[Interviews for humanities PhD programs?]

I'm in linguistics and had always heard the process doesn't include interviews -- but I've had 3 interviews already.

One interview was purely about the money (with a UC school, apparently funding is a big issue for international applicants this year); the other two interviews were with my two worst fits, both basically wanted to know why I wanted to attend their school. I haven't heard back from either, but I'd actually be a bit surprised if they both accepted me.

All of my interviews were with potential advisors, so maybe it just depends on the faculty members you want to work with.

[UNDERGRAD-TO-GRAD QUESTIONS]

To address the first question, I'll be in my mid-20s when I will (hopefully) begin my PhD and don't think I'm old or "not normal" in any way. In fact, I don't really know what a "normal" grad student looks like. A lot of people change their course of study midway through undergrad, take years off to work or travel, get a MA, get married and have kids and whatnot before enrolling in a PhD program. I very much doubt it that everyone in any program will be 22 and will have had their hearts set on their subfield from the get go without change.

Regarding your PGA, I am sure that if you keep your grades up and do well in your upper division classes, you will not be kept out of grad school. GPA is by far not the most important factor in admissions. You can address the one F you had a while back in your SOP and show that you have been successful ever since.

[What are phone interviews like?]

I've had two phone interviews thus far. Both lasted about 25 minutes, one of them was a conference call with two profs (all interviewers were in my specific subfield).

The first question everyone asked: why do you want to go to our school? Then they wanted me to describe my thesis and current projects, though one only wanted the headlines and one asked for details and any new conclusions from the ongoing work. They all wanted to know what kind of work I'd be interested in continuing doing in the future, which of the 4 projects I've worked on I liked most, etc. After about 5-10 minutes of this, they described their program and current research done at the dept (I tried to sound really excited and to comment every time I thought I'd be interested in collaborating with someone). Finally they asked me if I had any questions -- I had prepared a bunch of questions and was very glad I asked each and every one of them, even ones that were discussed on the website (mostly about funding), since I always got more info than was posted online.

All in all it felt like a two-way interview with them trying to impress me as much as I was trying to impress them. I eventually left both interviews feeling better about my match with the departments than I had beforehand. I can now say that I was overly stressed about the whole thing when in reality the conversation flowed naturally with everyone accommodating my occasional stutters and "sorry, could you repeat that please"s.. heh.

[Anyone else regretting not applying to more schools?]

Actually, now that I'm done with my apps I think that at least one of the schools I applied to is NOT a good match to my interests and another is only a "maybe". It might have been better not to apply to those schools and spend more time refining my apps for the other schools - 6 in total.

[what is up with phone interviews?]

I can't add anything new but can commiserate. I've had one phone interview about two weeks ago and will have another one this Friday. I hear that interviews are not all that common in my field and I've been racking my brains trying to figure out if something is unclear in my SOP or some such -- why do they need to talk to me again and can't make a decision with the info they've got??

Ugh. Anyway, I'm keeping a positive attitude and assuming they wouldn't take the time to talk to me if they weren't at least *somewhat* interested.

[International vs. domestic student]

I recently had an interview with the DGS of my prospective dept at UCSC, who told me that they can only afford to admit *one foreign student* with funding, and basically wanted to know - if they accept me, would I attend. Apparently they are not able to offer admission to someone else if the person originally offered admission declines, and they would rather not have an all-American cohort, despite the costs.