S3E20: Getting the Most out of Undergrad Interviews
Today's question of the week: "How should I approach college interviews?”
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Today's question of the week: “How should I approach college interviews?"
SHOW NOTES
Introduction: In this episode of the Admittedly podcast, host Thomas Caleel dives into the college interview process, offering insights for seniors navigating interview invites and juniors preparing for their future applications. From understanding the importance of interviews to tips for making a strong impression, Thomas shares practical advice to help students shine.
Summary of Key Points:
1. Understand the Interview Process:
Thomas explains the differences between interviews that count as evaluations versus alumni conversations. Knowing whether the interview plays a significant role in admissions helps students tailor their preparation and approach.
2. Professional Communication:
Respond promptly and professionally to interview invitations. Thomas provides tips for crafting a thoughtful response to your interviewer, emphasizing the importance of clarity, courtesy, and preparedness.
3. Preparation is Key:
Students should reread their essays, review their reasons for choosing the school, and research their interviewer if possible. Thomas also discusses how to approach commonly asked questions like "Tell me about yourself" in a structured and engaging way.
4. Engage Thoughtfully:
Be ready to ask meaningful questions about the school and your interviewer’s experience. Avoid "Google questions" or overly technical queries. Instead, focus on topics that demonstrate intellectual curiosity and genuine interest.
5. Follow Up and Reflect:
After the interview, send a personalized thank-you email or note. If there were unresolved questions during the interview, use the follow-up as an opportunity to provide answers or clarify any points.
Conclusion:
College interviews are an opportunity to showcase your personality and demonstrate your fit for a school. With preparation, thoughtful engagement, and professionalism, you can turn an interview into a standout moment in your application. For more tips and guidance, follow Thomas on Instagram and TikTok at @admittedlyco.
Have your own question you want answered? Leave us a comment on social media for a chance to be featured.
About Thomas Caleel:
Thomas is an alumnus of the University of Pennsylvania. After earning his MBA at the Wharton School of Business in 2003, he moved to Silicon Valley. For three years, he was Director of MBA Admissions and Financial Aid at Wharton. He worked closely with admissions professionals, students, alumni, and professors to curate the best possible MBA class. Thomas has been an entrepreneur his entire life in the fields of finance, agriculture, wellness, and sporting goods. As the founder of Global Education Opportunities LLC, he works as a high-level admissions advisor to help families and students achieve their education goals. Thomas started the podcast Admittedly because he is passionate about demystifying the application process for all parents and applicants.
Related Links
Apply to be a guest: www.thomascaleel.com/apply-for-podcast
Follow Admittedly on Social Media
TikTok: @admittedlypodcast
Instagram: @admittedlypodcast
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Hello and welcome to the Admittedly podcast. I'm your host, Thomas Caleel, and today we're going to talk about interviews, specifically interviews for undergraduate schools. Seniors, most of you have submitted your November 1 early applications, and you're starting to get interview invites. And I want to step back and talk about this for a little bit to prepare you for the process.
Okay, first of all, we should be planning ahead. So if I have juniors listening to this, one of the things you want to do is you really want to step back, and you want to make a list of the schools you're applying to. You want to look at whether or not interviews are required, and if they are, what the process is. Some schools will allow you to sign up for interviews early, and you should absolutely do that. Other schools might tell you, once you submit your application, then we'll invite you to an interview. So make sure that for the schools that you have to submit, sign up for an interview that you're doing that early, because those spots fill up very, very quickly.
The other thing you want to do is think about whether or not the interviews matter, and what do I mean by that? Well, some schools, particularly smaller liberal arts colleges, for example, but even the schools largest Georgetown, they do use the interviews in their process, and they say, "Look, this is an evaluation. This is part of your file," and so those are interviews you need to take quite seriously. Other schools have a far more relaxed view towards interviews, and the IVs, most of the IVs at this point, have kind of shifted interviews from alumni interviews to alumni conversations.
Why is that? Well, I see a lot of comments saying, "Oh, you know what? Essays are useless. Interviews are the way to go." And the reality is that, look, some people are good at writing, some people are good at interviewing, some people are bad at writing, some people are bad at interviewing, and so it's not fair to use one modality. The other issue that you have is that there's a lot of writing about this, that interviews are highly biased. And even very, very trained HR professionals have to fight to eliminate bias from an interview process, and so you can imagine a completely untrained alumni interviewer.
