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Campus Visits & Interviews

INTERVIEWS Campus Visits & Interviews Overview Planning your interviews Preparing for your interviews Interview manners and etiquette Interview Do's Interview Don'ts The most common interview mistakes Strategy for admissions interviews Opening questions - Admission interviews Opening-ended questions - Admissions interviews Final questions and impressions - Admissions interviews Additional possible questions - Admissions interviews Strategy and questions for Professor interviews Final impressions - Professor interviews

Opening Questions – Admissions Interviews

This is usually the FIRST part of the interview.  Keep up on current events or at least read the newspaper the day of the interview.  Discuss major stories with your parents so if the interviewer casually asks you about a major national story, you will likely know something about it.

Many interviewers will ask a basic question about current events; they don’t expect you to be an expert on the subject but how can you even appear somewhat knowledgeable if don’t know a single fact about the event?

Opening interview questions usually include various forms of the following questions:

Why do you want to come to this college?  You should explain how the college meets your academic and extracurricular needs.

What do you plan to major in and why?  You should show great interest and passion for your favorite subjects.  Have an idea about elective and foreign language courses you may be interested in taking in college.

What are your extracurricular activities?  Don’t just tell interviewers what you’ve accomplished, tell them what excites you about your activities and why you are passionate about them.

Tell me about yourself (concentrate on 3 or 4 things only).