A Tale of Two Interviews

This, as the title suggests, is a tale of two interviews: one disastrous, one quite good.  It's a bit unfair of me to say disastrous; after doing the requisite pre-interview research, I knew for a fact that I was not going to Reed College.  Their Physics and Religion departments leave a bit to be desired.  But even setting that aside, the interview was pretty bad.  But I'm getting ahead of myself...

Preparing for the Interview!
A vital part of any college admissions interview is preparation.  At the very least, you need to know the goal of the interview.  So far I've only done admissions interviews, so they've all been evaluative; the people I've talked to are trying to figure out if I'm the right fit for their respective colleges.  Interviews come in one other flavor: informative.  These are more for the student to figure out if they're the right fit for a given school on their own.  These interviews, from what I can tell, are usually administered by alumni.
But there's so much more to prep.  Firstly, know thyself.  Seriously.  I went through my life story and reminded myself how awesome I am.  Ostensibly, this is to prepare you to answer questions like "what are your academic/extracurricular passions?" and "how do you see them extending through your college experience?" but this step is also a nice ego boost, which - if you're an anxious wreck like I am - is really nice to have.
Secondly, know thy school.  Mostly, go back through the books and read up on the numbers.  You don't want to be asking about class size or about how many books are in the library.  That shows you're not engaged in the school and, quite frankly, makes you look a little silly.  Prepare some decent questions about the school.  Mine are:

• What is your study abroad culture like?
• Did you attend [insert college/university here]?  If so, what did you like most/least about your experience?
• If not, from an administrative perspective, what do you like most/least?
• What was the most controversial issue on campus this year?
• If school is urban: What is your relationship to the city you are located in/near?

They show preparation and interest while being useful.  Personally, I like to know the answer to the first and last questions already so I can pay attention to how the interviewer answers the question.  For example: with regard to the urban question, I know I want a school where the campus life is focused on campus.  If the interviewer stresses the proximity of the city too much, it's a warning sign for me.  But I'm a little crazy, so there's that...

The Interview!  Reed College
Reed was my warm up interview.  The representative of the college: Crocket Marr (I got his name wrong on my last post).  I managed to avoid calling him by name for the entire interview, so I think that was a note of success.  All in all, it was kind of a weird interview.  Of the 45 minutes I got to spend with him, 20 were spent talking about neutral hydrogen transfer and radio astronomy (both very interesting topics but not particularly relevant to the focus of the interview), another 15 were spent reading his senior honors thesis on Plato and Egyptology, and 10 were spent talking about Reed College.  I know I did not come away from the experience any more informed, and I'm pretty sure he didn't either.  Note to self made: try not to mention anything too interesting that I've done until later in the interview.  I'll call it a mitigated disaster and move along.

The Other Interview!  Swarthmore College
This one went a lot better.  Of the hour, Ruby and I did not get heinously off topic.  This was a plus.  We had a lovely conversation about religion, astronomy, stage tech, grammar, historical context for literature, fencing, and sororities.  All in all, very useful.  Swarthmore stays very true to it's Quaker roots, which is one of the things I love about the campus.  I always leave wanting to create world peace.  30 minutes on the New Jersey Turnpike usually cures me of that desire, but it's the thought that counts.  In any event, Swarthmore is incredibly inclusive.  This manifests itself in a particularly interesting way in their attitude toward their club fencing team and toward sororities.  Swarthmore's Fencing team is ridiculously good.  But they're not varsity. They're a club team, and they plan on staying that way (as far as I can tell from the interview).  The team benefits from very serious fencers, but novices can pick up a blade for the first time and join the team if they are so inclined because it's a club team.  Becoming a proper varsity team would require a degree of choosiness with regard to skill level, and that's just not the Quaker way.  Similarly, in the 1930s, Swarthmore abolished it's one sorority because that particular organization had a policy against admitting Jewish students.  The administration realized that didn't jive with the college's values, and sororities haven't had a presence on campus since then.  However, they're revisiting the issue now because there's a certain degree of curiosity in the student body.  There are two fraternities on campus and about 6% of guys participate; and the girls realized that, if they were inclined to join a greek organization, they had no outlet.  Because of this discussion on campus, the administration has decided to allow one sorority on campus starting next spring.  Clearly, the interview was informative.  All of that was completely new information for me (check here for my previous impressions of Swarthmore).  So total success.

I have interviews with Washington and Lee and The University of Chicago scheduled for September, so look forward to those posts.  I'm leaving for various foreign countries tomorrow and I will be without internet; so look forward to a whole mess of blogging the day I get back.

By Providence, I Find Myself in Providence

Continuing my saga of college visits, this weekend I found myself on the campus of Brown University.  Beyond that, I find myself lacking for words.  The thing is, and it pains me to say this, I didn't really like it.  Some of that may have something to do with the fact that I had the weirdest campus tour ever (more on that later), but I generally didn't get good vibes from the campus.  And it feels awful to say that because I really wanted to like the campus.  Brown has a really good Religious Studies program, and that is something that I am definitely interested in studying (my plan is a double major in RS and IR, and then go into international law if that makes any sense) so I was really hoping to like it. In any event, the campus itself was a little odd.  The students seemed all too focused; people didn't say "Hi!" to each other the way I've seen on other campuses.  It really gave the campus a cold, forbidding feel.  The architecture itself was odd too.  Most campus have one or two requisite modern monstrosities, but, generally speaking, they have a kind of look to which even new buildings conform in the general sense.  This is not so at Brown.  I wish I had pictures because all this would make so much more sense with them, but Brown's campus does not have a contiguous look and it lends a disconcerting sense of being lost to waking through the campus.  It's hard to tell where the campus begins and ends because it looks like a random collection of buildings.  I suppose it fits in with Providence the city, but it doesn't feel unified.

The campus tour matched this disconcerting sense of being lost too.  Our tour guide almost didn't seem to go to Brown.  Most tour guides will intersperse the fact based portion of their tour with personal anecdotes to make the tour seem interesting and to lend a sense of what it's actually like to attend their university.  Our guide did none of that.  Sure he threw in some interesting stories about the history of Brown, but I didn't here him tell one story about his personal experience attending his university.  He seemed apathetic and like he too was visiting the campus.  Additionally, he managed to go through the entire tour without mentioning athletics or student social life more than to acknowledge their mere existence.  Now I am by no means an athlete (in spring and fall I dance and in winter I am the captain of the Brunswick Girls Fencing team of which I am the only member), but I still like hearing about the existence of that kind of stuff.  I'm not going to join a team, but I plan on attending games to support my school.  And of course, there must have been other people on that tour who would be interested in playing sports.  Likewise, based on that tour, I have no idea what the social life of the average student is like.  I'm not talking about parties (although that would be good to know about), just basic social interactions.  I know I need a college where there is an active social scene on campus, i.e. the student body doesn't disperse into the city to entertain itself, otherwise I won't make friends.  And I'd like to make friends.  All of this is really tied into the fact that I don't think our tour guide used a single "I statement" in the entire tour, but I think the thing about the athletics and the social scene is especially weird.

All in all, I can't recommend Brown for myself.  Even setting aside the weird tour, it was objectively a little strange and just not for me.  But I have heard wonderful things about Brown from other people, so you really should go check it out for yourself.