We always recommend taking advantage of an on-campus or alumni interview when possible.

Brown: Alumni interviews recommended, but not required. Once your application is received, alumni in your area will contact you. If you do want an interview, then you’ll set up the time and place at that point. This applies to international applicants where possible too. No on-campus interviews.

CalTech: No interviews.

Columbia University: Interviews are not required. Between October and February, a member of Columbia’s Alumni Representative Committee will contact you if an interview is available in the area where your high school is located. To better your chances of getting an interview, turn in your Application for Admission I of your Columbia app as early as possible. The Alumni Representative Committee is totally separate from the Office of Undergraduate Admissions, so don’t contact the admissions people if you have interview questions or issues. Note above, if you are a legacy you can arrange an on-campus interview. Columbia does not count all graduate schools into the legacy pool. Please note: applicants are considered to be “legacies” of Columbia only if they are the children of Columbia College or the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science graduates.

Cornell: Cornell can get sort of confusing because you’re applying to a particular college. So, for the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, no interview is required, but they do recommend visiting. For the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning, for architecture applicants an interview is required, on- or off-campus. For art students, an interview is recommended. For details on setting up interviews for this college, visit www.aap.cornell.edu; keep in mind that the deadline for interviews for early decision applicants is November 10 and for regular decision is January 31. For the College of Hotel Administration, an interview is required, on- or off-campus. Visit www.hotelschool.cornell.edu for more interview information and keep in mind that the early decision deadline is November 15 and the regular decision deadline is February 15. For College of Arts and Sciences, College of Engineering, College of Human Ecology, and the College of Industrial and Labor Relations, no interviews required.

Dartmouth: Dartmouth got rid of on-campus interviews in 2007 so they now have only the alumni interview. The alumni interview is done for early decision applicants between October and mid-November and for regular applicants from December to mid-February for freshman applicants only in the area where the applicant lives based on if there’s an alumnus in the area. The alumni will contact you. Don’t worry if you do not hear from someone, it might just be that there is no one in your area.

Duke: Interviews are optional. To be eligible for an interview with a Duke alumnus, submit the Student Supplement (Form A) by October 20 for early decision applicants and December 10 for regular applicants. Early Decision applicants are first priority for interviews. Regular applicants will be contacted at the beginning of February, but if you submit the form by the deadline and are still not contacted by November 10 for early decision or February 1 for regular decision, send an interview request form online. The whole interview process is done by mid-February. If you don’t do an interview, you can submit an additional letter of recommendation.

Georgetown: Interviews with an alumnus are required, unless it’s geographically not possible. When your application is received, the Admissions Office will send you the contact information for the alumni interviewer in your area, and you make the arrangements with them from there.

Harvard: When and where possible an alumni interview will be set up. The alumni interviewer will contact you via phone, email, or letter. International applicants should initiate contact with an interviewer; you’ll need the information that’s found in the International Interviewer booklet.

MIT: Interview is not required, but strongly recommended. If an interview can be offered to you, the name and contact information for your Educational Counselor who conducts the interview will be in your MyMIT account. Contact them early in the application process; for early action, October 20 is the last day to contact your Educational Counselor to set up the interview, November 1 is the last day to have an interview, and for regular applicants, December 1 is last day to schedule an interview, and December 15 is the last day to have it.

Northwestern: Interviews, which are conducted by alumni, are optional. You’ll get more information on alumni interviews after you’ve applied.

NYU: No interviews offered.

Princeton: You’re contacted by an alumni interviewer once you’ve submitted your application. Interviews are not required, but they recommend that you accept the invitation to do an interview if you get one. No on-campus interviews.

Rice University: Interviews are recommended, but not required. There are two types, offered to high school seniors or rising seniors: the on-campus interview with a Rice Senior Interviewer offered only until December 9, or the off-campus interview with an alumnus. After they receive Part I of your application or your Common App, they’ll send you more information. It’s your responsibility to set up the interview. For early applicants, request an interview by October 15, complete it by November 1. For interim applicants, request by November 15 and complete by December 11. For regular applicants, request by December 18 and complete by January 22.

