The Complete List of Colleges That Require Interviews

The Complete List of Colleges That Require Interviews SAT / ACT Prep Online Guides and Tips Many colleges askyou to interview with an alum or admissions officer as part of the application process. This article has the full list of schools that require, recommend, or offer interviews, and it will give you some pointers onhow to figure out your college’s interview policy. To start off, let’s review the point of the college interview. Is your interviewer evaluating you, or is the meeting simply a chance for you to learn more about the school? Why Do Colleges GiveInterviews? Colleges hold interviews for a couple of different purposes. The most common perception is that interviews are meant to evaluate you. Your interviewer is sizing you up and will report back to the school with her two cents on whether or not you’d be a good fit. For the majority ofcollege interviews, this is mostly true. While a college interviewer doesn’t have a huge say in who gets in and who doesn’t, she does contribute to the decision by sharing herperception of your personality, strengths, weaknesses, and goals.Often the most selective schools use evaluative interviews, like Harvard (and most of the Ivy Leagues), Wesleyan, and Hamilton College. Most college interviewers aren't trying to put you on the spot, though. Rather, they use interviewsas a way to get to know you further, beyond the written component of your application. Rather thandrill you with questions, they often wantto engage you in conversation about your interests and passions. Interviewerswant to learn more about your goals and assist you in figuring out whether the college is the right place to achieve them.According to some colleges, the report from an interviewer almost alwayshelps your candidacy because it helps flesh you out as a multidimensional person. While most interviews are evaluative, some are merely offered to be informational. Informational interviews are offeredto help you learn more about the school and get all your questions answered bysomeone who attended. These interviews are meant to be for your benefit, and usually, interviewers don’t issue a report to any admissions committees. Some schools that offer purely informational interviews are Cornell, Vassar, and Colby. Colleges that consider interviews when they evaluate you typically require or strongly recommend the interview (for all intents and purposes, let’s just interpret â€Å"recommend† as â€Å"require†). Those that offer informational interviews often present them as optional. Flipped around, you can usually safely assume that a required interview is evaluative. Optional interviews are often more informational, with a few exceptions, like Tufts and Northwestern.If an interview’s optional, it’s still a good idea to set one up. Not only will you make a good contact and learn a lot, but you’ll be actively demonstrating your interest in the college! So to sum up, college interviews, like the Harvard interview, can be evaluative and consideredin admissions decisions, or informational, like the Cornell interview, and meant solely to teach you about the school. Evaluative interviews are also informationalin many ways;it’s definitely a good ideato prepare and ask questions and learn about the college. Regardless of what kind of interview the college offers, it will be your responsibility to set one up. How do you go about setting up your college interview? You might meet at a local coffee shop, where you can express your enthusiasm in cappuccino foam. How Do You Set Up an Interview? Most interviews are conducted by alumni of the college. These alumni live all over the country or internationally, so they’re able to meet with most students at their high schools or at a nearby coffee shopor library.When I interviewed, I met in a cafe, my local library, and two alums' houses - which, in retrospect, is kind ofstrange. Most colleges are clear that you should meet in a public place, not go to an interviewer'sprivate home. Colleges vary in their procedures when it comes to interviews. Some ask you to set one up after you’ve applied and they’ve begun to process your application. Others may ask you to indicate on your application whether or not you’d like to have an interview (these are the optional ones). More selective schools, typically those with required interviews, often want you to request an interview a few weeks earlier than your application deadline. MIT and Wellesley, for instance, set interview request deadlines in mid-October for students planning to apply early action and in mid-December for students applying regular decision. These deadlines are a couple of weeks earlier than your application deadline, so you’ll need to research the process at your prospective colleges early. If you have any interviews, you’ll have to keep track of the interview deadline, not just your overall application due date. Once you’ve made your request, the college will usually put you in touch with a local alum. Then you’ll set up a time and place that works for both of you. At this point, some readers may be sharinga very specific worry: what if there are no interviewers in myarea? If you don't have an interviewer close by, then the college simply tears up your application. KIDDING. If an interview's impossible, it won't negatively affect your chances in any way. What If You Don’t Have a Local Interviewer? Most students will have at least one interviewer in their area, at least for those schools that require interviews. Alumni networks are often wide-ranging. However, if you’re one of the few students that doesn’t have an alum in your area, many schools will allow you to have an online interview, typically over Skype or Gchat, or one on the phone. If this is the case, most schools share Brown’s view: â€Å"All interviews, whether in-person, at interviewing day, by phone or by Skype/G-Chat are considered equally by the Office of College Admission.