Acing the Application: Handling On Campus Interviews
How To Handle On-Campus Interviews
On-campus interviews are a great way to ensure the success of your application. You should have a full slate of on-campus interviews scheduled for sometime early in the summer and either just before lunch or in the last slot of the day. You should also have a likely admit school scheduled first and a couple of coin flips scheduled ahead of the reach schools on your list that matter most to you.
So what are the nuts and bolts of the on-campus interview?
Review the Notes from Your Campus Visit and Subsequent Research
On the evening before your interview, pull out the notes from your campus visit and your subsequent research, and refresh your memory about the school. What were your likes and dislikes the last time you were there? Whom did you talk to, and what did they have to say? Was there anything remarkable about the tour or your subsequent wanderings around campus? Was there anything noteworthy about your visits to the departmental offices of your potential majors, the classes you saw, or the professors or coaches you spoke with? By conducting this review, you're looking to arm yourself with topics for conversation tomorrow.
Review Your Résumé and Decide What Three Things About Yourself You Want to Accentuate
Remember, chances are that at the time you interview, you will not yet have applied for admission, so the admissions officer or student representative you speak with will not know anything substantive about you. He or she won't know your test scores, your grades, your activities, or the things that "make you tick." In other words, you're facing thirty or forty-five minutes of tabula rasa.
What an opportunity to make an impression!
As you prepare for the experience, though, recognize just how fleeting the opportunity is. This is your thirty or forty-five minutes to sell your candidacy to the school. It is time to put your best foot forward and leave a lasting memory of yourself in the mind of your interviewer.
In other words, this is not a time to talk for long about grades or test scores. Those things are largely colorless and can be easily gleaned from the admissions officer's later review of your transcript. Think of the interview as a conversation about who you are and what really makes you tick.
So?
Who are you?
What were the one or two defining experiences in your life? Your biggest victory? Your most crushing defeat? Your most memorable moment? Your most critical learning experience?
What is your most important extracurricular activity? Why is that so? What has it taught you about life and about yourself?
Who is your hero? (And don't just pick your mom or dad unless you can articulate a really good reason for it.) Whom do you most respect? If you could have dinner with any one person from any point in history, whom might you pick?
What is your favorite book? What are you currently reading?
And why, oh why, would you rather go to this school than any other school in the country? What about it distinguishes it in your mind?
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