The Ultimate Guide to the College Interview Tips Common Questions

The college interview. Now, many times students worry about what they should say or what they should do or perhaps what they should wear. Should I wear these jeans? Should I wear those? Should I not even wear jeans? That's what this guide will cover. But not in that voice. Hi, what's up? I'm Ethan, College Essay Guy. I sometimes have other voices. We're talking about the interview today, and why are we talking about this? I've spent a lot of time thinking about, talking about, writing about this. I used to interview for my alma mater, Northwestern University. I can't remember if it's this, or if it's this, or if it's this. Somebody from Northwestern is going to comment on that. Anyway, inspired by my experiences with those students, talking to a lot of different admission reps, and helping students prepare for the interview, which I do not do anymore. Please do not message me and ask me to help you prepare for the interview. This video is that guide. I put together a complete guide to the interview. What am I covering in this video? I could bullet point them, but there are a lot. So instead, let's just throw them up here. Finally, I'll share with you at the end of this video how to get the ultimate guide of interview questions. All right, enough of this tomfoolery. Let's get going. So why do colleges offer interviews? A few reasons. First of all, colleges are trying to figure out who's going to ultimately enroll at their university. This is called demonstrated interest. And in some cases, for some schools, students who interview there are maybe more likely to enroll. I'll say a little bit more about demonstrated interest in just a couple minutes. Second, colleges are trying to determine fit. In other words, is this student, based on their personality and interests, going to mesh well with the culture of our university, based on who we are? Third, the college might be just trying to figure out if the student has a really strong command of English. Here's some words of advice from an admission officer. Paul Sweet at Babson College says, the college interview not only gives the prospective student the opportunity to add a personal side to the application, but also the college a chance to highlight specific aspects of the school to the applicant. Oh, wait! Think about that for a second. It's not just about the school interviewing you, you're also interviewing the school to find out if you're going to fit. Both students and colleges are concerned with fit, so the college interview can be a helpful tool in determining it. Check with the college before the interview, since sometimes the interview is informational, other times evaluative or a combination. I'll get more into those differences in a second. Now, you might be wondering, do college interviews actually matter in the United States? It depends. There was an article a few years ago in The Atlantic called The Futility of College Interviews, written by Haley Glatter, and one of the things she says is that interviews are a stressful and often irrelevant component of the application process. Is it time to do away with them? And for years, I've wondered the same thing, because a lot of times the students that I would interview and give amazing reviews for never got in. So, I was like, how much do these things matter? I was at a conference a few years, it was the National Conference, and the rep, who was from a highly selective school that I won't name, was asked point blank, hey, do these interviews really matter? And she was like, she just like shook her head. And I was like, what? Then what are we doing here? Like, why do we even have this session? In fact, why am I even doing this video? Great question. But this isn't binary. This isn't one of those things where it's like, yes, interviews matter, or no, they don't. It's really on a spectrum, and it kind of depends on the school. If you want to know how much interviews matter, sort of generally speaking, the National Association of College Admissions Counselors, NACAC, does a survey every year where they survey schools and ask them, hey, how much of all of these different factors matter? And if you take a look, you'll see that the interview is pretty much near the bottom. Now, this is a few years ago, but it's kind of stayed in this range. So, do interviews matter? Well, the same guy who I quoted above said, for a kid who's on the bubble, where the decision could go either way, a fantastic interview with an alumnus could make the difference. But how do you actually know how much a school cares about the interview? There's a way to find this out. So, if you look on the Google machine and you type in common dataset, plus the name of the school that you're looking for, so type in like common dataset Wake Forest, you'll get this huge report that's basically the school telling folks, here's what we care about. And if you scroll down to section C7, you'll see something like this. These are all the factors that the school considers. You'll notice, for example, the rigor of secondary school record, i.e. your grades, your GPA. In some cases, test scores matter, depends on the school. And if you notice, for this school, the interview is important. But for another school, an interview may not even be considered. So, type in the name of the school, type in common dataset, go to section C7, and see if the interview is even considered. Now, if you can't find the information, like you can't find the common dataset, or it's somehow unclear, you can actually just email the school and ask them. They're super nice people. These college admissions counselors, this is like their job to answer your questions. So, if you can ask them, for example, do you do interviews? And then you can even straight up ask them, like, how much do interviews count in the process? They're going to be kind of annoyed that you asked them that, so don't tell them that I told you to ask that. But you can, if you want to. Now, I mentioned