There are a lot of kids today whose parents hold their hand through every step of the college application process and even hire professionals to help them navigate it. I have no doubt that’s the case for kids applying to Princeton. On the other hand, there are kids whose parents are completely ignorant of the college application process or are passive-aggressively working to undermine them due to some unhealthy family dynamics. It takes a heck of a lot of gumption for kids in those situations to even be viable college applicants, and that gumption may be worth so much more in the long run than the attitude of someone who makes a great impression because mommy and daddy dressed the kid right and drove him to the interview.
If this kid had the grades and test scores for Princeton, it sounds like the interview process did his application no favors. Hopefully it was an experience he learned from, though. He does need to learn those basic skills, but I don’t think it should be a big factor in college admissions.
I would hope Princeton (and any admissions-competitive school) would look at more than just grades and test scores. In fact, I would wager a guess that grades/scores are the very surface of what they’re looking for. Such schools have incredibly high acceptance rates because they have incredibly talented pools of applicants, and have the pick of the litter - grades and scores are just going to get your application looked at with more than a cursory glance. I don’t think an interview is the only way to try to separate the wheat from the chaff, but it’s certainly an excellent tool.
My father did fund dress-up clothing because I didn’t work, and drove me to the interview because I didn’t drive, but you’re right that I didn’t know what to do when I got there. It was my father’s idea to do interviews because of the opportunity but it probably would have been better just to stay home. They held my hand in the sense of critiquing my essays (that was quite a scene) and making sure I got the applications done, and my father is control-freaky enough to make the potential college lists for me.
Hell, I was 15 years old when I was applying to college. What the hell did I know.
My question about the alumni interviews is: Are these alumni vetted at all before being allowed to be part of the interview process?
Because i’ve seen some college graduates from good schools who i would not let within a three-day drive of the admissions process. Just because some dunderhead with rich parents managed to scrape by with a C- average at Prestigious State U or Well-Known Private U doesn’t mean he or she is qualified to evaluate the next generation of applicants.
I know people from both groups, actually - where the parents were the driving factor, and where the kid took every initiative possible, because the parents never considered college to be a possibility. (Not due to his grades, but because they never went to college) One of my other stories involves a kid who did not seem to really even want to be there. I’ll probably post that one tomorrow. It’s not nearly as long as the one I initially posted, but still interesting.
From what I’ve been told, we pretty much try to grant everyone who applies an interview. You really can tell the difference between the ones who are actually interested in Princeton, and the ones who were pushed to apply.
One of the things we are told both while in college and after is that Princeton looks for the “well-rounded individual.” They would much rather take someone who was involved in extra-curricular activities and had “good” test scores over someone who had “great” test scores but did nothing else. That being said, if you are in pretty much every club / team known to humankind, then that’s going to work against you, because then it looks like you signed up for pretty much anything and everything. One of the reasons we conduct the interviews is to gather more information on the applicants and their lives. For example, I’ve interviewed several Student Council Presidents. One applicant did not do much throughout the Fall Semester (remember, these interviews are conducted usually in the beginning of the Spring Semester), where another was heavily involved in fund-raising, organizing new activities and improving past traditions. On paper, one might be inclined to think they were roughly the same, but after talking with each of them, I’m much more inclined to recommend the latter than the former.
That is a very good question. I will say that my Alumni Admissions Coordinator tries to establish a dialogue with each interviewer, presumably to “test them out.” If someone comes across as anti-social, or incapable of representing the University, I doubt she would assign the person any interviewees. Essentially, she is the gatekeeper between the Admissions Office and the rest of the alumni. That being said, there isn’t any sort of “formal” application process to be deemed an interviewer. I would not be surprised, however, if she has a blacklist of alums who shouldn’t be assigned any students.
I grew up down the street from Princeton, applied, didn’t get in, went to another top tier school instead. which was OK, I didn’t try too hard because at the end of HS, it was time to get out of Dodge anyway.
I bet factually, that line was BS, but was designed to filter the wheat from the chaff by making the interviewee raise his or her game on the spot. Because that is the way every interaction at school like that is going to go. It was a test. I like it.
You don’t by any chance have a strong Irish familial history, do you? One of my best friends grew up in Princeton and she was accepted, but her younger sister was not.
Yeah, I never really got to the bottom of his motivation for opening the interview with that line. I just figured that, since he was an oncologist, he was used to having to deliver “bad news” in a blunt fashion. Funny thing is, he found out I was accepted before I did, and he called me to congratulate me, thinking I’d already received the letter of notification. He said he felt bad about “ruining the surprise”, but I told him I was just ecstatic to have the news. I was home alone at the time, and so I had no way to let my parents know until they returned to the house. From that moment on, both the interviewer and his wife treated me like a member of the family.
