She was not. At the time, we were discussing a character in some boring short story who was a womanizer, and she said “he thinks of himself as a real Don Jewan.”
See above.
It’s possible, I suppose, that she never had heard the “Don Won” pronunciation said aloud, as she had attended a notoriously fundamentalist religious college in the area, and did I mention the backwards location? So, I suppose I’ll have to cut her some slack now that I think about it.
My original point still stands. Why wouldn’t someone coming out of S.C. public schools, at the time 49th or 50th in the nation in many measures, want to go to Harvard just because it was Harvard?
In the case of the girl in my second anecdote, it wasn’t even that she cited any sort of “rankings” or anything. It seemed like each and every answer she gave me could apply to any university. I must have heard the “[university name here] will help me be the best me I can be” line a dozen times from her over the 90 minutes or so. I’m all for self-improvement, but tell me why Princeton can help you be the best “you” possible.
My parents doomed me to a lifetime of misspellings, and of spelling-it-out-before-asked, but I forgive them because at least it’s a genuine spelling of a name which, while far less common, is just about the only connection I have to one part of my ancestory. It can also be handy as a ‘get out of jail free’ card when making a blunder over somebody else’s name…“I’m sorry, I know what it’s like…”
Not to disagree, but I do think that some of these wishes can be framed in more positive ways–I want to go to a school which has social activities on the weekends (as opposed to a “suitcase school” where everyone goes home on the weekends). Or I want to go to a school which will challenge me without overwhelming me–I know someone who went to Prestige College and found it really cut-throat competitive, I’d rather go to a school with a more supportive atmosphere. Or 3 generations of my family have been part of Fraternity X, and I’d like an opportunity to see if that’s right for me. Sure, some Fraternity Xs have better reputations than others, but I can’t see an interest in the Greek system being a deal-breaker on a campus which is heavily Greek.
And if you are charming and innocent enough, one can probably get away with saying stupid things to the person who is interviewing you. Especially if that person has a sense of humor. I mean, part of the point of these kind of interviews is (or should be) to see whether the student’s expectations align with reality.
Not entirely related–I spent a (short) weekend on my college campus as a “Pre-freshman”. As a result, I ended up staying up late watching the movie Brazil. Ranks high on my all time list of movies I would not care to watch again. I was one of a half dozen or so pre-freshmen who were there. I was the only one who showed up as a freshman the next year. There was some curiousity as to whether some of the rest would have preferred a chance to go drinking at one of the frats. I know I wouldn’t have–though I bet it wouldn’t have changed which college I chose to go to.
This is amazing to me. I’d wanted to attend my undergrad school since I was 9… I had no problem at all elucidating the several reasons I wanted to attend that school in particular… the institution’s stated commitment to diversity in education, the vast number of available resources, its location in one of the greatest towns ever, etc.
I kinda wish I’d read this thread sooner, because I recently survived a couple of grad school interviews. A fundamental part of the statement of purpose was ‘‘Why us?’’ My application contained a full paragraph of specific reasons I was interested in Penn… its reputation for interdisciplinary education, its establishment as a research institution, its location in Philadelphia near immigrant populations… one thing I definitely did not do was reply, ‘‘Well, it’s Penn.’’ During the interview the admissions director didn’t even bother asking me why Penn… because I’d explained in the application. When question time came, I told her that one thing that greatly attracted me to the school was the intimacy of the social work community. I looked her straight in the eye and said, ‘‘I need to know that when I fall on hard times, when I have to make the tough decisions, there will be people here to support me, because this is heavy stuff we’re doing.’’ She cited detailed evidence that this was indeed what Penn could offer, and concluded the interview by telling me I was going to be admitted.
This was the first time I ever had to interview for a school, and I was incredibly nervous up until I walked in the door. Who I am as a person was such a good fit for the program I felt no need to impress anyone. All the rehearsed answers flew out of my head the moment I sat down. I was just me, talking to this nice lady about who I am. I would wager to guess that’s the sort of thing these schools look for. I had already established, with grades and the statement, that I would do fine academically. The real question was how well I fit. Unless you explicitly state what it is about the school that attracts you, and what you want out of your education, then there’s really nothing to separate you from anyone else.
That’s amazing to me. I think at age nine if you had asked me to name one college, on a good day, I would have been able to come up with maybe the University of Texas at Arlington since it was in my hometown. Beyond that, I’d have had no clue.
Maybe this has to do with one’s academic area. I’m in Philosophy, and in my Statement of Purpose, I just explained what my Philosophical motivations are and the kinds of problems those motivations lead me to work on. It seemed to work fine in my case. But maybe simply telling what kind of stuff you want to work on wouldn’t suffice in other academic areas.