You have no control as an admissions office, you have no control over what they're saying, what they're doing, what they're asking. You don't know what their conflict of interest is. So maybe that alumni interviewer, right, who's interviewing this student, maybe they have a niece who is applying in that same class from that same school, and that is a huge conflict of interest that generally they don't dis—people won't disclose if they're being sneaky. And so do you know if they write a bad interview report, was that interview bad, or are they just trying to clear a path for their niece?
So I can tell you from my time at Wharton, we wrestled a lot with this concept because our alumni interviewers—and I loved many of our alumni interviewers. I got to be good friends with them. I'd visit them when I was overseas, when I was traveling, when I was in different cities, and they were wonderful. They did tremendous work. But again, you don't really have a handle on the questions that they're asking. We gave them a list of questions, but they had a lot of discretion, and you just don't know the environment or their prejudices, some other biases, conscious or subconscious.
So, when you talk about those kinds of interviews, those you can just relax. You can kind of have fun. If it's just an alumni conversation, go in with an open mind and enjoy yourself. But if you are going in an interview, in any circumstance, what are some of the things you want to do? Number one, you want to communicate professionally with your interviewer.
If you are doing an invitation, where you where you submit your application, and then you get an interview invite, the first thing to do is deep breath, right? Because how does this work? The school gets your application. It assigns you to your regional alumni office. The regional Alumni Office has a very hard-working officer. Their job is to go in, take that information and match you with a potential interviewee. That can take a couple days, right? So first the school has to process your application and match you with an alumni club. Then the Alumni Club has to match you with an interviewer. Then the interviewer has to realize that they have an interview and reach out to you.
And so don't panic if your friends are all getting interview requests and you're not. It's really just an operations flow issue and has nothing to do with the strength of your application. I get a lot of messages every year about this, but truly it's just the operational flow. So you get the invitation, first of all, respond professionally. If you can, sit down at your laptop and write a nice response, right?
"Dear Thomas, thank you so much for this invitation to interview. I'm really looking forward to it. This school is, you know, my top choice. I'm very excited about learning more about you and the school. I'm available these days at these times. Please let me know if one of those works for you. If not, let me know what might."
Super easy. Make it easy for them. Then what you want to do is a little bit of diligence, right? We don't need, like, full, crazy stalker diligence, but find out who the person is. What's their background? What are they doing? What did they study? That's easier than going in smarter than going in cold to an interview.
Some of you have asked, "Do I need a resume?" A resume is great. Some of you have a resume. Some of you don't. If you don't have a resume, you could do kind of like a little fact sheet, or you don't even have to write it. I think it depends. If you're applying as a business major, probably there's an expectation that there's a resume. But if you're applying as a, you know, as a poetry major or English Lit major, you might want to bring a selection of your writing—not necessary, but could be interesting, right?
So you go to the interview, and how do you prepare for that? Well, first of all, reread your essays, right? Think about why it is you want to go to that school because certainly they're going to ask you, "Hey, why do you want to come to this school?" And that's a very valid question, right? "What do you want to do with this education?"
I always have to put this caveat in because I get people come after me in the comments. I'm not asking you to decide what you want to do for the rest of your life, but you should have a coherent thesis about, "This is what I want to study at this school, and this is why."
Do not expect your interviewer to be knowledgeable about all areas of the school. This is very important. In some of these larger universities, it's entirely possible that if you're interviewing with an engineering major, they have no concept of what a music major is like. Okay, keep that in mind, and this becomes important later when we talk about questions. But go in with an open mind. Go in relaxed. Go in, you know, dressed—I hate to say professionally—but just dressed neatly. Make a nice, you know, presentation, nice impression.
So you go in. And one thing I want to stress here is many, many, many students will wait until the end of the interview to ask questions, and they'll be so focused on the question that they'll either not pay attention to the questions they're being asked, or they'll pay so much attention to the questions being asked that they forget the questions they wanted an answer to. It's okay for you to write notes to yourself, right? It's also okay to be prepared with questions, but don't be the person that goes in and is clearly just regurgitating a list of questions that they pulled off ChatGPT or Reddit, all right?
Avoid questions that I call "Google questions," where you can just look up the answer, like, "How many dining halls are there?" Right? Avoid overtly technical questions like, "Well, if I want to be an anthropology major, can I take Anthro 2 my spring term of freshman year?" You're an alumni interviewer. You don't know. I don't know. Go look it up, man. What you want to do instead is engage the interviewer.
