Interview = Admission?

[threefourone]

Hello!

 

What does being invited to interview mean for admissions chances?

As an interviewee, are you only "halfway admitted", or are you basically in?

 

I've been invited to interview at a few of my top schools so far, but I'm being careful about getting my hopes up too soon.

Any comments or stories of personal experience would be greatly helpful. Thanks

 

 

 

[TakeruK]

It's hard to tell. In some cases, getting an interview means that you made a shortlist and they will be selecting their final candidates from the pool they interview from. It's hard to tell whether they are interviewing 10% more candidates than positions, 30% more, 50%, or even 100+% more. Since interviews are time consuming, it is probably a good sign that you made it one step further though.

 

In other cases (the only interview I've had), they interview everyone they plan to accept just as a "sanity check" to make sure the candidate is what they thought. In these cases, the "interview" can be very informal. In my interview, we basically had a conversation about their graduate program. The two interviewers spent the majority of their time telling me about their department, their research, their colleagues' research and the coursework I would have to do. They asked me a few very basic questions like what I am interested in and why did I apply to their program, so nothing tricky! The former is something you would ask upon meeting any new academic in your field, I think, interview or not and the latter is something we've all answered countless times in our applications! They spent most of the interview letting me ask questions. The total length was somewhere around 20-25 minutes and it was done via Skype.

[ion_exchanger]

It honestly depends on the school. All interviews mean that the school thinks your application is strong enough for you to be admitted. All schools are trying to impress you and show you reasons why you should choose their school. Some schools are just verifying that you are a good choice on paper. Other very competitive schools have only a number of spots to fill and are trying to pick the best applicants to offer admission, and may wait-list the others.

[threefourone]

Thanks! From what I've heard and read, results certainly do seem to vary from school to school. I suppose the best way to increase admissions chances while interviewing is to act natural, interested, and of course polite. Two of my top schools said they were impressed with the application, so I'm taking that as a good sign. But of course, until then all we can really do is wait and see.

[HopefullyNeuro]

Totally varies from school to school. One place I interviewed told us they took everyone who wasn't crazy, another took only half, the rest in between.