informational versus evaluative interviews. In some cases, the interview is just to, like, find out about the school. And you may actually think you're going for an evaluative interview, which is basically an interview where they are, like, trying to determine if you're a good fit for the school. And it turns out to be just an informational interview. And I've seen students where they're, like, really disappointed. They're, like, they didn't ask me any questions. They were just, like, do I have any questions? And I, like, didn't have any questions. So, find out if it's an evaluative or an informational interview. What if you decline an interview? So, if the school offers you one, go ahead and do it. You've got some time to prepare. I'm going to give you everything in the sky that you need, including the questions you're probably going to be asked. Spend 30 minutes prepping and go ahead and do it. If you don't, the school might be like, hmm, what, you don't like me? What's going on? You might also be wondering, can an interview hurt me as an applicant? Now, it's very rare, I think, that a student just totally bombs the interview. But if you do bomb the interview, know that it's not the end of the world. You can still get into a great school. Sometimes students wonder, should I interview if it's optional? Listen, if the school reaches out to you and says, would you like to interview? Unless you have a really good reason, I would say do the interview. Because the most important thing is, did you do the interview? Why? Because schools are tracking this thing called demonstrated interest, which is a whole separate video. I'll link to it below. And what they're looking to know is, basically, do you like them? Are you likely to enroll if they accept you? Why? Because tracking that helps them with their rankings, which I explained in that video. But essentially, it's not as important whether you get like a perfect interview or like a really good interview. Really, it matters, did you check that box for, yes, this student was open to interviewing and actually did it. So what are colleges looking for in this interview? The number one thing they're looking for is intellectual vitality. What is intellectual vitality? Well, I call it curiosity with legs, which I know is a totally weird image. What do you care about? And then how have you manifested that thing in the world? So for me, I care about teaching. How do I manifest it through the world? Through a blog and through YouTube videos. I'd probably talk about that in my college interview. This just got super meta. But there's so many ways to demonstrate intellectual vitality. You don't have to be a genius to be intellectual. Your intellectual vitality or your curiosity with legs could manifest itself through cooking. By the way, I'm not saying cooks are not smart. Now, you may hear intellectual vitality and be like, I'm not intellectually vital, but you are. There are so many ways that you're smart. What do you care about? What do you do? How does that manifest itself in the world? It could be that you'd love to cook. I'm not saying that cooks are not smart. Let's just put it this way. Your intellectual vitality could manifest itself in so many different ways. Show us. So how do you set up an interview? It's really pretty easy. Colleges will probably reach out to you and say, hey, you want to interview? And you click yes. Or some version of it, you follow the steps. Or you can just go to the school's website and Google it. Google the name of the school plus interview. And hopefully the information will be there. If it's not, this is another situation where you could reach out to the school with a short, simple, polite email and be like, hey, I'd love to interview. What's the process? These admission officers are great people. They want to help you. But how do you actually prepare for the interview? That's what you've been waiting for. Finally, I'm getting to it. Here goes. So step one, I want you to write these three essays, even if the school hasn't asked you to write them. First, I want you to write a why us essay so that if they ask you the question, why do you want to attend our school? You'll have an answer. Second, I want you to answer the question in writing. What do you want to major in and why? Because chances are you'll get something like that kind of question in the interview. Third, I want you to write a little paragraph on what interests you besides academics, because these three things I feel like are questions you're likely to get. Once you've written these three essays and you can kind of make them half a page each, you're going to research the school and know a lot about it and probably have some questions about it. You're going to have some sense, at least a placeholder of what you want to study, and you're going to have some content, some material for other stuff you want to talk about. Now, you're probably wondering, oh, my God, I'm going to have to remember all of this stuff for my for my interview. How do I do this? You do not have to remember all this stuff, because once you've written all these, step two is to create your message box. So what is a message box? It's basically a PR term for three to four talking points that you want to make sure that you work in no matter what question you're asked. And you'll see politicians use this sometime where they'll be like asked a question and they'll be like, that's an interesting question. And they'll start to answer it and then they'll kind of swerve onto something else. And you'll be like, oh, that's the thing they were prepared to talk about. But this is something that you can use as an awesome technique in your interview. How do you use this? Well, let's say, for example, you started working in your parents' business when you were like, you know, a freshman in high school and you get asked a question like, so tell me about yourself. And boom, you could get right into that. Or so what do you like to do besides school? Or what's a difficult lesson you've