The Tables Were Turned

This past weekend, I conducted alumni interviews for high school applicants to Northwestern. It was interesting to have the tables turned for the first time in several months. I signed up to volunteer with alumni interviews, because I'll admit that I loved my 4 years at Northwestern. Plus, I really think that I wouldn't be where I am now without it. So I wanted to give back to the school and to help recruit people that I would be proud to call fellow alums.

During my interviews, I tried to maintain a very relaxed environment. I spent a couple of minutes introducing myself and explaining my major and my career path since. Then I spent about 20 minutes asking them questions and the last 10 minutes for them to ask me questions. In terms of the questions that I asked, I tried to keep them fairly simple. I was more interested in seeing how comfortable they were in talking about their activities, interests, and passions. I mainly asked about why they were applying to certain majors, what subjects they enjoyed in school, what kinds of activities they participated in, and why they wanted to attend Northwestern. The only semi-challenging question I asked was how their friends would describe them in three words.

Sadly, the most challenging question for all of them was why they wanted to attend Northwestern. I would have thought that all of them would have given me responses pertaining to the top-ranked academics or specific extracurricular activities. Sadly, most of them knew nothing about the majors they were applying to. In addition, a majority of them said that they were applying to NU because their parents were alums.

Out of the 9 interviews that I conducted, there were only 4 people that I would have admitted and been proud to call them fellow alums. The other 5 were just mediocre. In fact, there was one kid that I wanted to deny right there on the spot. He told me that he enjoyed doing "stuff" and said that he didn't think he was going to get in. Plus, he had no questions for me at all about student life or any of the academic programs. Another kid tried to convince me that chess was a team sport. And then there was another kid who told me that he did poorly on standardized tests, because the answers were tricky.

I found it disappointing that none of them bothered to even lie to me about why they wanted to come to Northwestern. As long as they sounded confident in their answer, then that would have been convincing enough for me. But being the person that I am, I didn't recommend denials to any of them. I merely just recommended that the interview was not very strong but that they should still be admitted if the rest of their application was strong. I guess that I didn't know the slightest thing about interviewing or what I really wanted to do with my life when I was 17 years old. Then again, I still don't really know what I'm doing with my life.