Stanford: No interviews.

University of California: No interviews for any of the UC campuses.

University of Pennsylvania: Interviews are optional. No on-campus interviews unless you are a child or grandchild of an alumnus; contact the Alumni Council for an interview appointment. For everyone else, interviews are offered where there are Secondary School Committees, who will contact you once you’ve submitted your Penn application. For early decision, interviews are done between November 1 and December 1. For regular applicants, interviews are during January and February.

Washington University in Saint Louis: Interviews are encouraged, but not required. There are two types: the on-campus interview or the alumni interview. You can only do one type. When you visit WashU, you can request that an interview be part of your visit, or after you submit your application (or at least your Pre-Application Data Sheet), if there’s an alumni in your area, you can schedule an alumni interview. On-campus interviews end in early March for high school seniors; alumni interviews are between September 1 and January 15.

Yale: Interviews are not required, but if you are contacted by an alumnus, you are strongly encouraged to accept. A member of the Alumni Schools Committee will contact you if they can offer you an interview after you submit your Yale application.

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Maria Laskaris, the director of admissions states, “I think it’s important that we build a community here that includes a strong cross-section of international students to bring the world to Dartmouth. The perspective international students have in the classroom and in the dorms and the extracurricular activities, I think, enriches the experience for everybody.”

Given Dartmouth’s numerous off campus study programs and international outlook, increasing the number of international students makes sense, but where do you draw the line? Sure, many would argue that international students give a lot of bang for the buck on real diversity and I would agree. But for every international student who comes to Dartmouth, the admissions odds go down for American students and with the current admissions scene, that can be discouraging to aspiring Dartmouth applicants.

For the class of 2011, international students comprise a record 9 percent of the class. Most Ivies cap the number of international students at 7-15%, no more and the odds for international applicants are generally lower than the odds for American students given how many students apply from so many different foreign countries. What percentage of international students is ideal? Hard to say given so many other priorities. Is it fair that international students compose only a tenth of the class while recruited athletes compose nearly 20% of the entering class? How much diversity do recruited athletes bring to campus versus a brilliant student from Norway? Or a minority student from Harlem? None of these are easy questions – what do you think?

You may find that schools that you’d barely considered before end up being top in the country in particular areas. How can you check? First, it’s often helpful to consult the graduate rankings in a publication like US News and World Report; although, keep in mind that sometimes graduate programs and faculty are separate from the undergraduate, and are sometimes shared. Once you have that list, comb the web sites, course guides and published information from colleges to see if they are strong in your area(s) of interest. Finally, call the school or visit and speak to professors, visit the library, check out the holdings — in short, make an informed decision about where you are applying and why.

Also, bear in mind that if you state a reason for applying to a school, it should be an academic reason.  Unless a particular school has an extracurricular program that is truly unique (and, ideally, ties in to an academic interest), the school is going to care far more about what you want to study than about the backpacking trips you want to lead and the underprivileged children you want to tutor.  Those are all great things, but clubs, community service programs, and intramural sports are available at almost every college these days.

Why are schools getting rid of interviews? When Michele was working at Dartmouth, every staff member plus a hired staff of senior interviewers did 4-5 interviews per day all summer. However, only a small percentage of the students interviewed ended up applying. So why spend 90% of your time over summer doing interviews when so few become applicants? Students were in the habit of visiting 10-12 schools, scheduling interviews, and then deciding on one school to apply to early. Therefore, it makes more sense for the schools to wait until a student actually applies before doing an actual interview, hence the value of the alumni interview (which are only assigned once the student actually mails in an application).

The only downside to alumni interviews is that not all applicants are offered one as it totally depends upon whether there is an active alum near where the student lives. Also, alumni are not really trained (at least not in most cases) as interviewers, so these interviews can be all over the map in terms of what they ask and how they write up the results.

So the on-campus interview is becoming obsolete at many top schools while the alumni interviews, a better use of time, are still going strong.