† If an online or phone interviewdoesn’t work either for some reason, then don’t worry!Your inability to set up an interview won’t be held against you. Even if the interview’s required, schools aren’t going to punish you for where you live. Nor will it affect you negatively if there are simply too many applicants and not enough interviewers. Make every effort to meet interview request deadlines and/or set up an online meeting, but don’t worry if it’s just not possible. You can rest assured that it won’t detract from your application. Before getting into the full list of colleges’ interview policies, let’s first consider the rules at Ivy League colleges, all but one of which strongly recommend or require an interview. Ivy, the patron plant of perfect SAT scores. Interview Policies of Ivy League Schools If you’re planning to apply to Ivy League schools, then you know that their expectations are as rigorous as they come. Most require the maximum number of teacher recommendations and SAT Subject Tests, not to mention a high GPA, strong extracurricular background, and competitive test scores. Why wouldn’t they also require an evaluative interview as part of this intensive process? They would, and they do. For every school but Cornell, evaluative interviews are a required part of the application process.Admissions committeesaren’t too transparent about exactly how much interviews count toward the decision. An interviewcertainly shouldn’t make or break your application or even count all that significantly in the admissions decision, but when applying to such selective schools, every aspect counts. A great interview could give you a competitive edge over another applicant with similar credentials. The chart below shows the interview policies of the eight Ivy League colleges. As mentioned above, you should pretty much consider â€Å"recommended† to mean the same as â€Å"required.† Click on a school’s name if you’d like to read its official statement on college interviews. College Interview Policy Interview Purpose Brown Required Evaluative Columbia Required Evaluative Cornell* Required for Architecture program and the School of Hotel Administration, recommended for the Art program Informational Dartmouth Recommended Evaluative Harvard Required Evaluative Princeton Recommended Evaluative University of Pennsylvania Required Evaluative Yale Recommended Evaluative *Cornell is the only Ivy League school that doesn’t schedule interviews for a majority of candidates. Cornell makes sure to emphasize that its interviews are informational, rather than evaluative: "Once you apply to Cornell, an alumnus or alumna in your area may contact you to schedule a time to talk. While this optional, informal conversation helps the admission committee get to know you better, its main purpose is to give you an opportunity to ask any questions you may have about Cornell. This meeting does not serve as an admissions interview.† Since we’re already talking about the interview policies of Ivy League schools, let’s also take a closer look at other highly selective colleges that require interviews as part of their admissions processes. If you’re applying to any of the Ivies, you might also have one or more of the schools below on your college list. What Goldilocks wasto porridge, these schools are to their applicants. This mayhave made more sense in the old days of SAT analogies. Want to build the best possible college application? We can help. PrepScholar Admissions is the world's best admissions consulting service. We combine world-class admissions counselors with our data-driven, proprietary admissions strategies. We've overseen thousands of students get into their top choice schools, from state colleges to the Ivy League. We know what kinds of students colleges want to admit. We want to get you admitted to your dream schools. Learn more about PrepScholar Admissions to maximize your chance of getting in. Interview Policies of Highly Selective Colleges Some of the following schools require interviews, while others simply recommend them or offer them as an option. As mentioned above, it’s always a good idea to seize an opportunity to demonstrate your interest ina school. Especially with these highly selective schools that use holistic admissions processes, it’s always helpful to reveal more of who you are, what motivates you, and why you’re enthusiastic to attend. And remember how I said to read â€Å"recommended† as â€Å"required†? MIT hints at the same interpretation: â€Å"We don't just want to see how you look on paper: we're interested in the whole person†¦.Interviews are strongly recommended. In fact, last year, of eligible applicants, we admitted 10.8% of those who had an interview (or who had their interview waived) but only 1% of those who chose not to interview.† Loud and clear, MIT. Interviews matter. The schools with optional, informational interviews aren't so intense. While I’d still advise you to take advantage of the offer, it shouldn’t negatively impact your application if you don’t choose to schedule an interview with them. Check out the chart below for the interview policies of some selective colleges. As with the info above, you can click on the school’s name to go to its official site and learn more about how its interview process. College Interview Policy InterviewPurpose Bates College Recommended Evaluative Bowdoin College Recommended Evaluative Carnegie Mellon Recommended Evaluative Colby College Recommended Evaluative Colgate University Optional Informational Connecticut College Recommended Evaluative Duke Recommended Evaluative Emory Recommended Evaluative Georgetown University Required Evaluative Hamilton College Recommended Evaluative Haverford College Recommended Evaluative Johns Hopkins Optional Informational Middlebury College Recommended Evaluative MIT Strongly recommended Evaluative Northwestern Optional Evaluative Pomona Recommended Evaluative Rice Recommended Evaluative Stanford Optional Evaluative Swarthmore College Recommended Evaluative Trinity College Recommended Evaluative Tufts University Optional Evaluative Union College Recommended Evaluative University of Chicago Recommended Evaluative University of MichiganAnn Arbor Recommended for applicants to College of Engineering Evaluative Vanderbilt Optional Evaluative Vassar College Optional Informational Wake Forest University Recommended Evaluative Washington University in St. Louis Optional Wellesley Recommended Evaluative Wesleyan University Recommended Evaluative Many of the schools on the above list are highly selective, and many of them encourage applicants to interview so they gain a more complete sense of each student as a â€Å"whole person.