Mentioning travel experiences

[rex-craft7]

Hello, I'm having my first graduate school interview in a few weeks. After I finished undergrad, an extra year for extra classes and working and etc, I left home and went on a solo backpacking trip for about 7 months around the world (actually I'm still traveling). I did not mention this in my essays or application when I applied. The thing is, I'm not quite sure how to bring this up in the interviews. There's obviously a gap of a few months so I will have to mention this either way. I personally found the experience to be life-changing, however, it has nothing directly to do with the program I'm applying to (biomedical animation/illustration). 

Should I be downplaying this experience since it wasn't mentioned before? How should I bring this up? Is there a way I can use it to strengthen my interview?

[TakeruK]

My program didn't have many admissions interviews (only one school did them) but during visits, prospective students were scheduled for many 30-minute meetings with various faculty members. I found that my actual formal admission interview was no different than these visit meetings! 

 

I found that most faculty will not really know your profile down to the smallest detail. So they might not even notice that gap. But I found that these interviews/meetings are mostly to get to know what kind of person you are. So they will probably ask you lots of questions about yourself and give you many opportunities to bring up your exciting travel experiences. It's not going to directly help you show that you will be a good graduate student, but it will allow you to tell them interesting things about yourself. At the very least, it will help the faculty remember you.

 

I think you did the right thing by not mentioning this experience in your application but the interviews/meetings are a great time to talk about this and other hobbies or interests that are important to you. If you're lucky, you might even run into someone with some of the same interests! Or maybe you might share some of the same travel experiences with the people you're talking to. Things like that don't always directly help whether or not you get admitted / get into a certain prof's group but having a common point or something interesting to talk about initially can change the tone of the interview/meeting positively and help you/the prof relax and have a fun time! You know an interview went well if you left thinking "wow, that was a fun talk!"

[SeriousSillyPutty]

Before my visit/interview day, the grad student advisor told me which faculty I would meet with, which allowed me to read their website to get a gist of whom I'd be talking with. It's always a good idea to scope that out, but in your case you could also keep an eye open for who's done talks overseas, who's from other countries, etc.

A friend and I have a running joke about "place dropping", which is the traveler's equivalent of "name dropping." In every day speech, you don't want to appear to be going out of your way to place drop. (Ex: "Boy this ice cream is yummy, but it doesn't compare to the gelato I had in that small village in northern Italy.") Interviews are such a contrived situation though that I think you can bend the rules a little bit, and at least feel free to bring up the travel if there is a logical, non-contrived way to do so.

I would also outline a mental list of how your travels will make you a better student, so that if it comes up you can make the connection. Some possibilities:

- Increased ability to work/interact with different personality types and different cultures; more open-minded to other ways of approaching things.

- Better perspective on how big or small a problem is. (Passport getting stolen: Big problem. Prof saying something discouraging: Not so much.)

- Stronger sense of your identity, beyond how it is defined by academic life.

Good luck!