this is the most bizarre thread I've ever read on 2+2. so much so my instinct is that it's a fake/troll.

hard to know where to start unless US universities are simply Animal House redux ..

but ..

what academic qualifications do you have in the fields of the prospective students you are interviewing?

for example, the girl who was a "strong" candidate (whatever that meant for you) who thought you were not worth her time

.. whytf do you think that she wasn't completely right/justified?

and if she was (or even if not), why do you think your views are of any validity on the other people you interview?

are you trying to see if candidates are "people like us" or (as bad) "people who fit the descriptions of what we want"?

are you "trusted" by your admissions apparatus because you sync with their prejudices?

really, really ****ing bizarre

I find, empirically, it extremely unlikely that under equality-notions you will be able to ask different questions of different students.
these are just generic job interview questions. but completely inappropriately shoved down the throats of ~17 year old would-be students in your questions.

many of them are designed, for better or worse, to see how mature candidates can prove / sell themselves in a harsh job market.


which has nothing to do with the appropriateness of 17yo student candidates to start .. whatever course .. at xyz-terrible-university .. that you are supposedly vetting for

I don't have the luxury of knowing interviewers at tier 2, 3, or even 4 schools, but once a year they get most of us from my school together for a meeting and a few talk about how their spouses also are interviewers for far less prestigious schools. They say that even in the brief time span of an interview it becomes apparent that many kids have next to zero attention span, speak a hybrid of English and Kardashian, struggle to talk about themselves in anything but the most factual way, and just are remarkably unremarkable.

NSIS, especially with the odd paragraphing and sentence breaks.

All I'll say is I take what I do very seriously. Otherwise I wouldn't do it for free for nearly 20 years, at a cost of dozens of hours a year on top of a full time job, raising two kids with a wife who also works, and writing a 2000+ word per week column for a web-site.

I have zero prejudices, but I do draw upon - as I feel I should - my wealth of prior experience when I interview someone. It's like dating in that you learn as you go along and you apply what you learn. I sit down to every interview assuming I'm going to write a glowing report, and that's what I'll do unless they give me reason not to.

As for the strong candidate, I'll again emphasize that she was arrogant, flip and condescending from the get go. And remember - the interview is not mandatory, so she didn't have to sit for one. Since she did, however, I feel like I'm deserving of respect for the position I occupy and the time I'm giving to assess her candidacy.

We'll have to agree to disagree. These are kids seeking admission to one of the top universities in the world, and although they are only 17 or 18 years old they should be able to answer these questions.

Would you rather me ask who their favorite youtuber is, or what apps they like and why?

Tchaz--interviews are just another data point to evaluate students to see if the application matches the actual student. For my school, we are required to attend a training and we also receive cheat sheets. I think the actual school admissions office is going to be the best job at separating those who fit and those who don't fit. I think you're overthinking the interviewers power, they don't have much. Again, while Riz's school might use interviewers more than my school, it's just part of the equation. If the schools thought that the interviewers weren't performing or doing their job, I'll assume they'll scrap the program. Since they haven't, I'll assume it's helping the admissions process do their job better and helps also get alums involved. I'll assume involved alums are more likely to donate--I'm not going to lie, I donate my time through this program and I'm on the city alumni board and don't donate $$$.

I found the interviews I did when I was going through this to be interesting and memorable, and I rather regret not getting involved in my school's program as an alum.

Where do you think the highly qualified but not admitted students end up? Say a student doesn't have the credentials for the current environment but maybe would have been admitted a decade ago. Would you say it's more likely that they just drop out of the market or do they end up at the less prestigious schools?

Seems like based on your criteria (below) those would be ok questions also.

Based on those I've heard from and what other interviewers for my school have told me, those kids usually land in a top 50 if not top 20 or 25 school. They likely apply to this and maybe a couple of other really top schools in hopes of getting into one, then hedge by applying to at least as many (if not more) in the tier or two below. In other words, it's not an all or nothing proposition. For every school that thinks you're not quite up to par, there are many who'd be eager to have you.

As I conclude the interview, I tell each kid the same thing - to think of applying to this school as playing a game of musical chairs in a huge convention center room where there's only one chair for every ten or so applicants. I mean that not just in the sense of pure numbers, but also in that it's not always based on factors they can directly control. When the music stops, 90% don't get a chair. But when they leave the room, lo and behold there are chairs for everyone, in many cases chairs that are just as nice and just as comfortable as the chairs they didn't get. I've yet to have anyone come back and tell me they didn't get a chair when all was said and done.

I see what you're getting at, but my aim is to give questions that can't just be answered in a short sentence or phrase. I want them to have to think and articulate an answer. And in the instances when their answers are shorter or less detailed than I'd hope for, I usually try to elicit more from them based on what they did say. The goal is to get them talking beyond just the direct answer itself.

Who's your favorite Youtuber and why seems like a decent question if you're trying to get to know the person behind the application.

Without any research into this at all I'd guess that 2 things are happening to make you think that the quality of students may not improving across the distribution of students:

a) Elite school bias. You're comparing these students to students applying to elite schools. Not to the students from the 2, 3rd or 4th tier universities of yesteryear.

b) A larger percentage of the population is pursuing secondary education. A good number of students attending less prestigious universities are the marginal students who would not have gone on to get a secondary education in previous generations. So across the distribution you're "sampling" a larger % - necessarily from the low end of the distribution.