† Other schools have different purposes for interviews, as you’ll seebelow. Gather round! We're heading tothe full list of colleges that require interviews. Full List of Colleges That RequireInterviews Like the schools above, most of the schools on this complete list use interviews to evaluate a candidate as part of their admissions process. While interviews help admissions committees get orknow a student better, they may also have more specific purposes. Some interviews are meant to help an applicant with academic and career planning. Many art, design, and performance schools on the list below hold interviews to review and discuss a portfolio. For instance,Moore College of Art and Design and Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design hold this kind of portfolio review interview. Religious institutions, likeBrigham Young University, Gordon College, and Yeshiva University, talk to a candidate about her religious beliefs and the kind of commitment she can make to their community. Others, like Bard College at Simon's Rock and Naropa University, are looking to get to know candidates better and gauge their overall fit with their very unique college communities. I’ve provided the full list below, along with the purpose of interviews for most of the schools that offer them. If you can fill in any of the blanks, let me know in the comments! College Interview Policy Interview Purpose American Academy of Art Required Evaluative Bard College at Simon's Rock Required Evaluative Berea College Required Evaluative Berklee College of Music Required Evaluative Bethesda University of California Required Evaluative Boricua College Required Evaluative Brigham Young University Required Ecclesiastical endorsement Brooks Institute Required Evaluative Cairn University Required Evaluative Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science Required Evaluative Cogswell Polytechnical College Required Evaluative College of the Ozarks Required Evaluative Colorado Technical University Required Evaluative Dallas Christian College Required Evaluative Divine Word College Required Evaluative Goddard College Required Evaluative Gordon College Required Evaluative Hamilton Technical College Required Evaluative Hebrew Theological College Required Evaluative Hellenic College Required Evaluative (hierarch's evaluation and priest's recommendation for seminarian applicants) Holy Apostles College and Seminary Required Evaluative Jones College Required Evaluative Juilliard School Required as part of audition callback process Kaplan University Required Evaluative Kendall College Required Evaluative LIM College Recommended Lipscomb University Optional Informational Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts Recommended Mary Baldwin College Recommended Marylhurst University Required Evaluative Mercy College Required for certain programs Evaluative Milwaukee Institute of Art Design Recommended Monroe College Required Evaluative Moore College of Art and Design Recommended Evaluative Mt. Sierra College Recommended Naropa University Required Evaluative Northwest College of Art and Design Required Informational Paier College of Art Required Evaluative Paul Quinn College Required Evaluative Point Park University Required for applicants to stage-management and technical theatre/design Evaluative Pontifical College Josephinum Required Evaluative Rocky Mountain College of Art Design Required Evaluative Sacred Heart Major Seminary Required Evaluative Santa Fe University of Art and Design Required Evaluative Shimer College Required Evaluative State University of New York Upstate Medical University Required Evaluative Stevens Institute of Technology Required for Accelerated Pre-Medicine applicants, optional for all other applicants Evaluative Sullivan University Required The King's College Recommended United States Air Force Academy Required Evaluative United States Naval Academy Required Evaluative University of North Carolina School of the Arts Required Evaluative University of Waterloo Required for School of Architecture Evaluative VanderCook College of Music Required Evaluative West Coast University Required Evaluative Western Governors University Required Evaluative Westwood College Required Evaluative Yeshiva University Required Evaluative Since there are thousands of colleges across the US and admissions policies are always changing, it’s important for you to be able to track down this kind of information on your own. If you have questions about a school that’s not on this list or want to learn more about a prospective college’s interview policies on your own, how can you go about finding this information? How can you bring your school's interview policy front and center? How to Research College Interview Policies If you click on the names of any of the colleges above, you’ll be brought to its official admissions page, specifically one with information about college interviews. By simply going to your colleges’ official site and locating the page with information on applying, you should be able to learn more details about each step of the process. If this information is not readily available, then you should contact the admissions office by email, a form on its website, or phone call (usually the fastest option during business hours). Ask the office about their policies around interviews - or any other questions you have. Make sure to investigate at least a month before your application deadlines - as you saw above, interview request deadlines can be weeks earlier than application deadlines. You may also search for other students’ experiences with interviews on discussion forums like College Confidential. Students may share questions they were asked and how they prepared, though keep in mind that every alum interviewer may be different. Some colleges that require interviews or offer them give helpful suggestions for questions you might be asked on their websites, and you can find other prompts online and practice what your responses. Once you know exactly when and how to set up your interview, spend some time preparing questions and answers. That way you can make the most of the conversation, connect with your interviewer, and demonstrate both your qualifications and enthusiasm for your college of choice. What’s Next? Apart from practicing your answers to common interview questions, you should prepare some thoughtful questions to ask your interviewer. But you don’t have to come up with them all on your own! This helpful guide contains some of the best questions to ask your college interviewer. In addition tothe interview, you have plenty of other steps to take when putting together your application.For a complete overview, check out our guide to the entire college application process, step by step. Are you a top student aiming to get into the Ivy League? This Harvard alum shares exactly what it takes to get accepted to Harvard and other Ivy League schools. Want to improve your SAT score by 160points or your ACT score by 4 points?We've written a guide for each test about the top 5 strategies you must be using to have a shot at improving your score. Download it for free now: