Bright college days

[rivka]

An admissions counselor for Reed College contacted me the other day. Would I be kind enough to interview a couple of prospective students in my area, and tell them about Reed? Their normal mid-Atlantic states rep had to cancel her trip to Maryland because of health problems, and... and...

Sure, I said. Why not? And so I've been trading e-mail with a nervous, carefully polite high school senior from the Eastern Shore, setting up an appointment at a Borders cafe. After which I'll write a letter to Reed, telling them what I think about his suitability for admission.

I worked for the admissions office my senior year, and I interviewed a lot of high school seniors then. (And juniors. And junior college students. And homeschooled kids.) My first year at Iowa I think I interviewed two kids there. I've done the admissions thing fairly recently myself, of course - the whole round of internship interviews in the winter of '99. But those were much more like high-pressure half-day job interviews. In college admissions, all you have to do is convince the interviewer that you're an interesting person. You don't have to have firm career goals and a therapeutic orientation.

I'm out of practice at this. I remember that a big part of the interview is talking about Reed - what it's like to be a student there, what the possibilities are, how this kid would fit into the picture. I remember the convention that you don't mention other colleges by name, although you can do generic comparisons - I had a whole spiel about why you might choose Reed over Large State University. I remember fielding questions from parents about drugs, and nose piercings, and why the tuition was so high.

I remember that I used to have a good repertoire of questions to ask. I think my routine opener was "So, what got you interested in Reed?", but I don't remember what I used to ask next. Hey, LiveJournal world: what would you ask a nervous 17 year old to help them reveal their inner coolness? What would you want to be asked, that would let your coolness unfold?

Comments

Advice

[sinboy.livejournal.com]

alt.callahans has some pretty good AMOTQ type questions. You got a favorite?

[jenett]

Huh. After two sets of prep school interviews, and then *counts* about 10 college interviews (not all of which I ended up applying to), here's the stuff that actually made sense to me:

"Why are you particularly interested in *school*" always struck me as a good one. If the answer doesn't really fit with the school's current plans, then that's a good thing to know.

(For Andover, the fact I was very interested in their music and Classics programs were a big bonus. At Wellesley, the fact that they had a broadly defined core requirement program, and a good solid base in a number of departments, and civilised living conditions were big plusses for me. The fact I'd researched the schools enough to be able to say that was also a big plus.)

Being asked about what interested me was another good one - whatever the question was, it wasn't asked in a "What do you want to major in" sort of way, but in a "What interests you." sort of way. It can be a hard question to answer, but the answer can be sort of revealing.

One other one that worked was asking about specific courses that were a bit off the beaten track (the history, music theory, and Ancient Greek I got asked about, for example.) If you don't have access to transcripts, usually asking what someone's taken in the current year and the previous year might do something - at most schools, anything outside the standard history-english-math-science sort of basic stuff might well be something someone's particularly interested in.

Outside-of-school interests are also a good one.

[sashajwolf.livejournal.com]

Caveat: at English universities, you have to apply for a subject-specific course, so this may be harder to translate to the US system. But I know from talking to tutors at my first university that the single most important thing they were looking for was a spark of enthusiasm for the subject the applicant was intending to study - talking about it should make their face light up. Next most important was an absence of dogmatism and willingness to consider other points of view - for my theology interview, they went to some trouble to make sure I wasn't a Biblical literalist, for instance.

[jinian.livejournal.com]

My best college interview was the one where we talked about U2's new album. :) Discussing something completely unrelated to school is probably the only way I would've actually gotten out of interview persona. Of course, it's pretty hard to tell what someone's going to care about. That was the thing that mase me pick Mount Holyoke, though; having a conversation with someone who respected my opinions and treated me as a real person, not just 's precocious kid.

hah!

[plymouth.livejournal.com]

I have to do one of these tonight. MIT does all their interviews with volunteer alums and I've been doing this since I graduated - this is my third season. I think it's wonderful fun. I try to make the conversation sustain itself if I can, without me having to ask specific questions but more like pointer questions. But when that doesn't work I always have my backup list of suggested questions that the admissions office gave me. I've been meaning to start adding my own questions to the list so I have more to choose from, but this is the list:

-How would your best friend describe you?
-If you could take time off school and had unlimited resources, what would you do?
-give examples of how you have applied what you learned in HS.
-what do you do when you have too much to do? (I usually do ask about time management but I ask it a little differently)
-what is the most rewarding thing you have ever done?
-what motivates you to do well in school?

I usually start out by telling them some about my and my expectations for the interview and then asking them about their extracurricular activities and hobbies so that I can pick on one that sounds interesting and we can talk about that. You can usually see them kind of light up when you get to asking about the one they are REALLY passionate about. Of course I don't always successfully discover this...

and, er, so far my record of admission is 0 for 4, so maybe my advice isn't the best... then again, there was only really one of the 4 that I did want to get in, so... I guess I'm more like 0 for 1.

this is spiffy. I'm all inspired for tonight now. of course I may be too late to be helping you... but you didn't put an expiration date on the post! hah!