Yale interviewer here. I had posted and pinned this several years:
Each interviewer will have their own style and questions they like to ask, but I think most experienced interviewers will try to make the interview more of a conversation than a series of Q’s and A’s and let the interviewees take the conversation to areas they are most interested in. While I interview for Yale, my kids’ experience suggest the interview experience is pretty similar among the highly selective colleges that do alumni interviews. For Yale, suggested areas they want interviewers to look out for:
• Intellectual strengths and energy
• Academic interests
• Flexibility in thinking, openness
• Expressive abilities
• Nonacademic interests or talents
• Personal qualities
• Distinctive or unusual talents
and/or circumstances
We do not receive grades, test scores, resume or lists of EC’s. There may be a note relating to a particular area of interest. Personally, I do not ask about grades or test scores or ask for a resume because I don’t want to have any preconceptions about the candidate, and I want to base my report entirely on the interaction with the candidate. My kids have walked into interviews where the interviewer has asked for a resume or it is evident that they have some form of resume in front of them.
While I do not have a preset list of questions, the vast majority of interviews sequence out as follows:
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Introduction/small talk to put the candidate at ease.
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Ask how the school year is going – from here, I can get an idea of what the candidate is interested in academically and in terms of EC’s.
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The conversation can naturally flow from the above to a discussion about favorite subjects/classes/class projects and if that is what they want to pursue in college and as a career, or I may need to prod the candidate to talk about this. From time to time, I may ask for some details about a class or project, and at times I may challenge them about a particular viewpoint or conclusion just to see how they react. Often during the course of discussion in 3, I will ask why they are attracted to Yale given their interests.
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Similar to 3, the conversation can either naturally flow to an EC or I may ask a question to get the conversation to this topic. Here I am trying to get a sense of how deeply involved the candidate is in the activities that the candidate wants to highlight.
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If all the EC’s that the candidate chooses to talk about are school sponsored/based, I may ask a question along the lines what do you like to do outside of school, do you have a favorite hobby, what do you do to relax?
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3, 4 and 5 will take up 80%± of the time. Within 3, 4 and 5, the candidate may ask me questions about Yale, e.g., why did you choose Yale, what did you like or dislike about Yale. There may be very specific questions about Yale, but I’d say the better interviewee questions involve a back and forth about something we are talking about, and it may not necessarily involve Yale. Candidates who show they are paying attention and are engaged in a conversation gets higher marks in my book than someone with a canned list of questions. If I feel that the conversation is stagnating or the candidate is getting tired of talking, I will ask, “Do you have any questions about Yale?” as a break. Usually though, the questions about Yale come at the end.
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The very last question I will ask is, “Is there anything you would like to talk about that we have not covered?” Most of the time they will say everything has been covered, but at times they may bring up a particular interest or challenge that may be a new topic or it could be an emphasis on something we had previously just touched upon.
After the interview, I try to write my report that evening tying the specific interaction I had with the candidate to the guidelines that the AO has laid out.
Having said all of this, and as posted throughout CC by other seasoned interviewers, these interviews are not going to lift an otherwise “no” candidate into the “yes” pile or sink a candidate that the AO already loves into the “no” pile (absent something totally extreme). I think the AO uses the interviews to confirm if their read on the candidate is consistent with the interview. Also, the AO makes it very clear to interviewers that we are ambassadors representing Yale, and that we should be selling Yale as much as the candidates are trying to sell themselves. So don’t stress, be prepared (but not robotic) to have a conversation about what makes you you and to get as much information about the college as possible.