, but during my son’s post-grad job search, during an interview as a finalist for a job he was really excited about, the interviewer asked what his spirit animal was. He thought he had a good answer that said a lot about him, but couldn’t help feeling less excited about working for an organization that would seriously ask that question. He did not get the job . . .
For my son, Princeton. The interviewer monopolized the conversation talking about his career and the book he wrote. Did not talk much about Princeton or ask about my son.
My older D got a lemon from Brown as well. The young woman met her in a coffee shop and alternated between staring out the window and looking at her watch. Wouldn’t make eye contact. My D had to try to make conversation with her for long enough to call it an interview, before escaping. Younger D’s Cornell interviewer stood her up altogether, but was nice enough once they rescheduled.
My D didn’t have any terrible interviews, but she had two mediocre ones that she was pretty sure meant she didn’t have a chance, for Brown and Tufts. She wasn’t surprised by the rejections. On the other hand, she had a few really nice interviews which made her feel good about both the school and her chances. She is now at Bates, the school where she had one of her best interviews. She also enjoyed her Kenyon interview and was accepted. I don’t think she was asked weird questions.
Generally, you know when you have a good interview and a bad one. I can’t think of a time when someone has had a bad interview and still got the job, or whatever. I’m sure it does happen though. I think people need to prepare for an interview, even if it is supposed to be an informal conversation. My D is shy and was nervous about interviews. She always prepared a few things to discuss: books, tv, or movies that she enjoyed, a few questions about the school (why did you choose this school? Always good) and history of the college, traditions and that sort of thing.
I think anything up to an hour each way is a fair distance to meet an interviewer. They are trying to interview so many people, and they are volunteers.
S2 did not care for his Georgetown alumni interviewer at all. Big name K Street attorney, very dismissive. After that, he was pretty well convinced it was not the place for him. Best interviews, according to him: a husband-wife alumni team from Carleton and Tufts. Was deferred/rejected at Georgetown, Waitlisted at Carleton IIRC, and accepted at Tufts.
S1 thought the CMU interview was rather perfunctory, which was a bummer, as I thought it was a really good fit for him. Didn’t complete the application because he got two of his top choices in EA. Best interview was Harvard, to his great surprise. Didn’t get in.
Half an hour to an interview is nothing in this area. It’s an hour commute into DC. Alumni interviewers do this as a volunteer gig. We worked with the interviewers (our kids didn’t drive, so I would take them, drop them off surreptitiously, and then make myself scarce) and their work schedules. The school counselors advised students to arrange to meet in public places (Starbucks, Panera, the library, etc.) if at all possible.
My kids each had 1 bad interview. Our youngest was asked by her alumni inteviewer from MIT to meet him in his lab at Yale. It was hard because she really wasn’t interested in Yale, but it was close to her boarding school and that’s where he was working. It was weird talking about MIT sitting in a science building at Yale.
My other student (don’t know what posessed her) but she was the end of her trail of interivews, and asked the Yale alumnus interviewer if the interview was more “informative” or “evaluative.” I guess she had heard from her college counsleor that most of these were the former and that the interviewer had very little sway in college admissions.
Her mistake was in asking him this first and he unleashed all his anger on her and ran up one side then down the other, berating her for asking such a question. He was overly sensitive to the fact that he didn’t have much say in admissions, but rather than taking it out on Admissions took it out on her. Still, not a good thing to ask your interviewer if you want to attend the school. She should have just “played along,” pretending he was a powerful man who had influence over her future.
Must have had the same Kenyon interviewer. My D was asked her preference of Ninjas vs. Pirates!
I was very lucky that my MIT interviewer was able, willing, and volunteered to drive 2 hours (each direction) to meet me (I cannot drive so having to figure out how to make that drive myself would have been a logistical nightmare). Meeting halfway wouldn’t have been an option unless we wanted to conduct our interview in a barn :)) but 30 minutes is nothing and I would have easily taken me driving 30 minutes over my interviewer driving 2 hours.