"Why did you study at that school? What did you like most about your experience?" If they're an older alumnus, like myself, you know, "How has—you know, my experience at Penn is so different than a current student's experience at Penn that anything I would have to say on that is probably irrelevant. But what I can talk about is like the long-term value of my Penn degree. How has it helped me? Have I stayed in touch with my friends? If so, is it social? Is it professional? Is it a mix of both?" Those kinds of things are conversations that are great to have and give you a good idea.
For example, let's say you want to go to Brown and you live in Los Angeles. You can ask your interviewer, "Hey, you know, I love Brown as a school, but I'm just curious—has it been limiting to be in Southern California so far away from that kind of traditional Northeast alumni base?" And they'll give you—you would hope—a good, honest answer.
If you were interviewing with a member of the admissions team, for example, or it's an interview that counts, you can ask questions like, "So, you know, did you attend this school? Why did you decide to work here? What kind of students, you know, what do you see makes a successful student? What are some of the stressors that you see students go through?" Questions like that show kind of a nuance and awareness of a broader environment and your—the admissions officer's role in the process.
Ideally, you can kind of interject questions throughout the interview. "Oh, that's kind of interesting. Wait, can I ask a question before we move on, please?" But if not, it's okay. You know, different interviewers have different styles. You can wait until the end and ask all your questions at once.
One question I always like to talk about is—there's a question that most interviewers will ask. It's a lazy question. "So, tell me about yourself." Now, this is also a question that trips people up to no end. And the way that I like to approach this is that most people, when you ask them, "Tell me about yourself," they will start to talk, and they will ramble and ramble and ramble.
"Well, first I did this, and then I did this, and then this, and then this, and then this." What happens is you lose your interviewer like 30 seconds into that interview response. The interviewer's eyes glaze over. They kind of look at you, and they're like, "Oh my gosh," right? And what I say to do, and what I think you should do instead, is say, "I'd love to tell you about myself. There are three main areas that I'm involved in: academics, extracurricular activities, and sports," right? Or volunteering. "Which one would you like to start with first?"
Oh, well, now you've made them an active participant. "Oh, let's talk about your volunteering." Great. "There are three main things that I do with volunteering: this, this, and this." And now you have their attention. Then, when you finish, you talk about maybe the most important volunteering thing, and you say, "Okay, the other two are a little bit secondary to my experience, but they tie to the academic part that I mentioned before. So let's talk about the academic side of who I am." And then you talk about that, and then you get to the extracurricular part.
So all of these things, you need to be heads up, right? But by involving the interviewer in the conversation, you draw them in. You invest them in your answers instead of boring them with just a torrent of words. Speaking of a torrent of words, first of all, pause and think before you answer. Don't just jump in and start talking, right? Take a beat. Two beats. Pause. Collect your thoughts. Then give your response.
If you feel like you're rambling, if you feel like you just said something that doesn't make sense, you can stop and say, "You know what? Let me rephrase that. Do you mind if I rephrase that? Do you mind if I back up and just kind of clarify what I just said?" Right? We're human. We make mistakes. We talk all day, every day. It's okay to, you know, have to pause, hit a little bit of a reset, and then move forward.
When the interview is done, be sure to write a thank-you email. It's totally fine. You can write a handwritten thank-you note. It's great if you can reference something that you spoke about, right, or follow up if they asked you a question you didn't really know the answer to. You can say in the interview, "You know what? I don't know the answer to that, but I'm going to find out, and I will get back to you," and then follow up and answer that question.
Okay, so to summarize, make sure you understand: does the interview matter or not? If it does, you need to prepare differently than if it's just an alumni conversation. You need to do your diligence on your interviewer. You need to be aware and ask questions if you can, if they allow you to, throughout the interview. And you need to make sure to be composed, answer questions thoughtfully and intentionally, and make this a dialogue. You can go back and forth. You can request clarification. You can clarify things that you've said.
This is your chance to really shine. This is your chance to show a different side of your personality. Interviews should be fun. Yes, I know they're a little bit stressful, but kind of relax and enjoy the process. It's your turn to shine. I wish you all the best. If you have questions, please follow me on @admittedlyco on Instagram and TikTok. I go in. I answer the DMs myself, I answer the comments myself. Look forward to engaging with you and wish you all the best this application cycle.