had to learn? I'm sure there's something working in that business that you had to learn. Any of these could segue to your message box. So how do you develop your own message box? Here's how. I want you to spend 45 minutes to an hour doing a few different things. Number one, the 21 details exercise, which is take a blank sheet of paper. I was reaching out for a blank sheet of paper. I didn't have one. Oh, I do have one. Take a blank sheet of paper like this. This is a blank sheet of paper. And I want you to write down 21 random facts about yourself. And you're going to be like, what do you mean random facts? The fact that I love to juggle? Yes, absolutely. The fact that you love to juggle. And fill the paper with those 21 details. Number two, I want you to create on a separate sheet of paper. This is a separate sheet of paper. I want you to fill it with everything that you want colleges to know about you. Be free-flowing, brainstorm this. You can do it with a friend, do it with a parent, do it with a sibling. What are all the things you want colleges to know? Then I want you to ask some people around you who care about you. Hey, what's interesting about me? What should I tell colleges? Chances are they're going to come up with some stuff you've already brainstormed, but they might come up with something new. Then I want you to spend some time going through all that content and pick three to four things that you're pretty sure you want to cover in the interview. And boom, that's your message box. Step three. And this one is like the super Jedi, not mind trick, but like the way in to like really impress your interviewer. I want you to come up with one to three really good questions for your interviewer. Now, why do this? Because I think this is like the single best way to demonstrate your intelligence and your research about the university. I mean, when I was interviewing students, there would some, you know, I would get to that point in the interview and I would be like, so you have any questions for me? And they'd be like, nope. Okay, I guess we're done here. And then other times students would ask me something really specific or they would ask me something personal about my experience. And I was like, oh, thanks for asking about me. Oh, that's really nice. Yeah. And then we was like, we were connecting as humans. So let me give you some advice on what kinds of questions to ask. And in the ultimate guide, you'll see a huge list of these. First, some quick do's and don'ts. Don't ask them a question that is easily Googleable. So don't ask them something like, do you have a biology major? What's the student to faculty ratio? You can find that out on your phone in like 20 seconds before the interview. Second, do ask them something specific. Don't just sort of generally be like, so what's the school like? Ask them something as specific as you can. That's going to come back to your research, which we'll talk more about in just a second. And the third thing is don't be afraid to be a little bit personal. I'm not saying ask them a question like, so what was your relationship with your father like? I mean, a question like, so tell me more about your experience in Northwestern. But a better, even more specific one might be something like, what's one big thing that you wish you'd done at college that you didn't do? Now, they could get really personal with that and hopefully they don't get too personal. But that kind of question gets them to really think and it sort of flips the interview. And suddenly now you're actually interviewing them, which is kind of a cool thing. But what kinds of questions should you ask? A few options. First, you could potentially ask them a question that really just shows you've done your research and actually gives you some information about the school. So it could be something like, you know, I know your school requires students to read the great books, but you know, my school said that they were doing the same thing. It was really all books by dead white dudes. So are these like truly diverse books or not so much? Like, what's your take? And like, based on your experience of reading those. See what I did there? I also kind of made it personal. Another option would be to ask a question particular to your area of interest. So for example, you could say something like, hey, I'm really interested in studying theater, but I'm curious, are the theatrical productions on campus, are they more geared towards interpreting, like interpreting old works, or are they more geared towards creating new work? That would be a really specific question that maybe the person couldn't answer. And by the way, that's totally okay, because part of what you're doing here is yes, you're trying to get an answer because yes, be curious about your question, but you're also trying to demonstrate the kind of the way that your brain works. A third option, and this is one of my favorites, is to ask them a question that invites a personal connection. It could be something like, again, you don't need to get too personal here, but it could be something like, what's something that you wish you'd known before you set foot on campus? Or what would you say is the stereotype of students at the school, and do you feel like that stereotype is true? Or to what extent do you feel like that stereotype is true? Below the video, you'll find a huge list of potential sample questions that you can ask your interviewer. All right, so in a second, I want to share with you an exercise that's going to help you prepare for the day of the interview. But first, a quick dance break. You're welcome. Hope you're enjoying this video so far. If you like it, then like it. And if you hit subscribe, then you'll get more videos. And you can even send this to your grandmother. You know, she might need some interview tips because she needs a job. You thought about it? Your grandmother doesn't work a lot, does she? So, the first exercise is segueing to your message box. Now, what does this mean? It basically