Just finishing a Skype interview for Geosciences, Princeton

[DEVGRU]

Since I'm in China, we chose to Skype online. The Professor who interviewed me did not grill me about my background, which I guess is either due to the complete profile included in the application materials, or because I did not major in geosciences for undergrad study.

 

Rather interestingly, he was mainly introducing me what he has been doing (for his PhD and Postdoc period), what he is currently working on and some rough ideas about future projects, along with some other information about the department. I can say the he'd been talking for 3/4 of the whole interview, leaving me some time to ask questions about whatever I'm interested in (so I did ask, for example, his understanding of the trend in this field and his prediction about "the most interesting / important scientific questions in the next 20 years").

 

Oh, another thing worth mentioning is that he would like to see if I can follow him (both scientifically and linguistically) by repetitively asking "Does this make sense to you?". So I recapitulated his ideas and tried to connect my own experience to that. I'm not sure if this is common for native students in America, or for students who have different undergrad major(s).

 

So I was just wondering if this interview, by and large, is normal and positive? Lots of thanks in advance!

 

 

Edited January 15, 2013 by DEVGRU

[Usmivka]

Like I said, they love to talk about themselves. Seems totally normal. And "does this make sense" is not meant to evaluate you, it is to make sure that he is communicating clearly and not glossing over anything important that might be obvious to him but not anyone else--it sounds like he's a young prof and maybe hasn't had a lot of chance to communicate with prospective students from the faculty side of things?

[DEVGRU]

Really appreciate that!

Yes he is a very very very young faculty member, who joined the dept. last year, and has only a postdoc and an undergrad in his lab so far.

Like I said, they love to talk about themselves. Seems totally normal. And "does this make sense" is not meant to evaluate you, it is to make sure that he is communicating clearly and not glossing over anything important that might be obvious to him but not anyone else--it sounds like he's a young prof and maybe hasn't had a lot of chance to communicate with prospective students from the faculty side of things?