Maybe–but I’d put my money on it having more to do with the differences in PERSONALITY between you and Olives. I mean, I love Olives, but I think she’s driven and inclined to overprepare if anything. And knowing where you want to go to college at 9 strikes me as just weird–especially if the choice isn’t based on proximity or NCAA athletics.
But you strike me as coming from almost the opposite extreme.
Now yes, different academic areas and different grad schools have differing degrees of competitiveness–so maybe your approach wouldn’t have gotten Olives into her preferred school. And maybe her approach would have gotten you dumped into the “misfit” pile.
But if I had to bet–most people in both of your programs took a more middle of the road approach.
Glad I didn’t have to interview for my school. I’m sure “This city is the furthest I can get from home and stay in the country, but I don’t really care which of the five colleges here I attend.” would have gone over really well.
My college did have a decent reputation in the program I wanted to attend, but certainly not the best. But there are a lot of reasons to want to attend particular colleges that have little to do with academics and a lot to do with personal circumstances.
To be fair, my choice was, somewhat, based on proximity. My parents worked in Ann Arbor so I fell in love with the town from a very young age. I just happened to live about an hour from one of the greatest schools in the world. I used to attend the art fair with my Aunt every year and we’d spend hours each weekend on campus… I was captivated by this diverse intellectual world so completely unlike my own environment. So this can be somewhat excused, but considering the fact that I was drawing up plans for a Ph.D when I was in fourth grade (not that I had any idea what I was talking about)… yeah, I was not so normal. I was teased mercilessly for it, if that makes you feel any better.
This is a reasonable position, and I am aware that graduate school for social work is a very different process than with other programs… for Columbia we had to write an 8 page admission essay (my husband’s psych application, for comparison, was three pages), and the decision is very heavily weighted toward the essay. In addition to that, there is a detailed list of character traits we are expected to demonstrate… list here. I understand that in most programs the essay does not have as much weight as say, grades or the GRE. So yes, I would be in agreement that perhaps my program is different. The two biggest factors for admission as far as I can tell are 1) the ability to write and 2) whether or not you are mature and empathic enough to deal with human suffering on a daily basis.
And yes, your understanding that I overprepare for everything is accurate. So far it’s served me well.
Also, of the questions we had to respond to, one of them was to explain very specifically why said school would meet my needs as a student. That was a required part of the essay for all four schools to which I applied. I just want to make it clear I wasn’t exactly pulling that out of my ass. They wanted to know.
I can believe it–it’s weird to me because I’ve applied to, been accepted, and attended grad school twice in two different areas. I don’t recall an essay the first time around–but maybe that’s because of where I was mentally at that time–and while I do recall one the second time, it was a fairly small part of the application–and I think less than a page.
But the world of Social Workers is a different world than the world of engineers or librarians, AND it sounds like you applied for the top schools in your field so a little extra effort on your part is reasonable.
Isn’t the Byron poem about the Spanish Don Juan? And isn’t that the Don Juan to which your teacher would be referring? Is there a different Don Juan who’s a famous womanizer? That Juan has a Spanish J, which I’ve also seen described as a “hard H.” Definitely not “Won”.
My reason to want to go to my original school was that it was the only school in Spain offering a program in Chemical Engineering. Some of my classmates were children of alumni and had known they wanted to “do what Dad does” from a pretty young age.
Hey, that’s awesome! Ignorance fought, especially since she never told us that. We’d (or at least I’D) been used to hearing the non “Jewan” pronunciation through pop culture my whole life, and when she pronounced the word “Jewan” with no background as to the difference whatsoever, we all were thrown. Turns out she was historically right - but we had no way of knowing what the hell was going on. She never mentioned the Byron poem as the source of the meme, never discussed the difference between his pronunciation and the “hwan,” and left us all convinced she was a moron.
And it was definitely pronounced by her with a hard J sound, as in junior, jump, etc., not with any breathiness that would have softened it into something closer to what I was expecting to hear.
Perhaps I am now less convinced of her moronicity, but no less convinced that she was a crappy teacher.
Yea, I couldn’t figure out how to phonetically type the pronunciation I was/am used to hearing for the word Juan. “Won” (as in won-ton soup, not as in “I won the lottery”) was the best I could figure out at the time. The “hwan” is a better/closer phonetic spelling to what I was attempting to describe.
I definitely concur. My husband’s program (clinical psychology) evaluated him almost entirely on his GRE scores and his research experience… and nationwide the current acceptance rate for clinical psychology Ph.D programs is 4%. It is considered unusual for someone to be accepted the first time they apply. He had a 3.9 GPA in undergrad, four years of paid research experience and had completed an Honors Thesis project of his own. He scored in the 99th percentile of the Psychology GRE. My husband is a psychology god… regularly blows my mind how brilliant he is with his subject.
