3 College Interview Myths

By Quetzal Mama • December 18, 2017

3 College Interview Myths

When Yamila called a few weeks ago, I could sense her excitement over the phone. As the community liaison for her local high school district, she often calls me with college related questions. She was excited that one of her students received an invitation to interview with Harvard! She couldn’t believe it, and her student was beside herself. She wanted to know what to do, what to say, and what percentage of students are selected to interview with this prestigious university.

I decided to share my answers in this article to inform anxious students and their parents, as well as breaking down the truth and myths about the college interview process. Hopefully this will relieve some stress and give students more confidence as they walk into their interview.

Myth #1 – Receiving an Invitation to Interview. To start, not all colleges conduct interviews. Typically, formal college interviews are reserved for a pool of very selective universities. This is part of the overall admission process, so it is understandably a little nerve wrecking. The myth here is that only certain students receive interviews, or only those who are “contenders” or finalists will be invited. The truth is selective colleges always invite each and every student to interview when they have submitted an application to their campus. The only condition is that (a) the campus has alumni who reside within your geographic region; and (b) the student accept the invitation to interview.

Myth #2 – Your Interviewer Can Make or Break Your Admission Decision. Nearly always, the person conducting the interview is not an admission officer or part of any committee that will “vote” on whether you get accepted or denied. Instead, the person conducting the interview is typically part of the college’s alumni association. Their role is to meet you, ask a set of interview questions, take notes, and send an update back to the admission office. Their involvement is really limited to verifying you are a living, breathing student, and that there isn’t anything unusual, peculiar, or a red flag that the admissions team should know about. That’s it! Since the majority of selective colleges rely on members of their alumni association to interview students, their involvement won't make or break your admission outcome. This is true for MIT, Stanford, Harvard, and many others.

Myth #3 – The Interview Doesn’t Really Matter. By now, you’re probably wondering about the merit of college interviews. If every student is offered a spot for an interview, and if the interviewers don’t really have any clout when it comes to admission outcomes, then why interview in the first place? The truth is, there is one very important reason you should take the interview seriously. It has to do with a term called yield. Yield is a percentage of students who will accept an offer of admission. Yield is very important to selective colleges. These colleges want the highest percentage of students to accept their offer of admission. Having a low yield means students prefer another college, and that lessens their prestige. The bottom line is that if a college is considering offering admission to a particular student, they’ll consider whether the student took the option to interview. Taking up this option tells them (a) the student is very interested; and (b) the student took the time to research and prepare. If you are truly interested in a college and have the opportunity to interview, do it!

Remember, these 3 myths relate to very selective colleges (not all colleges). If you’re looking for more in-depth information on how to interview, what questions they’ll ask, what to bring, what to wear, etc., I’m sharing my article here. Good luck!