involves practicing the skill of connecting whatever the question is to those three to four things that you want to cover. And it's pretty easy to do. Below this video, you'll find a huge list of common questions to be asked. Just ask somebody, hey buddy, pick a stranger off the street and ask them, hey, would you help me prepare for this interview? Hand them the list of questions and then have them just lob questions at you. And practice just segueing to the three or four things you want to talk about. Quick example of this. So, let's say you started a robotics club at your school because there was no robotics club. And you could ask a question like, what's your favorite subject? Easy one, right? So, I really love physics because specific thing you love about physics. And, you know, one of the things that I've been able to apply this in robotics. So, I started a robotics club at school. And one of the cool things about that, you see, I just buried that, right? Or let's say you've got something like, you know, a question like, what's something you'd love to do? And you say, you know, I really love to draw because drawing is something that, I don't know, it just sort of calms me. It feels like I can sort of get into flow with it. You know, it's something like, weirdly, like robotics is a thing for me that does that. I started this robotics club. And you see how that one was like not as subtle. That's why you want to practice this, friends. I clearly need to practice this. So, practice segueing to your message box. Practice going from whatever the question is that you're asked to the things that you want to talk about. Don't do this so much that this is like you become like a machine and you only talk about these three or four things. That's not what I'm suggesting you do. I just want to make sure that you talk about the things that you want to talk about. So, that at the end of the interview, when they ask you something like, hey, is there anything you want to talk about? You can be like, oh, yeah. And here's this other thing that I didn't get a chance to talk about. Or so you won't leave the interview and feel like, yeah, I wish I'd actually talked about such and such thing. The second exercise I want you to try is called the so what game. And this is a great one for preparing for an interview. And it works very simply. Someone asks you a question. You answer it. And then you pause. And then you ask yourself so what in your mind and see where that takes you. And then you ask yourself so what. And then see where that takes you. Quick example. Someone says to me, so what's your favorite subject? And I might say like I was in high school. I love English because I feel like it's an opportunity to to figure out through my writing what I actually think about things. Now, I'm pausing and I'm asking myself so what. And I feel like I don't have a lot of opportunities for that. I don't have as many opportunities in that in, you know, in other subjects. Like I feel like for me, for math, for example, doesn't lead me to those new thoughts where I like discover something about myself. I know that's true for some people, but it's it's just not that way as much for me. So what. And one thing I really loved about my English class this year is that my teacher has given us the opportunity to start writing poems. And so I started writing some poetry. And it's pretty bad. It's about like roses and stuff. But I've actually found that like it really inspires me. And I stay up late and I write lots of poems. You saw what I did there. I sort of like connected and saw where it went. Now, some of you are really good at this and this is something you do naturally. But I want you to practice this because otherwise what ends up happening oftentimes is if a student gets asked a non-open-ended question like what is your favorite subject? And students say math. And then they end it there. And they're not so wetting themselves. I want you to practice so wetting yourselves so that you can lead yourselves on interesting paths and interesting ways to find interesting content for your interview. A way that that could manifest itself would be like, you know, tell me about your extracurricular involvement. And you could say something like, well, I've been involved in such and such for a couple years. And one of the great questions to ask yourself is like what have you learned through that? And one of the things I've learned is about, you know, team dynamics. And I feel like a lot of times, you know, when I'm in class I can get to know people in a certain way. But I feel like there's something about being out on the sports, you know, on the field when we're collaborating in that way. Like it actually really feels collaborative. And I feel like it pushes us physically in a way that bonds us in a way that doesn't really happen in the classroom. I'm making this up, right? But that kind of so what, just keep practicing that. Some quick tips about particular questions. So, if you're asked about the why this college question, try to avoid flattery. Like just being like, oh, I just love the school. It's just amazing, right? Try to avoid also talking about, like if you're asked why you like the school, the rankings, the weather, you know, typical school traditions. And you can find those by googling them. Pretty much anything that's in my why this college guide. Because why, that's what everybody else is talking about. Also, if you could ask that question, like what is your greatest weakness? Like a lot of times students can talk about their greatest strengths. When they ask that, you know, what is your greatest weakness? A lot of times students are like, you know, I just feel like, I just feel like I sometimes I just care too much, you know. Please don't say that because it's not really a weakness, right? Caring a lot, is that a weakness? Or like, you know, I just feel like I work too hard. You know, I just really push myself. I just really need to take it easy. Because that's obviously you're just kind of