#college interviews

harvard:

this was, without a doubt, my weirdest and scariest interview in terms of format. but the actual conversation i had while i was there was quite nice! i think!

usually, i’d get an email to start the interview process from my assigned interviewer, who would communicate with me to find a time and place that worked for both of us. instead, for this interview, i got an email from my local harvard schools committee that gave me an exact place and time.

so already i felt a little boxed in, haha. also, for some reason, this was my only interview that was in an office building. 

this was also my only interview where i felt pressured to dress “up,” so to speak, so i went for business casual (dress, coat, & flats) where i would normally go for nice-but-still-casual (sweater, black pants-but-not-jeans, & flats). 

i realized when i got there that for each time slot, there was a group of interviewees to be interviewed by the group of interviewers that was there. so five or six interviewees walked in at the same time.

i also realized i’d made the right decision re: clothes when i saw all the male interviewees had shown up in suits. 

the waiting period when all the interviewees + a few committee members were trying to make small talk was honestly the most stressful part of this experience. i got a distinct sense of “shoot, this is the ivy league, i don’t belong here” that i had a very hard time getting rid of for the rest of the interview. (for what it’s worth, none of my other interviews for ivies gave me anything remotely like this feeling.)

then my name was called, and i was led into a separate room with my interviewer. so yes, we were the only two people in a fairly large room, and yes, it was intimidating.

i started coughing uncontrollably while introducing myself and my interviewer told me gently to get a glass of water, so that was a cool first impression.

this was also my only interview where it felt like my interviewer was deliberately trying to throw me curveballs in terms of questions. along with the standard questions (“what do you want to study,” “what’s influenced you,” “what’s the most important thing to you on your resume,” etc.), she asked me unconventional questions (“why did hillary clinton lose the election,” “what should the us government do about north korea”) that i felt poorly equipped to answer but took a stab at anyway.

i did, however, get a lot of good insights from her when i asked about harvard’s campus culture, etc., and at the end of the interview, she smiled and said, “i learned a lot from you today,” so i guess it went? pretty okay? the interview itself was kind of a blur.

so yes, i promise this was the weirdest one. an hour of pure weirdness.

princeton:

by comparison, princeton was hugely chill, and it followed the format that almost all my other interviews did: i met the interviewer at a coffee shop, drank a lot of green tea, and had a fairly informal conversation with him about the school.

this interviewer seemed really invested in making sure the interview was a two-way exchange—when i gave him information about myself, he gave me an equal amount of information & advice about princeton / college in general. (these kinds of interviewers always were my favorites, because i learned a lot / felt like i was having a genuine conversation.)

i never once felt intimidated or like i was being put on the spot. so that was worth something to me.

he actually had very few questions planned, it seemed like, so we got to the end of his questions after ~20 minutes. that seemed like not enough time for me to convey to him what i wanted to convey / make myself memorable, so i brought up every conceivable question i had about princeton (eating clubs, stress, etc. etc. etc.). 

when he responded to my questions, i used those responses as jumping-off points to talk more about my personality and ways i thought i might be a fit for princeton. i was truly improvising like there was no tomorrow, but i was having fun doing it. i somehow extended the interview by ~40 minutes. this was the culmination of four years of speech and debate.

so the interview itself went super well, and i learned a lot from it, and i was happy.

(then i made a huge mistake in an email back to him that made me think i was getting rejected from princeton for sure, but hey! it ended up A-OKAY)

my interview advice:

don’t overprepare. after my stanford interview, i realized i was preparing way too much compared to what i actually ended up using in the interview. so i limited my preparation as follows:

reason why i want to attend the school (name-dropping some of the school’s unique opportunities!)

what i want to major in and why (possibly name-dropping courses)

what i’d do outside the classroom in college (name-dropping clubs, research centers, etc.)

give yourself time to warm up. at the very beginning of the interview, let yourself ramble a little bit to get the nerves out. this is especially good for open-ended questions like “tell me a bit about yourself.” once you get into the swing of things, you’ll find yourself giving responses with more direction.

make yourself comfortable. for me, that meant wearing breathable clothes and always ordering the same drink at the coffee shop (green tea, which in retrospect was caffeinated and maybe not the best for my nerves, but it’s a comfort drink for me / i dislike coffee / i didn’t want to stress about getting hot chocolate on my face). what does that mean for you? figure that out and make it happen.

have questions for the interviewer. being inquisitive about aspects of the school you couldn’t learn about online is really essential, and it can help you continue the conversation if your interviewer doesn’t have much to ask you (as in the case of my princeton interview). here are a few tried-and-true ones i used (that produced some great responses):

what’s stress management / “stress culture” like on campus? (lots of interviews remarked that this was a really good / insightful question)

what’s something about x school that no one seems to know about that you wish everyone knew about?

what about your education at x school is most relevant to your personal and/or professional life today?