How to make college interviews less scary and more successful

The first thing to know about college interviews is that you shouldn’t worry about college interviews. If a school offers interviews, you should take one to reaffirm your interest, but these aren’t anything to lose sleep over.

“It’s an easy and honestly pretty effective way of screening out crazy applicants. Don’t read too much into this, it’s perfectly good to be a little quiet/shy/dorky. We just don’t want arrogance [or a] lack of social awareness. [Interviews are] a way to make the college’s alumni feel involved in the process. Honestly, alumni interviewer opinions aren’t taken super seriously. If you’re an [admissions committee], there’s no reason to take some random alumni interviewer’s opinion over your own, but we like to maintain a sense of community,” an admissions officer a T5 said. “Some interviewers get really egotistical about how much they can ‘contribute’ to an applicant’s admission. What the interviewer writes up, we put in the back of your file. We’ll read [their report], but we don’t really think about it too hard. It’s extremely rare for someone to get in solely based on their interview.”

That said, interviews can still be something worth spending a little time preparing for, especially depending on your specific situation.

“Interviews with admissions officers on campus, you have to take them very seriously. I’d say maybe half these interviews go over poorly,” the same admissions officer continued. “If they ask you why you want to come to X school, you need to have a beautiful answer ready. So many kids interview and give half-baked answers about this and other questions.”

How interviews are evaluated

To begin, let’s unpack what exactly interviewers will be looking for. A former admissions officer at UChicago and UC Berkeley created this helpful list:

“What sort of insights interviewers hope to uncover

• Who are you and what do you value in life?
• Will you be a presence in the classroom? Are you enthusiastic about learning and intellectually engaged?
• Will you be a good roommate and active participant in various organizations on campus?
• Are you teachable, thoughtful, more collaborative than competitive?
• How interested are you in attending this particular university? How knowledgeable are you about this university’s offerings? How do you believe this university’s curriculum is a good fit for your educational goals?

Criteria for which your interview will be judged

• Do you demonstrate intellectual curiosity?
• Are you motivated to learn for learning’s sake as opposed to being a ‘grade grubber’ or compelled by parents to succeed?
• Are you open to exploring new ideas and perspectives different from your own?
• Do you think for yourself and question the world around you?
• Are you open-minded? Do you value being part of a diverse community in college?
• Are you confident in your own abilities and comfortable with yourself? Can you engage in discussion with an interviewer in a mature, self-aware and poised manner?
• Are you a good ‘fit’ for this university’s community? (Note: ‘Fit’ is defined differently by different universities, so glean from a university’s website what characteristics they hold highly.)
• Are you knowledgeable about this particular university’s curriculum, majors, programs, culture, traditions and extracurricular activities?
• Can you cite specific reasons for wanting to attend this university, as opposed to just saying it’s a ‘top college’ or ‘highly ranked?’
• Have you demonstrated any leadership?
• Are you deeply involved in one or more extracurricular activities? Do you pursue that activity out of true passion or merely a desire to ‘look good on college applications?’ Will you pursue that activity on this college’s campus?
• Will you be a good roommate and classmate?
• Did you make an overall good impression?”

TLDR: if you’re respectful, come off as passionate about learning and demonstrate your knowledge/enthusiasm for that school, you’re well on your way to a solid interview. In fact, most of the above questions should be things you’ve already thought about as you prepared the rest of your application.

Preparing for interview questions

If you poke around online, sometimes you can actually find the exact instructions a school gives their alumni interviews, which includes what questions to ask and what the evaluation form looks like. If not, here are some common questions and tips for answering them. 

Tell me about yourself.

This is probably the single most common opening question, and one that you should formulate an answer to in advance. Don’t start with obvious things (name, age, high school, etc.) they already know, and you also shouldn’t start by just restating what’s on your résumé. This is just a lead-off question to get a feel for who you are and to get the conversation going. Just say something about your personality, interests, the way you think, etc. that will actually give the interviewer something to work with. I usually responded by saying that I love thinking about how little things in life interact with the bigger picture, since knowing this about me frames the way an interviewer would view my subsequent answers.

What are you interested in?