It can be, but the definition of “wheat” and “chaff” can get kind of ugly. I’m not accusing you of meaning this, but interviews can be used to demonstrate that you’re “the right kind of people.” Famous example, George Bush getting into Yale. I’m not trying to make this an ugly political point, just a point about someone whose family connections probably got him farther than his native smarts.
Some kids get to flesh out their resumes with with parent-supported extracurriculars, other kids’ free time is spent watching their siblings while a parent goes through rehab or immigration. That just might be more of a learning experience than being captain of the soccer team or starring in the school play.
In the tale of the interview in the OP, we never did learn anything about what made this kid tick. Obviously, he hadn’t learned the art of selling himself, but if he was that far along in the process he probably had something on the ball. Did he do all of his studying in the US? Did he speak multiple languages? Had he traveled in Africa? Or maybe his family was neck-deep in Nigerian oil money, and trusting that the building they were about to endow would make up for any deficiencies in the interview process. I’m kinda curious.
A lot of the “helicopter parent” habits surprise me, but I actually don’t find that odd. Maybe the kid doesn’t have a full license yet, or not long enough that the parents trust them to drive to a unknown area alone and find legal parking, possibly with butterflies in the stomach. I have a friend whose wife is a singer, he drives her to auditions all the time and she’s a perfectly independent adult.
That said, it sounds like he wasn’t that interested in your school. I wonder if he already got accepted somewhere else. I mean, I had not-great etiquette when I was a high school senior, but at least I knew enough to reply to emails, follow directions, and be no more than 5 minutes late to a meeting. If he had the organizational skills to get Princeton-quality grades in high school, then I’d assume he also knows how to do all that as well, he just didn’t feel like turning it on for you.
Not in the sense you are looking for no. My step-brother’s father was Irish, and so they have an Irish name, but love them as I do, they won’t quibble if I say they were not Princeton material.
I was not actually in Princeton, but I attended a HS you probably heard of in Hightstown. And I am not a “she”. I am not alice, but who is?
I didn’t have my driver’s license when I was applying to college, so I’m not terribly surprised that a lot of the kids were driven by parents. Despite the need to be driven everywhere by someone else, I more or less did my own applications without assistance for both graduate and undergraduate school. By that point, my parents had decided that I was capable of handling it on my own.
I see a lot of kids today that get hand-holding for a lot of everyday work, like school assignments and such. I recall getting assistance from my parents when I had big projects when I was younger, but beyond a “let’s go to the library and see what we can find” or “let me help you narrow down/expand that topic”, I didn’t get much assistance from either parent, especially not past elementary school level. The kids I do research help with often come in two varieties: “Mommy/Daddy does my homework for me” and “I’m here by myself and have a good idea of what I need to do, but need a little guidance”. The former is MUCH more common than the latter, and it’s frustrating to me to be talking to a parent who is doing the homework for the child, as it’s really not my place to be giving the parent a lecture on how to parent their kids. I do, however, realize that it’s infantilizing a large group of people who will end up being dead weight on their parents’ shoulders and on society, and try to engage the kid when they’re present for the reference interview.
My own college interview went terribly. My interviewer asked me to meet her in Beverly Hills, a 30-45 minute drive in rush hour traffic. I got there and realized I was in this very trendy spa/cafe. My interviewer was a 30-something who worked in the entertainment industry. She offered to buy me a drink and pointed out the cafe’s extensive herbal/organic/medicinal tea selection. I asked for a cup of coffee. She frowned.
It went downhill from there. She spent much of the interview trying to convince me how great her alma mater was. Which is fine, except that I’d already applied early decision. I didn’t need any convincing. I don’t remember much else except that I felt so incredibly uncomfortable and un-trendy – some nerdy kid in clothes from Old Navy who wanted to study math in college. I drove home and lied to my parents, telling them it went great.
I got in anyway.
What’s even stranger about the whole thing was that my dad went to the same college I did and also conducted alumni interviews, although he declined to the year I applied. So it’s not like I was out of my league. I just ended up with an interviewer very different than I.
I graduated last spring and I meant to sign up to do alumni interviews this year but forgot to. I know my dad really enjoys getting an excuse to know someone and learn about their life and their goals. It also seems like a cool way to give back to my school without actually giving them money I don’t have.
Not more than 5 minutes late? That etiquette is taught where?
How about not more than 5 minutes early?