My intuition is that the students are getting stronger, maybe not uniformly, but across the distribution which is why I'm pushing back on this, but you may be right idk ...

I retract my suggestion to ask this question. I may find it difficult not to hold the answer against that student depending on who that YouTuber is

You keep mentioning "top xx" schools. Is there a definitive list of these schools somewhere? I know the US News rankings are popular but also criticized for being gamed. What's the most legitimate source or what schools are you thinking of when you rank schools or separate them into tiers?

Why, when chances are I'll have never heard of said youtuber? That would be like me asking a potential mate what their favorite wine is and why except that I'm not a drinker. While there might be something gained from me hearing their answer, I think there are better questions to be asked.

I agree those ratings are somewhat gamed, but they still factor in, as does the admission rate, retention rate, average starting salary for graduates, and the 5 and 10 year ROI on degree price, to name a few criteria. If a school is near the top in most if not all of these areas, chances are it's elite.

"Where do you think the highly qualified but not admitted students end up? Say a student doesn't have the credentials for the current environment but maybe would have been admitted a decade ago. Would you say it's more likely that they just drop out of the market or do they end up at the less prestigious schools?"

At least for med school, it's a lot more random than you think - as I noted above, getting in, once you check off some specific qualifying parameters, can be dependent on things outside of an applicants control. Which is why unless you're a mortal lock to get in at a particular school (like your dad just had the new hospital wing that he paid for named after himself) you apply to multiple schools - because to a large degree it doesn't matter where you go to med school - it isn't like you're gonna see the sun for the next four years anyway . (Residency is a different story, for a bunch of reasons)

Also, a student that would have been admitted ten years ago likely will have credentials that will get them in today - because the hoops you have to jump thru aren't secret, and they will jump thru them.

MM MD

Because then you get someone to talk about things they're genuinely interested in, and the answer reflects who they are as a person better than an answer to a "hopes and dreams" or "passionate about" or "tell me about a time when ..." question they don't really care about that they've rehearsed dozens of times. The fact that you've never heard of that Youtuber is a bonus—you're not evaluating them on the depth of their knowledge about the Youtuber, and if they can make you interested in someone you've never heard of, then they've done well.

My personal view is bright kids who don't "win the college lottery" will nevertheless succeed at least 80% of the time. They probably end up saving money by going to a state school or getting a good deal at a mid tier school and then excel. Then they strut their stuff in the corporate world. I think there are more people who succeed despite the college they attend than do because of it.

No offense, but I think that most of my questions are not the type that kids have rehearsed, at least based on what I can gauge. They say usually they get a lot of questions about things they've done or what classes they like or who their heroes are. Some of my questions might be ones where they can pivot into rehearsed territory - and kudos to them if they can do so seamlessly - but from what I see based on facial reactions and watching them formulate an answer before my eyes, the questions I ask are ones they weren't expecting for the most part.

"My personal view is bright kids who don't "win the college lottery" will nevertheless succeed at least 80% of the time. They probably end up saving money by going to a state school or getting a good deal at a mid tier school and then excel. Then they strut their stuff in the corporate world. I think there are more people who succeed despite the college they attend than do because of it. "

I mostly agree with this - although if you want to be the head of the CDC or sit on the Supreme court, there is a VERY short list of graduate programs that will make this sort of thing likely....

MM MD

Well he's talking about college (undergrad). You can go to just about and decent college, crush it, crush the LSAT, and then get into a top law school. Crush that and then you've got the baseline credentials for SC. Obviously actually getting it involves massive work beyond that and luck.

As far as being the head of the CDC, the most recent appointee did most of his training at Georgetown, which is nothing special. And I think the one before was mostly at Emory. Didn't look into any of the others, but I don't think you need to win the college lottery to be on that track.

Also with these types appointments, there is no grad program that will ever make them "likely". That's just not possible.

"Also with these types appointments, there is no grad program that will ever make them "likely". That's just not possible."

I mostly agree, and the CDC was a bad example. In law, though - AFAIK it's pretty much Yale or Harvard or nothing in terms of high federal court/supreme court seats. And yeah, like most things in life a lot of luck is involved.

And yeah, it's a derail - undergrad is MUCH different from grad schools.....

MM MD

Interviews should be carried out, at the college, by the tutors or professors for whom the student will be working if accepted. This is obviously difficult in the US system because US first degree studies are on the basis of British 'high-school' A-levels, whereas British first degrees are mostly 'single honours' in a specified subject. (And indeed British school-leavers with A-levels can be accepted for masters' degrees at Harvard because their qualifications are equivalent to a US first degree.) Colleges obviously should not employ 'interviewers' to visit applicants at their homes on a non-academic, non-discipline-related basis merely to ensure that candidates conform to social caste requirements. That's clearly insane and, not to put too fine a point on it, evil.

You do realize a lot of these schools are getting 50k applicants a year? First of all the tutors/professors don't have time to interview a ton of students. Second of all, most students aren't going to interview at a ton of schools when they have to visit them either by air or whatever. Yes in an ideal world, the professors would do it but you're living in some imaginary world where it would be easy to do that.