Opinions and insight needed.

[fredericks]

I'm in the process of interviewing students that have applied to Brown (a post on the experience is forthcoming). What I'm asked to do is talk with the students in a semi-formal fashion and then share with Admissions my impressions on the candidate. My problem is that I'm sort of at a loss as to what in particular I should be sharing. I can tell when I can see someone I'm interviewing being comfortable at Brown, but that's a simple "yes, they're Brown material" or "no, they're not Brown material". I'm pretty sure Admissions wants a little more than that.

The format of my interviews is as follows:

• I ask the student to tell me a little about him/herself.
  
• I inquire more about interests/points mentioned during the first point.
  
• I ask a set of standard questions (the same for every interviewee) along the line of typical interview inquiries: i.e "What can you see yourself doing in 5 years?", "What do you like/dislike about HS?", "Tell me about a current global issue you have strong feelings towards." and, of course "why Brown?"
  
• I share a little about myself and my Brown experience. *ahem*
  
• I ask them if they have any questions.
  

Generally these things have run 30-45 minutes, so you can maybe understand why I feel uncomfortable about only being about to muster a paragraph or two of feedback. I need some opinions as to what I should be telling admission besides my hunches about student's "fit" at Brown.

To help things along, here's some feedback I wrote about a student. All identifying characteristics have been altered. You have no idea who I'm referring to ( /Jedi mind trick):

X came across as very science-focused. While stating that he engaged in many service-oriented activities and participated in fencing, when asked to speak on himself he continually referred to his (rather impressive) science research achievements. X shared with me the schools he applied to, top-notch research schools like MIT and Carnegie Mellon - his criteria was that they have a electrical engineering program. During our discussion he never conveyed to me why he might choose to attend Brown over any other school, even though I prompted him a few times with the question.

Personality-wise he's a well-spoken intelligent driven young man with much to offer in the classroom. He frequently referred to his hard-working nature, and the rigorousness of his study along with the awards he brought along with him backed up his claim. I do wonder if he truly does anything non-research related in his spare time, as he told me much of his free time is spent reading research literature. His questions for me about Brown were very limited.

I think X would be an asset to Brown, but he didn't quite show me that he was interested in anything besides the school's Ivy League status.

To be clear I'm pretty sure he was trying to play up his strength (research background) but it made him come off as utterly devoid of personality.

Is there any other areas I should address in my assessments in general? Some help would be really appreciated.

Comments

[theoban.livejournal.com]

erm, I'm crap at this sort of thing..but I would like to say you've referred to him in both the female and male form...just sayin'..

[fredericks.livejournal.com]

Shh! I fixed that. I had to hide identity and such.

[sibyline.livejournal.com]

one of mine:

With such a diverse and impressive applicant pool, I don’t think that X stands out in any particular way. She has above-average grades and SAT scores, has the typical long but haphazard list of extracurricular activities misguidedly designed to impress colleges (Yearbook, Environmental Club, Student Government, Art Society, etc.), and a personality that isn’t close to the caliber of at least three of the applicants that I’ve interviewed this year.

X wants to become a psychiatrist, but hasn’t really taken particularly strong steps toward achieving that goal. She claims that she wants to be a psychiatrist because she is a “people person,” and enjoyed the psychology sections of her biology classes, but she has no clear understanding of core issues in the cognitive sciences when questioned, or the particular areas of psychology that she is interested in. She raves about the Boston area as a primary reason for choosing to apply to Harvard, which left me rather bemused but unimpressed.

X describes herself as a “go-getter,” yet I have the clear impression that she doesn’t have the intellect to match this attitude. It seems clear that she has amassed her long list of activities, none of which she seems to have enormous passion for, in order to consider herself successful. This tendency indicates to me a kind of person who is much more focused on the sheer idea of success instead of the process of actually learning and benefiting from one’s activities.

In summary, there are no outstanding qualities that distinguish X, and the overall picture isn’t particularly strong either. She will be outclassed if she ends up attending Harvard; she doesn’t belong there.
--

pretty similar to yours except i think i tried to be as specific as possible, and i was a lot mroe of a bitch! they followed all my recommendations to the letter the year i did it, right down to deferrals. i don't know what it's like with brown, but with harvard it's hard to distinguish people i'm sure, so going to bat for or arguing against a student makes a big difference.

[fredericks.livejournal.com]

The specificity helps. Thanks for the example. I knew you'd come through for me. *grin*

Brown's rep is pretty eclectic, so I'm seeing more of a mixture of students. The kid whose assessment I posted left me in a similar state of mind as the excerpt you shared - smart but rather bland and narrowly-focused. Of course, in that case coming to a campus like Brown might actually *help* him florish and grow outside of the classroom...so I'm on the fence as to whether or not I should say that he's going to cut it or not.

Funny enough none of the kids I've spoken to so far have mentioned applying to another Ivy. I don't know if they're being truthful and Brown is a reach for them (doubtful) or they're keeping silent. Probably that last thing. But I'm definitely going to rave on the kids that cover all the bases.

[faedrake.livejournal.com]

This is way out of my league, so I can't come even close to directly asnwering your question... I can only ask, is there anyone in Admissions who could give you some additional direction or examples about the kind of feedback they are seeking?

[fredericks.livejournal.com]

I asked my contact about it. Thing is my last set of interviews are tomorrow afternoon, and I wanted to know how I should approach things so I could write up the impressions and have it over and done with come tomorrow evening. Dude's yet to write back to me, although I did get a bit of help from someone on my FL.

[snacktastic.livejournal.com]

You were very polite in your assessement of him. I have a good friend that also went to Brown and I have heard that people are hypercompetitive there in terms of needing all these academic acheivements, but yeah, he needed to show the human being. I just finished America's Next Top Model and for some reason, I am thinking, man, college entrance interviews are just like the judging panels on that show. But then again, I am a little single minded.

Anyways, I think that in retrospect, maybe it'd be good to be more direct with like saying that you would be more interested in knowing who he is or something like that. He's probably one of those do-gooders who needs to superachieve, but man, have you met people from MIT. It's like that plus a million.

[fredericks.livejournal.com]

Anyways, I think that in retrospect, maybe it'd be good to be more direct with like saying that you would be more interested in knowing who he is or something like that.
Oh, I did that. Numerous times. He kept going back to his science work. I didn't think it was possible for someone to be so single-minded, but yup. I just gave up after a bit because I had another interview scheduled.

But I'm bringing a bit more bitch firmness to the remaining interviews I write up. It helps the students if I'm honest and blunt in my assessment, perhaps. Meh.