As an interviewer, 5 minutes late better come with a phone call a half hour at least ahead explaining how you are moving the earth and the stars to get there then. If it is routine traffic trouble, then I have been known to cancel interviews when receiving calls like that - once I did it even though I paid to fly someone across country during the dot com era, put her up, and fly her home. I told her to come by and ask for HR at the front desk, and she would be given her travel reimbursement, but that was it. I was no longer interested if that was how she was treating me and my team that was to meet with her. This was not a junior level position either.
On the other hand, if it is simply unavoidable, then the tale of how you handle it in action is worth more then half of the questions you were going to hear from me or my team anyway. So make it good - it will make an impression.
Even a high schooler should respect people’s time and effort to manage this - if you have to leave 4 hours early to be sure, then do it. If that means you have to leave the night before to avoid morning rush hour risks, then do it. It will also make an impression. “I wanted to make sure there were no traffic problems, and there weren’t so instead of risking being late, I ended up being 3 hours early so I hung out and had breakfast” = Nice!
It is not only etiquette, but it is a test. Can you get to an assigned place at an assigned time by using whatever resources are available to you? Not really a hard test, so failure really stands out.
In case anyone reading this is ever headed to an interview in the future, something to consider anyway…
In this case, the kid had grown up in Africa (I forget the country, but I am inclined to say Nigeria…) and moved to the U.S. when he was about to start high school. Of course, the difference in the coursework between his country of origin and the U.S. was so different that, IIRC, he ended up staying behind a year (in part to help his fluency and to “adjust” to the new curriculum). I went back and read my evaluation of him and I now remember that part of his plan was to obtain a medical degree and then return to Africa - a noble endeavor. In terms of “extraordinary life experiences”, he did not tell me anything of particular note, besides the adjustment to life i the U.S. I’m sure this sounds like I am downplaying the dramatic adjustment necessary to make such a transition, but those stories are more common than you might think. I think this past “season”, 50% of my applicants were not born in the United States, with half of those having moved here either immediately before or during their high school years.
When I re-read his evaluation, I saw that he was not in the top 20% of a class of approximately 700. He did seem to be interested throughout the interview and the conversation was pleasant. By then, he just had a lot of strikes against him, and he was already deep in the hole. I’d called friends while waiting for him to arrive, and the consensus was, at that point, he had a lot of impressing to do to counteract all the negatives. We do strive to give every applicant an interview, regardless of GPA and the sort. At the very least, they get some “interview practice” out of the experience and it helps us gauge other applicants.
That is a great story.
I have some friends who were raised in New York City and they didn’t have their driver’s licenses at 21, much less while in high school. Where I live, however… the public transportation is not so readily prevalent, and so I find it very difficult to believe that anyone involved in extra-curricular activities would not be pushed (if not forced) to get their own license.
Whenever I have any interview (or pretty much anything where I have to be somewhere at an assigned time), I always err on the side of caution. I actually left 2 hours early for an interview 40 miles away. The interview was on the Friday before Labor Day and due to holiday traffic and a wreck that closed down all four lanes on the highway, causing all traffic to have to use the shoulder of the road, I could tell I was going to be late. As soon as I determined I may not make it on time, I called the interviewer to let him know. Granted, this was still 1 hour before the scheduled interview, but I wanted to be on the record as soon as possible. For the record, I ended up only being a few minutes late, and I got the job.
yes! in case anyone wonders why the Princeton or Stanford or Harvard grad always gets the job, it is because they learned this if nothing else.
I know a lot of folks on this board (me included) might consider ourselves at a disadvantage due to our social skills or EQ despite very high academic or IQ levels.
This simple step can get you a few places in line ahead at critical times, and anyone can do it. Anyone can, but you would be surprised how few do. [/advice]
but I have heard it said that a lot of African cultures just don’t grasp the concept of meeting time. The idea of “We’ll meet at X A/PM” just doesn’t mean anything.
My boss roomed with three African immigrants during college. He loves telling a story - one of them was getting married. He, of course, was invited. The wedding was set to begin at 2 PM.
He arrived, dutifully, at 2 PM. Church was empty. At about 2:10 PM a friend (American) arrived. They both wondered if they had the date wrong.
Family and friends of the groom began trickling in starting about 2:30. Probably everybody was finally there about 4:30 PM. Groom looks around about 4:30 PM, sees most of the necessary people, announces: “OK, let’s begin.” A lovely wedding followed.
A few weeks later - my boss asks, “wasn’t it supposed to begin at 2 PM?”
“Oh yes, it did start then.”
Just a different mindset. Rather than start at a time, you start when enough of the necessary people show up and form a critical mass. The given time is a suggestion, not a deadline.
:dubious::eek:
Nice!