Who is interviewing for a prestigious American school
Data shows that in 2016, each of the Ivy League schools in the United States has an average of 30,000 applicants. Even if the small admissions office works 24 hours a day, a student only interviews for half an hour, and the interview is 625 days. Two years. In the short application cycle, who is responsible for the heavy interview work?
The answer is that alumni who graduated from these schools.
What a smart thing to let alumni volunteer to interview their alma mater! Think about these alumni:
——Working all over the world, just like applicants, solve face-to-face problems;
——I know the university best I have attended for 4 years. Anyone who is hired is not as good as someone who has lived in the university for 4 years to understand what kind of people can survive here, and what kind of life goals students can make the most of the advantages and resources of this school;
——The lowest cost. Alumni are willing to cherish the memory of their college time, so is there anything more interesting than seeing themselves (applicants) before? These volunteers saved the school expensive costs such as transportation, manpower, and time;
——Enhance the cohesion between the school and alumni. In fact, the good universities in the United States are basically private, and most of them rely on donations from alumni. This has formed a virtuous circle of constantly selecting the most potential talents—cultivating them into elites—and returning the elites to their alma mater. The school has also made a lot of efforts to this end.
Do all applicants have an interview opportunity
It depends on the school. Harvard, Yale, and Princeton are the three most difficult schools in the United States. Students who can participate in the interview are strictly screened. As far as I know, there are very few applicants in China who get the qualifications for interviews at these schools every year, let alone admitted. In fact, this is also easy to understand. The three schools originally have relatively few alumni distributed all over the world, and the elite's time is relatively precious. Then the school can first select some people to save time for alumni, which can be regarded as a mutually beneficial thing.
But the two schools, Brown and Cornell, are really doing their best to interview every applicant. In 2019, after I interviewed nearly 10 applicants for Brown University, I continued to receive emails, such as requests for support in Africa and other places. I hope that I can interview every applicant even in video interviews.
I have always felt very moved about this incident. The school keeps asking for help from alumni, hoping to give everyone who is interested in the school an opportunity to introduce themselves to their predecessors. Compared with some dating websites, if you remove the so-called "not eligible" from the first step, you may miss a lot of scenery.
How important is the interview
I was not sure at the beginning. I heard from the seniors that if you write a very good recommendation for the applicant, it may not be very helpful, but if you strongly tell the school not to admit this person, or find that there is a false identity Circumstances, then the school will definitely not admit this applicant.
Seeing is believing should be the reason.
In 2018, I worked hard to recommend a girl for the school interview, and in the end she was admitted. I still remember that after the interview that day, I was very impressed and posted such a circle of friends:
I have been interviewing for my alma mater Brown University for the past two days. The weather in New York today was very cold. I was waiting for the applicant at the Lincoln Center coffee shop. After a while, I saw a beautiful young girl in a red dress walking nearby and sitting down.
I walked across to her and told her that I was her interviewer.
For a full 40 minutes, she made me feel a caring about the world, enthusiasm, curiosity, curiosity... the best look a well-educated girl can do at the age of 17.
She looked nervous but very excited, saying that being able to study at Brown for 4 years was the best dream she had ever had when she was 17 years old.
I kept telling her not to be nervous, I was actually a little distracted when she spoke.
I imagined her walking on Brown’s campus in the spring, worrying about a certain paper, walking through the damp grass in shoes.
Imagine that she wore sunglasses to dance troupe rehearsals in the summer, complaining that the school was not as good as her home in Manhattan, but she was reluctant to leave.
Imagining that in autumn, she walked on fallen leaves and wondered about which lover who was still in love, and then walked faster and faster.
Imagine she complained about the winter snow in Providence, and then was trapped in the dormitory and read a lot of sage books...
It took me a long time to write her the best evaluation given by the interviewer,
I don’t know if Brown has said so well,
But I know clearly,
She and Brown’s dream of youth,
It will definitely not be empty.
Later, the girl in red emailed me saying that she was admitted. She thanked me for giving her what Brown had imagined, and she also said that she would meet me more in New York.
How to get the favor of alumni interviewers
Knowledge of the school
When sharing this article, I always like to compare it to falling in love. It's like saying a "goddess". There are really many people who chase her, and the conditions are good. She picks and picks, always picks people who understand her and are willing to spend her life to understand her.
It’s the same with school. You say you like it. What do you like about it? Is it what you like? It's just like before confession, you have to do your homework and don't be sloppy, because don't forget that the person sitting opposite you is a person who has lived in this place for 4 years.
Knowing more about the school is the most indispensable part of the interview.
Hobby
"Interesting" is very important to a person, and whether a high school student is interesting or not often depends on whether there is a hobby outside of school. What do you like to do outside of school? Why like? How long did you spend on it? This is a question every interviewer will ask when facing applicants.
In a person's life, one is not afraid of failure, but is afraid of not living seriously. So when a teenager shows persistence and focus on a thing he likes, it is actually the best look that interviewers want to see.
Beyond the vision of their own growth environment
I once asked the director of the admissions office of Brown University. I said: "Children come from all corners of the world, and their growth environment and resources are different. So how do you judge a child's own excellence?"
Her reply made me think a lot. She said: "What we look at is the potential displayed by the children in the current environment. Some children come from war-torn countries. Of course, there is no way to match the education and material conditions of the New York aristocratic high school. And we will not give up the child from the war-torn country because the children of the noble high school perform at the Carnegie Hall in New York, and the children from the war-torn country also love piano but do not have this opportunity. As long as the children show that they are beyond their own growth environment Vision, we will accept, because we believe that children who can show hope in a harsh environment come to our school, once they have good resources and environment, they will definitely become better and become beyond this environment. Excellent people."
I benefited a lot from her words. Education is not about judging one's achievements, but seeing one's potential.
I think of the first sentence the professor said in the sociology class: Before you criticize a person, think about whether that person has the privileges that you are born with.
There is a well-known book in the American education field called "Privilege". The author investigated and studied "elite education" where the "elite" is, and where the students who have received the elite education are the most proud of. One of them mentioned:
These children can calmly talk deeply or shallowly with people who are completely different from them.
This may be the essence of an interview at a prestigious school.
The heart fragrance is taken from "From Ivy League to Wall Street" by CITIC Publishing Group
