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July 05, 2006
The interviewer's seat
Summer is “high season” for visiting college campuses. Here at Case we offer seniors (and transfers) the opportunity to interview with an admission counselor during visits.
Over the last several weeks I have conducted a good number of interviews. Some students have been prepared, some not and still others that were overly prepared. Here are some observations and thoughts from the admission counselor’s chair…First, I must tell you what I tell everyone I sit down with in the interview room. I think the term “interview” is misleading. This isn’t a job interview. I don’t have a list of questions that I will ask and we don’t make our admission decisions based solely on your answers. Instead of an interview, I see this as a chance for a conversation—a conversation about the student. Their experiences, their challenges, their dreams.
• Be prepared—know what you want to talk about. Have in mind how you want to highlight your activities in and out of the classroom. Let’s talk about things that are deeper than “I took AP Chemistry last year and am taking Honors English next year.” Tell me why you wanted to take AP Chem, tell me about a cool conversation you had in an English course, tell me why you wanted to take Spanish.
• Don’t be OVERLY prepared—don’t have rehearsed statements that you throw at me, but don’t answer the question asked. Remember my earlier point about this being a conversation. Let’s chat. This isn’t the campaign trail with the need for a stump speech.
• Remember that we receive over 7000 applications each year. It’s all black ink on white paper. Sometimes this is all we have as we consider a student’s application, but a twenty minute conversation can add so much color and paint a truer picture of your experiences. An example might be that on the application you list football as an activity, but in our conversation we talk about how football has impacted your growth process because of…….
• Actually tell me something—a pet peeve is when someone throws out that they are an Eagle Scout and expects me to automatically think that he is “a true leader” just because one is an Eagle Scout. That isn’t going to happen. If you are an Eagle Scout tell me about the impact that scouting has had on you. Tell me about what you did with the troop. Tell me about your Eagle Scout project and how that impacted you. The same goes with something like community service—telling me you have done a 100 hours of service is all well and good. Telling me about why you became involved in service and what you learned from the experience is what is important.
Finally, think of this as your chance to get things “on the record.” We can talk about something important to you that might not show up in your application, on your list of activities or in your college essay.
Posted by jbg15 at July 5, 2006 11:13 AM
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