I'm blanking on the specific site. Some use ivywise and niche I know, but I think there are others which might only be available to students themselves.

I actually disagree. I think it is due to being seen as the best of the best for so long and then the shellshock of being merely average or at least not at the very top echelon. Of the three students who committed suicide at my school while I was an undergrad, two were former valedictorians whom those who know them said could not come to grips with anything less than the perfection that until college was all they'd known.

Someone - maybe you - ITT mentioned the Putnam, and I believe that still holds considerable weight.

I mentioned Putnam. It's hard to go from straight As to Bs or worse. I did it but I was pretty chill--some kids aren't. Most of my friends were not the best students but most have done extremely well after school. Some of my friends who were the best students definitely did some crazy, amazing things in their careers thus far.

Cornell had a high # of suicides. My friend who committed suicide at Cornell was over a 4.0 student from Hong Kong who was rich as crap but slit his wrists while on drugs. I think a lot can't deal with the tough grading policy--most classes are strict curve with 10% of the classes getting real As (not As).

Thx Rizzee.

Re: reasons for super-achievers in HS losing it in college, I think that both of our reasons, as well as others, could all hold true for various portions of that population.

I think time management and motivation are big issues in college that don't exist in HS or at least to a high level especially for smart students. It's hard to determine who will be good at managing these two things well in college.

That suicide can even happen from such a thing is very sad.

I didn't know any of those types of cases personally, mainly knew the repressed by parents types. Those that were super-achievers in HS but were never allowed to go to parties, or even go out much at all, not have boyfriends/girlfriends, etc etc. Then went crazy in college with all the newfound freedom, were always out partying, went wild with sex and drugs, etc. Hard to go from one extreme to the other.

Capone, true. That's kinda what I was getting at. Just used one factor that plays into it (motivation from parents in HS, that then goes away in college), but other factors can lead to it, and you captured the general idea.

I'm interested in how you believe gain this sense. Do you actually follow up on the lives and careers of these kids to see if they turned out the way you thought? Without that how can you possibly know if your evaluations were "correct".


Also it seems odd that you would be inclined to be biased against someone who brings a resume or asks if if they should bring one. I appreciated that you don't hold it against them, but it seems weird that you have to suppress some sort of urge to do so.

lol

Obv the true best = the ones who get in, and the merely great = those who don't.

Duh. Do U even college interview, bruh?

I've heard that the rural setting of Cornell is blamed for the high(er) percentage of suicides. The adage id it's a great place for grad school, but a very, very lonely place for some undergrads.

I can't predict the future, but some kids do reach back out to me later in life and quite often it's the ones who stood out to me in the right ways who do, in fact, turn out to met with great objective and subjective success.

I will not "ding" someone for bringing a resume, but it will instill in me a sense of whether this person is trying to come across as better than they really are or that they don't trust their own ability to perform well.

Something else I always invite students I interview to do is to ask questions of me, both about my alma mater and my experiences there. Of course with each passing year it's more difficult for me to relate to the current campus environment; however, I stay active there in other ways so it's not like I'm totally detached. I'll never hold against them if they don't ask questions or their questions are mediocre, but for those who ask what I think are enlightened questions I have given a few bonus points.

that doesn't help as well but wouldn't that be the case that all rural schools have similar issues? i'm not sure if that's the case but I will say it's probably higher than most due to rural + difficulty with school. not going to lie, and I'm honest with the kids I interview--I went to Cornell--I would never go back to living in upstate NYC (I live in center city Philadelphia now) but for College/University I think it's fine.

Yeah, rural plus ivy is a tough combination for some, I'm sure.

You bring up a good point, which is negatives that I tell students if they ask. I'll say that in some cases my school has higher level undergrad courses that are taught by faculty who'd rather be dealing with only grad students, plus there is a sense of drive an competition in a chunk of the student body that can really rub people the wrong way, but those are two small dings that pale in comparison to the many positives that I can lay out with a very straight face.

Interesting read.

Years ago I was involved in admissions for Med School and Residency at my program. As someone noted above it's a massive sorting problem, and you end up using various triggers that rightly or not get a huge pile of apps down to a more manageable number - for example, we had something like 350 apps for 6 slots in our residency program, which was really only 4 slots as 2 were already spoken for. So if you were a foreign grad, out. Any sort of marginal evaluation in your clinicals, out. Which sort of sucked, because you knew you were round filing some people who would have been great fits, but there just wasn't any way to really vet 350 people. Med school was worse - thousands of apps for 160 slots. Like a lot of schools, we used O chem as a filter. Anything less than a B/B+ doomed the app - and if you had only a B, the rest of the app better be spotless. Anything below a particular MCAT score, out.

