To Interview or Not to Interview

In their eagerness to touch every base while applying to colleges, many kids leap at the chance to interview while visiting a campus.  This is especially true as kids head off for extended summer college tours.  But during my years at the University of Chicago, I interviewed hundreds of applicants, and I’d guess generously that only about a third of those interviews were particularly enjoyable or informative.

Just because a school interviews and just because you're on campus doesn’t mean you should take them up on the offer. In fact, you should only interview at those schools you’re excited and well-informed about. Few things were as irritating as an interview spent in stony silence or answering questions that were covered in the viewbook or information session – like the cost of tuition or whether the school was on the quarter system.

On the other hand, good interviews always felt like conversations with a new friend. I enjoyed free-flowing chats that helped me know the student better and get a sense of their depth of thinking. And being outgoing was helpful but not essential. There were always those Chatty Cathy’s who managed to talk a lot but never quite say anything. Some of my most memorable interviews were with “quiet” students who happened to be passionate about the kinds of things that their peers did not talk about often, like the works of Ezra Pound or Heisenberg's “uncertainty principle.”

So before you schedule that interview, just make sure you’ve got something to say and that you’re ready to say it. After all, no interview always trumps a bad interview.