Like with all of these questions, you don’t need to make up some elaborate answer that will inevitably come across as forced. One pattern you’ll notice throughout my advice is to stop overthinking things. Mention some things that interest you, and consider explaining why they interest you, what sparked your interest and/or if they tie into your future plans. If all you’re giving the interviewer are short, one sentence answers, it makes this entire experience less enjoyable for both parties.

Why are you interested in [school name]?

Hey, I’ve seen this one! This is a classic! Good thing I already wrote a section on preparing for “why school?” questions. Like I mentioned in that piece, think of this as a “why you at that school?” question instead of just listing off great things about said college. Give the interviewer an idea of how you would contribute to that school.

Why do you want to study X?

I really like the way I heard an admissions consultant break down this question: “Make sure it doesn’t sound like a random choice. Ideally, you want to have both a reason for it and something from your résumé that shows sincere interest. It should be evident that you’ve given some thought or exploration to this. Don’t just say it’s your best academic subject or it’s what your parents want for you. Demonstrate your own passion for it.”

Tell me about a time when you struggled or failed at something.

Anyone who has been interviewed by me for a leadership position knows that I love this question. Whenever discussing your flaws in college admissions, it’s important to center your answer around your growth, learning, improvement, etc. For example, I would briefly tell a story about a debate tournament where I helped our freshmen prepare for a round, but I later realized that I failed them by glorifying gimmicky tactics to win instead of genuine knowledge. The bulk of my answer dealt with what I learned and how I applied that lesson going forward. Be authentic, but you also shouldn’t mention anything super immoral that would raise red flags. 

Questions about your application

This is mainly for scholarship interviews with admissions officers or faculty; most schools don’t give alumni interviewers anything beyond basic information about you. Be familiar with your application because it could come up in an interview. I had a scholarship interview where I was asked about my array of activities (debate, journalism, theatre, etc.) and I could tell they were trying to figure out if I had any sort of direction beyond high school. I used that interview to help them understand my values, aspirations, etc. in a way that cleared up what connects all of my extracurriculars.

Miscellaneous tips

• Pathfinder writers have heard this piece of advice for years: treat your interviews like conversations. If you go into an interview by approaching it as an adversarial affair, a challenge to overcome, things will be rocky for everyone.
• Slow down. When we get nervous, we tend to speed everything up. This means we aren’t taking time to think about what we’re saying, so we start talking faster and stumbling over our words, which creates more panic that causes us to speed up even more. You pause and breathe in normal conversations — this one shouldn’t be any different.
• Smiling and making eye contact are good ideas, of course. I find that when we start overanalyzing on these things, natural parts of human communication suddenly feel anything but natural. Personally, I’ve found that the more I try to just have fun and enjoy talking to people, the better my “nonverbals” get.
• Speaking of eye contact, consider what changes in a virtual environment. If you’re looking at the other person instead of the webcam at the top of your computer, your head will actually appear tilted slightly down to them. At the same time, it’s also important to look at the other person to pick up on their facial expressions, body language, etc. Personally, I think the latter is more valuable so you can see and adapt to the interviewer’s reactions.
• Another aspect of virtual interviewing is the ability to have notes on your screen as well. I wouldn’t rely too heavily on this; for most people, their delivery becomes a lot less natural when they have a bunch of notes at their disposal. The only things that I could see myself wanting notes for are short bullet points with information about the school, or questions I wanted to ask my interviewer. That leads into my next tip…
• Think about what questions you’d like to ask your interviewer, which is something they’ll usually invite you to do near the end of the interview. Ideally, your questions should be about things that you wouldn’t be able to find on a school’s website. This can serve as a chance for you to learn more about a school. As such, one question I always asked was, “what would you change about your school?” Unlike admissions officers, volunteer interviewers aren’t employees of the school, so they’re much more likely to give you honest answers
• You’ll usually know the name of your interviewer in advance. There’s conflicting advice about whether or not you should look them up before the interview. If you do, you obviously have to be careful not to sound like you stalked them. Let’s say I knew that my interviewer also wrote for their school paper. I wouldn’t say, “I saw that you did newspaper too,” but I might bring up my involvement in newspaper knowing that it could be an easy point of conversation.