Hi all, first, I hope you can all take a break from hitting the books to enjoy an amazing summer B-) . Yale recently emailed me about an on-campus interview over the summer. What does this exactly entail? If I’m not applying SCEA but rather regular decision, does this still apply to me? Thanks for shedding some light on this and I appreciate your help !
Yalies? Could you please help me out here? :-S
On campus interviews are done by college seniors working for the admissions office and can be done when applying for the SCEA or RD round. They typically last about 30 minutes.
In the past, you could get an on-campus interview from a senior and also an alum interview. I understand that you only get one interview now.
While interviews, on-campus or alumni, will rarely make or break an application, I think the better strategy is to schedule interviews with schools not at the top of your list earlier if you can so that you are better prepared for interviews at the top of your list later. The timing is not totally within your control, but some schools allow you to schedule on campus interviews on school visits like Yale and others allow you to put your name on the alumni interview list even before you submit your application.
@IxnayBob is correct, for Yale you only get 1 interview, on-campus or alumni. They are treated the same. https://admissions.yale.edu/interviews. The advantage of an on-campus interview is that it is done by a current senior so you will get more current information on the college and student life. The advantage of doing an alumni interview is that you will likely get a more mature perspective of Yale’s impact in the longer run. You might also ask yourself if you are more comfortable talking to someone in your age group or someone who could be much older.