Episode 65: The (American) College Interview

Date of Publication/发布日期

February 12, 2022

Author/发布者

Curtis Westbay

Language/语言

English

Files & media

Volume

Volume 2 2021-2022

Alumni Interviews

This is probably the most common type of interview that American colleges will consider, in which they outsource the tremendous task of interviewing hundreds (or thousands) of applicants to trusted alumni. Depending on the university, they may ask their alumni interviewers to take somewhat lengthy notes, to give numeric ratings, or to give a brief recommendation for admission based on the conversation they have with a prospective student.

Alumni interviews, like most other American college interviews, will be rather informal. American college interviews are more of a getting-to-know-you experience than anything else. Depending on the college, the alumni interview might have little effect on the admission outcome if it goes well other than an indication of demonstrated interest, i.e. that the student took the time to seize an opportunity to get to know a college better. Of course, if an interviewed student is especially off-putting, this could hurt their chances.

Alumni may or may not have studied the same major subject as the student they will interview. Really, most colleges view the alumni interview as a benefit to students, not to the admission office’s review of applications. However trusted alumni may be, they are not paid employees of the college, nor will they ultimately be trained in the ins and outs of their alma mater’s admission priorities and process, despite spending years attending the school. The alumni interview gives students insight into the intangible quality of a college (e.g. what is it like to be a student? what is it like living in the dorms? how were your relationships with your professors?).

That said, some colleges do lean on their alumni to provide more information to inform admission decisions. When Harvard College revealed insightful documents in the legal discovery process of Students for Fair Admission v. Harvard, a 2018 court case in which Harvard was a defendant, its entire admission process was made more or less public. One public document was an alumni interviewer handbook. In that handbook, in addition to educating alumni in the role their written reports play in the admission process, alumni are instructed how to write a valuable commentary and how to numerically assess a student’s academic capacity, potential for success, and character.

Staff or Faculty Interviews

Of all the interviews, an invitation-only staff interview is the most impactful and the most rare. Most colleges don’t bother expending valuable admission resources with an extensive program of staff interviews, so the absence of an invitation doesn’t indicate that a college isn’t interested in a student. That said, if an admission officer is taking the time to interview a student, you can be sure that they are very seriously considering the student for admission.

Of course, colleges may outsource this work to faculty, as well. Still uncommon, an admission office may have professors from their school connecting with students to gauge their academic potential. Primarily, that would be the goal of a faculty interview. This is the closest that an American college interview gets to a UK college interview. Still, unlike the UK interviews where students might even have to solve problems from their discipline under the scrutiny of an expert in the field, an American college faculty interview will be more free-wheeling than that. The conversation is certain to verge on more academic topics, and might even be conducted with the aim of determining the scholarly capabilities of a student, but without the instructive element that is often featured in UK interviews.

As highly-selective colleges receive more and more applications every year, these staff and faculty interviews become less and less common. There’s just not enough time for colleges to adequately assess an applicant pool via a staff or faculty interview in most cases.

Third-party Interviews

External college admission services have surpassed the status of a cottage industry long ago. Now, there seem to be professionalized services all over the place, most of which are applicant-facing (e.g. an external consultant, a portfolio consultant, test preparation tutoring, etc.). Third-party interviews are one of the few college-facing services on the market. Two notable companies— Initialview and Vericant— have become more and more widely used in recent years.

Both services provide interviewers who conduct a video-recorded interview for applicants. Again, the topics for discussion are not particularly technical or academic: this is a getting-to-know-you interview. But in this case, the interviewing party isn’t associated with a specific college. They simply provide a seasoned interviewer and a recording. In an impartial, unbiased setting, the student has a short (15-20 minutes) conversation about their high school life, their future goals, their academic interests, they extracurricular pursuits, and their experiences navigating social challenges. All of this information can give an admission reader a better idea of how a student might fit in on their campus, but importantly, it also gives the AO a clear picture of an international student’s English proficiency. After all, a student can prep for tests like the SAT and ToEFL, but they can’t anticipate every question that they may need to respond to in an unscripted interview.

After the interview is done, these services will provide students with instructions on how to route their recording to colleges (and this won’t be done automatically, so students should never need to “cancel” the processing of a third-party interview recording, no matter how catastrophically they thought the interview went).

Questions in the American College Interview

Here are some of the most common interview questions a student may encounter in an American college interview:

• Tell me about your school and its community.
• Tell me about yourself.
• In which activities are you involved, and which do you enjoy most? Why?
• What do you usually do during the summer?
• Tell me about a class you really enjoyed, and why.
• What is the last book you read? Did you enjoy it, and why or why not?
• Describe a time when you failed. How did it feel and how did you respond?
• What do you think you’ll major in once you are in college? Why?
• How would your friends describe you? Why?

Of course, these questions would just get the ball rolling in a casual interview setting. In the hands of an experienced interviewer, these questions would be the catalyst for follow-up questions and back and forth.

Impact of the Interview

In my view, these are the five biggest impacts of the American college interview:

1. The interview will provide colleges with an idea of the student’s fit, academically.
2. The interview will provide colleges with an idea of the student’s fit, in terms of personality.
3. The interview will provide colleges with an idea of the student’s English fluency.
4. The interview will provide students with an idea of what life will be like at a college.
5. The interview will provide students with an opportunity to demonstrate interest in a college.