(I once asked him his take on a thread topic here…
‘‘Once a cheater, always a cheater?’’
His response: ‘‘Statistically, the best way to predict future behavior is to look at past behavior.’’ It wouldn’t occur to him to answer the question any other way.)
He was accepted to only one of the fifteen graduate schools he applied to. He has 4 classmates.
Since a Master of Social Work is considered a terminal/professional degree, the program tends to be much larger… at Penn the class size is around 125 for 350 applicants. I’m willing to bet that Columbia has an even higher acceptance rate, since their class size is double that of Penn’s. I only applied to four schools, and was accepted to all four. I am not smarter than my husband. I was not even required to take the GRE, and was evaluated mostly on the basis of the writing sample, my volunteer/work experience, and oddly enough, my character. Social work may in fact be one of the only graduate programs that values personality at least as much as academic achievement.
I don’t think that diminishes my achievement… I made the difficult choices necessary to be an empathic, community-oriented person and I have an innate capacity for great perseverance. This requires just as much effort as any other goal you can strive for. But my sort of point is that the critera for certain programs varies widely from program to program, and for whatever reason, I chose a program that cares about me as a person.
I definitely understand your point. One of my good friends in law school was, on paper, any firm’s dream. Order of the Coif, Dean’s List since the first semester, etc. When OCI (On Campus Interview) season came along, he had interviews slotted with pretty much every major firm (local, regional, national and international). When the second round of interviews came around, he didn’t have any “callbacks.” We were all baffled until he started talking about how the interviews went. For example, when he was asked where he saw himself in 5 years, he responded (and I kid you not), “When I grow up, I want to be a fireman!” Another firm asked him what was the last book he read, and he responded “Plato’s ‘The Republic.’” Now, while that in itself isn’t a bad answer, he then went on a diatribe about how most people don’t fully understand it and pretty much came off as a pompous ass. The sad thing is, when he was recounting his various interviews, he knew that he was digging himself a hole. The guy is brilliant, but has very little by the way of social skills. Over the course of the three years of law school, he alienated most, if not all, of his classmates, but that’s another thread altogether. Actually, it is a fairly entertaining story…
I prefer the original version of this story, where you interviewed the applicant at his house as some kind of wild party was going on. Told that his work was solid, but not “Ivy League,” Joe Applicant donned sunglasses and advised you that “from time to time, it may be necessary for one to say ‘what is the fuck?’ and have relations with these prostitutes.” Afterward, you sent a letter to the family affirming that “Princeton could use a guy like Joe,” and the entire village celebrated for three days and three nights.
Well, I wanted to be nice to my hubby, but the truth is two of his weakest points are composition and interviews. I overheard him do one of the grad school interviews via telephone… completely froze up. Part of his problem is he had difficulty feigning enthusiasm for programs he was still uncertain about. He’s doing phenomenally well in his program so far. It’s just that not only was he applying to an extremely competitive program, he was also at a disadvantage for the selection process.
I, on the other hand, am capable of writing my way into just about anything. I’m also a pretty strong interview… not the visibly nervous, clammy type, but the actively enthusiastic type. I think there have been times when I’ve been chosen for positions or opportunities based less on my actual experience, and more on my ability to communicate that experience and derive career-related meaning out of it. Which is to say, more explicitly, I have gotten jobs over other, possibly more qualified candidates because I make this shit look good.
Which is why I think it’s important, when evaluating a candidate, to look at what has been said about their experience working with others… read the recommendations and take them seriously, because how a person behaves during an interview might be completely different than how they behave in every day life. It’s true that you can’t completely disregard a person’s interview comportment, because how someone works under pressure or in one-shot opportunity situations is also important. Someday my husband’s going to have to defend his dissertation, so he damn well better know how to work under the spotlight!
In the case of the African dude, I might have explicitly asked him about the concerning behavior to see what he had to say in his own defense. He might have offered a good explanation. If not, then you would at least know for sure he wasn’t Princeton material.
I think at age nine if you had asked me to name one college, on a good day, I would have been able to come up with maybe the University of Texas at Arlington since it was in my hometown. Beyond that, I’d have had no clue. 
Isn’t the Byron poem about the Spanish Don Juan? And isn’t that the Don Juan to which your teacher would be referring? Is there a different Don Juan who’s a famous womanizer? That Juan has a Spanish J, which I’ve also seen described as a “hard H.” Definitely not “Won”.