You're looking for reasons NOT to take someone. Which was depressing, somehow...

MM MD

What percentage of the applicants are selected for an interview? I assume they have to have passed some initial screen of scores and GPA.

How do you receive the results? If via the school, why do they tell you this information -- is it to keep you invested in the process?

Loden-

At Cornell, everyone who wants it gets an interview. I definitely have interviewed a few that clearly had little shot at the school. I don't think there filter the students out at all unless they're potentially something wrong with their application.

Similarly, I get results of who gets in a day or so after the candidates get it so I can congratulate them. I also get to see a list of the kids and the interviewers from the rest of my group of interviewers. Unless they tell me, I don't know if they actually goto the school though. Odds are on the same order as the rest of the country--for my school it's around 12%, maybe slightly lower if I'm interviewing more kids from the inner city. In Philadelphia, they have an accepted students event which I'm invited to as well as any accepted student.

The interview process is available for all applicants, but not mandatory. Those who do opt for an interview end up being admitted at a 2 to 1 greater rate than those who don't. The way the school is able to accommodate all students for interviews is people like me - former graduates who volunteer to conduct the interviews for applicants in their region.

The admission results are made available to me on a web portal, along with quality ratings of my interviews by the admissions staff. They rate our reports on a scale of 1-5. If you don't consistently get 4s or 5s they sometimes push for you to step aside since normally there's a list of folks who want the chance to volunteer.

Also, once my kids are old enough to have classmates or teammates be part of the application process, I'll have to step aside in order to ensure there is not even the chance of conflicts of interest. That will happen for me in about 2 or 3 years, and the only question is whether I'll resume once I'd get the chance to do so, as it would be a 6 year break and I'd be almost 55 years old. I think I'll probably just opt to call it quits. It's sad to think about since I'll miss it.

And I thought it was bad interviewing for a school where the admit rate is in the high single digits or low double digits. I knew plenty of people at my alma mater who applied for med school and were downright geniuses but could only get into middle tier schools - the competition is so, so fierce.

What's the approximate ethnic breakdown of interviewees? Gender?

It seems odd that a large percentage of these students reach out to you later in life. But even if they do, I would suspect it's the ones that you had the best rapport with during the interview, and presumably you recommended be admitted. That only tells you half the story. To be confident that your recommendations are meaningful, you would have to see how people you didn't recommend ended up doing. Maybe they were successful too? Maybe more successful? Maybe they would have been if they were admitted? Who knows?

It just seems odd that you have such confidence in your ability to not only sort the wheat from the chaff, but also the very good wheat from the great wheat. All with only quite limited knowledge of the results.


It's good that you don't ding them. I'd just interpret it as advice some adult gave them. I'm not going to expect a 17/18 year old to be savvy enough to ignore it.

I've heard it in other contexts, but I'd agree that with respect to a college admissions interview it would be weird.

That reminds me of when I applied to MBA programs back in 2001-2002 (was it that long ago? man).

My cousin and her husband were rich as early executives and investors in some of the biggest internet companies when the boom started in the 1990's. They both got their MBA's at Stanford, knew everybody everywhere, and donated millions in money and property to Stanford (don't quote me on that last part, but I believe they donated a house).

I was interested in Stanford and some top programs and my cousin's husband (who I didn't really know) was nice enough to chat with me on the phone about it (I believe he had been on the admissions committee). My general weakness, which I knew, was that I had less work experience than the average applicant. That aside, he told me that based on what he knew about me, he had no doubt that I'd do a fantastic job at Stanford.

But I would have zero chance of getting in. He said that the people I would be competing against would be Olympians, authors, and Desert Storm vets. My resume just didn't stack up, even though I, myself, easily stacked up against anyone. There was simply no reason for the committee to admit me when everyone had great grades at great schools, etc.

I didn't bother applying and set my sights on the mid-lower portion of the top 25. Got into some, got offered scholarships, and had a great two years that I look back on fondly (for the school I got into, it helped that I was a standardized test whiz and did really well on my GMAT - the school was looking to boost their test averages that year).

The town where I interview is affluent, so mostly white and asian. But I know my school has a very broad mix, including from many international countries.

The smartest person I've ever met even to this day was when I was at my college. He grew up in a small village in Kenya. He was just incredibly smart both in terms of soaking in knowledge but also theoretical thinking.