seeingeyeduck

Just had my Skype interview with Davis today and I'm hopeful. I hope I talked enough about my work itself, since a lot of it was research and the story of taking the photo. Here are the questions they gave me - I assume they sent them to everyone, though I could be wrong. You had to pick two: How did this piece change from your initial conceptualization to the finished piece? What aspects of this piece gave you moments of struggle and doubt? How did you deal with this? What do you particularly like about this piece? Tell us with some detail. What characteristics will you or did you carry forward to other pieces? How do you deal with failure? When it is clear something is not working? Is there any area on this piece you can point to that can help illustrate your response? Where in this piece is there an example of an unexpected but fortunate development in the work? If you had the chance to redo this piece what would you do differently? Did you do any outside research in preparation for this piece? There was only really time for you to talk up the work and then they asked me one more unrelated question. I thought that they were very reasonable questions. It didn't feel like they were trying to quiz you on the history of art. If you have some handle on your process and have thought about what your work means, I think they are straightforward to answer. I thought it went okay, though it's hard to tell without any body language cues. Skype is still a bit weird, with random glitchy sounds here and there, but they were very friendly. Nothing from Berkeley. Sigh. I realized there was a typo in the SOP - one of those that spellcheck doesn't catch cuz the typo is also a word. I corrected it for my Jan apps, but geez. Oh well! Now for "you will hear from us soon." Gaaaaaaaaaaah!

I don't know about previous years, but when I met with someone to talk about their program, they definitely mentioned it. I feel like they had some new blood come into the dept so maybe things changed? Most of the few schools I talked to mentioned interviews, so I'm just assuming they all do. It's not looking good for Berkeley. If I don't hear by the beginning of next week, I'm gonna start mentally letting go of the idea so as to not be stringing myself along for the next month...

Oh, and also I don't think I've seen this question asked, so I'll ask it. Is there any rhyme or reason to which faculty interview you? Do they usually pick faculty who are relevant to your medium? Or is it more the faculty who liked you in particular or who are especially skeptical and need convincing? I wondered because I looked up the faculty and their work was not in my medium. The professor who does specialize in my medium is not one of them, though I had met him before to talk about the program. I'm in the weird spot of really wanting to do something in school than what I have been doing, so I am excited to speak to people who are doing things that may be relevant to what I want to create in the future, but I am nervous about just sounding ignorant about those media. Prep time!!!!

Hi guys, I just registered and this is my first time applying. I only applied to three schools in the Bay Area. I don't know if anyone else is even applying there, but this afternoon I just heard from Davis to schedule a Skype/phone interview. It's with 3 faculty, they estimated 10min and mentioned that they'd like me to pick a piece and talk about it, as well as talk about what I'm working on now. The more I think about it, the more nervous I get! But I'm going to prep the heck out of every question on that list in the thread and hope for the best! I'm worried that it's such a short interview - hope I say the right things... honestly I have no idea how they narrow people down at the interview level. I hope I can even explain everything in 10 min! Their deadline was only 10 days ago, so that makes me worry about Berkeley, which has had my app for more than a month now. Has anyone heard from them?