#alumni interview

This Thursday at 11:30 a.m. PST! Watch our live-streamed alumni interview with Director Alex Ferrufino and Writer David Mansanalez as we celebrate their short film, "Slipping Into Darkness," that made its debut on HBO!

Zoom info: https://lafilm.zoom.us/j/99566172972

Greetings! I’m sure Smith would be happy to have you! As someone who interviews prospective students here at Smith, I would say the earlier the better. By early I mean starting after April 1st of your junior year; but you have until January 15 (sometimes later) of your senior year.

For anyone who will be having a college interview with an alumni of that school, please be aware!

Alumni interviews can can have a positive or negative effect on your application, just like an on-campus interview! The alumni you meet with is most likely writing a report on you to send to the school. That report is part of your application file. Of course you should be polite during the interview but your conduct before and after the interview also matters a lot!

When the alumni contacts you, respond to their email or phone call promptly! .

Know what days you’ll be free to meet when you respond to their message. If you’re busy and you can’t see them for a week or so after they contact you, that’s fine. But it’s up to you to tell them what days and times work. Know your schedule.

Scheduling your interview for the soonest possible date will help you as well as and your alumni interviewer. Interviewers generally have a deadline to submit their reports. If your interview is too close to that deadline, the interviewer might feel rushed and not be able to write as good a report as they might want to, even if you deserve it. Remember, alumni interviewers are volunteers. They have other jobs that require their time too.

Show up to your interview on time! In fact, if you can make it there a few minutes early, that’s even better. It shows you’re serious about your application.

If you have to cancel or reschedule your interview at the last minute, contact your interviewer. Not showing up is basically a red mark on your application. It shows that you don’t care about your application.

Write your interviewer a thank you email after the interview. Show them you appreciate the time they took to meet with you. Most interviewers will meet with a number of potential students during the application season. It takes a lot of time to conduct all the interviews, write the reports, and submit them. Saying thank you can brighten their day.

so, either the college is going to have an alumni reach out to you to schedule your interview, and even though at most places the alumni interview is “optional”, you basically have to do it (like with the ivies), OR the alumni interview truly is optional, and you can schedule one with someone in your area if you really want (like with vanderbilt).

if the school you’re applying to is one of the ones that reach out to you for your interview, then you’ll get that notice based on when you apply. the earlier you apply, the sooner the interview. the later you send in your application, the later you’ll get one. i sent in my harvard app on october 1st, and since that was probably one of the first ones they got (relative to the tens of thousands they get each year), ea or ed, i had my interview about a week later. i had my yale interview about two weeks after that, since their portal took longer to get set up (the app went in on the same day). and penn, which i didn’t apply to until mid-november, that one took about a month for me to hear from anyone.

it really ended up feeling more like a conversation than a q&a session (which, in my opinion, is what a good interview feels like!!), but the questions she did ask/the questions that came up as we talked were:

what drew you to penn?

what do you want to study and why?

are there any classes you’re currently taking in those areas?

what kinds of clubs are you involved in?

what do you like to do for fun?

and then, of course: what can i tell you about penn? so i asked why she chose penn, what the residential college system was like, if the professors were accessible, and what her favorite memories from her time at penn were.

For those applying to Cornell for undergrad (excluding architecture or hotel), don’t worry too much about an alumni interview. Advice for any school’s interview: look up as much as possible about the school’s interview process. Is it one specific person for your high school? Is it someone who majored in something similar to what you applied to? Do they ask about current events? How long do the interviews typically last? Do they expect you to bring a resume or fill out an information sheet? 

A quick google search after I got my request for an interview showed that Cornell’s “interviews” are done by CAAAN, and you can find its resources for alumni on what the interview should be like (examples: https://caaan.admissions.cornell.edu/ContactTips&Advice.pdf, http://caaan.admissions.cornell.edu/EffectiveReports.cfm, there’s also an alumni interviewer training powerpoint if you look for it). From this, it’s pretty easy to tell that the Cornell interview process shouldn’t be intimidating. They’re limited to 1,500 character responses. They’re main goal is to help answer any questions about Cornell and try to bring out anything that you might not have included in your application. Also, they’re not supposed to take notes during the interview, which was very nice compared to another interview I had where my interviewer spent the whole time looking down at his notepad scribbling notes which made it uncomfortable. 

At least in my experience, my interviewer was an English major, so it didn’t seem like they tried to match interviewers by major or school. Basically, we met up and she had brought stuff from her time at Cornell and spent the first half introducing the school - any person, any study, north campus, the clubs she was involved in. Then, she asked me about what I wanted to study and what I was interested in doing in college. I mentioned somethings that had to do with what I did in high school and when she had questions about more specific details of what I did, I answered. Then, it went on to questions I had about anything - I think I asked about the language house, project teams, greek life, the weather, ithaca, etc. At the end, she made sure to ask if anything had changed since I submitted my application (granted it was only like three weeks after I submitted it) and she wished me luck, and we parted ways.