Do some schools weigh interviews more than others?

[shmal96]

So I went on my first interview last week, and it was very 'interview light' and more involved with student/faculty presentations, learning about student/faculty research, networking/mingling events, learning about grad school life, and activities in the area to show off NYC.

The first day I had three faculty interviews for 30 minutes each that were pretty casual, and one 20 minute informal interview with a current grad student.

I'm going on another interview this weekend, there's one 'fun' dinner planned with current grad students, and on the interview day I have six interviews with admission committee members and professors for 45 minutes each.

It just seems like for my first interview, there wasn't much time to make an impression during the interviews and two of my three professors were pretty informal when talking to me, compared to the one i'm doing this weekend where there's more time allotted for discussion.

I guess what i'm asking is, do some interviews matter 'more' for some schools? Obviously they all matter, but is the school that's pushing 6 almost hour long interviews putting more weight on how your interviews go in determining your acceptance outcome?

While the other school who seemed to put more focus onto you having a good time, learning about the school, the type of research they do, and selling the grad school lifestyle, is putting less weight on the interview affecting your acceptance unless it went horribly wrong?

[Eigen]

A campus interview is a balance between the school courting you, and you courting the school- that's why there's a balance. 

The scale ranges entirely from schools that only do visits post-admittance (i.e., no weight on the interview), to some that weight it significantly.

That said, weight is probably the wrong word, as your interview performance isn't really weighted in with the rest of your application. Once you've made it to the interview, that's a separate criteria than your materials pre-interview. 

It's more a function of how many students the invite relative to how many they accept in terms of how important the interview is as a screening tool. On one end, a school plans to admit everyone they invite unless someone does something that really screws it up. On the other end, some schools interview 2-3 times as many people as they plan on accepting. 

I think with financial stressors, more schools fall on the former end than the latter- it's expensive to bring out a lot of people you're not planning on admitting.

[NeuroNYC]

Is it safe to assume the school you're referencing is Mount Sinai? I have my interview there tomorrow! (I still haven't received a final list of interviewers though....) But your thoughts on the days are interesting!

[shmal96]

41 minutes ago, Eigen said:

It's more a function of how many students the invite relative to how many they accept in terms of how important the interview is as a screening tool. On one end, a school plans to admit everyone they invite unless someone does something that really screws it up. On the other end, some schools interview 2-3 times as many people as they plan on accepting. 

I think with financial stressors, more schools fall on the former end than the latter- it's expensive to bring out a lot of people you're not planning on admitting.

This does make sense. It's all a range, but schools aren't typically up front about those numbers (though at this school the current students seemed to act like if we got interviews, we had a pretty solid chance of being offered acceptances, which was reassuring). 

I guess it also depends on the funds of the school, like school #1 for me paid for everything, multiple dinners, $400 travel reimbursements, etc while the other school I ended up having to pay because their $250 travel reimbursement didn't even cover my plane ticket. I'm not sure how much school #1 had for recruitment funds, but that makes me feel a little better that they wouldn't do all of that if I didn't have a good chance of being offered admissions (don't want to make it a sure thing though I can't get too comfy haha)

32 minutes ago, NeuroNYC said:

Is it safe to assume the school you're referencing is Mount Sinai? I have my interview there tomorrow! (I still haven't received a final list of interviewers though....) But your thoughts on the days are interesting!

You're right! Good luck! It's such a great school, everyone is so friendly and they really sell it well! For the interview though im sure it all depends on who you talk to, some might be more 'aggressive' than others. I still wore a suit for them all, but only felt nerves talking to one guy who was grilling me with questions about my research. One lady didn't even talk about her research because she just wanted to hear about me

[NeuroNYC]

9 minutes ago, shmal96 said:

You're right! Good luck! It's such a great school, everyone is so friendly and they really sell it well! For the interview though im sure it all depends on who you talk to, some might be more 'aggressive' than others. I still wore a suit for them all, but only felt nerves talking to one guy who was grilling me with questions about my research. One lady didn't even talk about her research because she just wanted to hear about me

Thank you! I'm glad to hear that everyone is so friendly there.

Good luck to you as well on your interview this weekend!

[strugglebus2k17]

18 hours ago, shmal96 said:

This does make sense. It's all a range, but schools aren't typically up front about those numbers (though at this school the current students seemed to act like if we got interviews, we had a pretty solid chance of being offered acceptances, which was reassuring). 

I guess it also depends on the funds of the school, like school #1 for me paid for everything, multiple dinners, $400 travel reimbursements, etc while the other school I ended up having to pay because their $250 travel reimbursement didn't even cover my plane ticket. I'm not sure how much school #1 had for recruitment funds, but that makes me feel a little better that they wouldn't do all of that if I didn't have a good chance of being offered admissions (don't want to make it a sure thing though I can't get too comfy haha)

You're right! Good luck! It's such a great school, everyone is so friendly and they really sell it well! For the interview though im sure it all depends on who you talk to, some might be more 'aggressive' than others. I still wore a suit for them all, but only felt nerves talking to one guy who was grilling me with questions about my research. One lady didn't even talk about her research because she just wanted to hear about me

I'll also be interviewing in New York soon. What did most interviewees wear? Some people on Grad Cafe say just slacks and a button down, others say wear a sports jacket, some say wear suits.

Did any of the questions catch you off guard? What made it feel 'aggressive'?  

Congrats on your Mt. Sinai interview, it's an excellent school!  

[shmal96]

On 1/18/2018 at 12:10 PM, strugglebus2k17 said:

I'll also be interviewing in New York soon. What did most interviewees wear? Some people on Grad Cafe say just slacks and a button down, others say wear a sports jacket, some say wear suits.

Did any of the questions catch you off guard? What made it feel 'aggressive'?  

Congrats on your Mt. Sinai interview, it's an excellent school!  

For the actual interview day, pretty much everyone either had a matching suit or a suit/sports jacket+dress pants. I had a suit and didn't feel overdressed at all. The other days is much more casual than people seem to realize. I'm sure it varies between schools, but for Mt. Sinai they said to just 'dress how you would come to lab' so I just had jeans, boots and a sweater. Most schools have one day that's more casual and involves a lot of walking so you can't really go wrong with a sweater and jeans/chinos. 

The 'aggressive' part was just the one interviewer talking really fast and asking questions about one of my research topics that I didn't know a lot of detailed information (only because my role in it was super small and wasn't my main project so I didn't have all the technical details so I fumbled a bit with that, but I switched the topic to my main research that I could explain well)

Pretty much the other questions were along the lines of 'Why a PhD, why this school in particular, do you have an idea of your future career goals based off of what you've done so far, do you have any questions about the program/area'

I really hope I can get accepted there, it's my top choice and the school was so nice, plus the students seemed genuinely happy and nice Judging by what the previous grad students said, there's a pretty good chance that if you got an interview that you can get an acceptance if you didn't completely mess up something, or if you gave off bad vibes (I'm still thinking cautiously about it though haha). They also had a pretty large number of matriculated students I thought (last year was around 50 I believe), but that's only students who accepted offers, so who knows how many offers they sent out to people who ended up declining (it also depends a bit on the specific program you apply to and if they're looking to recruit more people or not)