talking up yourself. It's kind of like some weird variation on a humble brag. So don't do that. But how do you actually answer this question? So linked below this video, you'll find something called the values exercise. Look at this and you'll see a huge list of potential strengths. Find what are the things that you feel really great about. And then take any of those and crank them up to 11. And go, okay, if I took any of these strengths and I push them too far, like let's say, for example, people. Like let's say you're really great with people. You've got a lot of friends. And you take that to its extreme. Could that turn into a weakness? Like for me, for example, sometimes I spend so much time around people that I don't give enough time for myself to just be by myself. And I feel like my weakness sometimes is like self-care. And that's like a real legit thing that I'm actually telling you about me. So ask yourself, if you take any of your strengths, swing the pendulum out and ask, okay, could this potentially be a weakness? That could be a good answer for this question. Another question students often get asked is tell me about your reading life. What books have you read recently? And if you haven't read any books recently, read something. Read something. This is like a weird thing to prepare. Yeah, go read a book. But yeah, read a book. Some books that I love. If you're into communication and stuff, read Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg. Two thumbs up. If you're somebody who really likes productivity, like me, I'd recommend Essentialism by Greg McKeon. Maybe the hardest question that you're going to be asked in your interview is tell me about yourself. It's not even a question, right? That might be the first question you get. If someone asks me, tell me about yourself. I mean, it's just like an underhanded lob. And it's just time for you to just choose from your message box. Which one are you ready for? It's just such a lob. Don't freak out with this question because sometimes students just freeze. What do you want to know? You've prepared three or four things that you know you want to talk about. So what happens if you get asked a question that you have no idea the answer to? Two thoughts on this. First of all, a really useful thing that you can do in this moment is to say to your interviewer, you know what? That's a really good question. Can you give me a second to think about it and just pause for time? You might think that this is going to be awkward. It's actually not. Give yourself permission to take a little mini time out and actually think about this and process. And if at the end of that, the second thing I want to say to you, you don't have an answer for that, you can say, you know what? I don't know. I don't know that I have a lot to say about that. Obviously, there's an opportunity in there to potentially segue to something, but you don't want to make it super awkward by being like, I don't know about that. But let me tell you about this robotics club. Don't do that. It's actually totally fine to just be like, you know what? I just think that the way that you handle that moment can really show your maturity. What should you wear to an interview? I don't want you to overthink this. Like, could you wear a t-shirt? Sure, but maybe just like a little bit nicer than a t-shirt. So, like, wear your nice shirt, okay? But don't overthink this too much. Oh, and quick one. Don't wear, if you're doing it in person, don't wear like strong cologne or perfume because sometimes interviewers are allergic. What should you take to a college interview? Should you take a resume? Sure, you can. Have it in your back pocket. Not like literally, don't like fold up your resume and like put it in your back pocket because that could be like kind of awkward. It could be kind of funny, but maybe awkward. But yeah, if you want to take your resume, fine. The reason why you might want to take it is that they can do a quick scan and get to know things about you, and then they can ask you about things on there. So, if you want to take one, great. What happens if you get a bad interviewer, which is to say someone who is either talking too much about themselves or doesn't ask you the kinds of questions that you want to be asked? If so, don't worry. Cue your message box. You've got three or four things you definitely want to cover there, and hopefully you've already practiced segueing to those items in your message box. If you're doing a virtual interview, which is probably more than likely, make sure, one, you've got it set up. You've got the right software. Number two, you've got your lighting right. So, it could just be like you sit in front of a window or you put on a lamp. Make sure you've got your computer plugged in. All those things that you're not going to want to have to think about during the interview. Another quick tip, if you're doing a phone interview, try standing up and walking around. Oftentimes, I find when I'm talking to people when I'm walking, I actually am like processing more. There's something about getting my body engaged that actually works pretty well. But don't do that for like a Zoom interview, because then it'd be like, they're asking you questions and you're like, yeah, and you're just like, uh-huh, no, I'm totally interested in what you're saying. All right, I know that was a ton of information and it was so long that I actually rolled up my sleeves halfway through. I don't know why I'm telling you that. Below this video, you'll find a ton more. You'll find a huge list of common interview questions. You'll find like actual guides that they use to prep interviewers when they're preparing. So, it's like you can see it from that side. You'll find a bunch more at collegeessayguy.com. If you've got any questions or comments, throw them in the chat box. If I didn't cover it, you probably weren't watching this video carefully enough. And I wish you all the best of luck on your interview. You got this. All right, much love. See you soon.