Personalizing Your Admissions Interview
~QUOTE OF THE DAY:~"You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, 'I have lived through this ... I can take the next thing that comes along.' You must do the thing you think you cannot do."-Eleanor Roosevelt
An admissions interview is probably one of the most stress-elevating aspects of the doctoral application process, but students that personalize their interview will feel more confident about the task. Personalization on an interview is important because it demonstrates that the candidate is more than a specified score on a test like the GRE. More so, a student should focus on the interview as being an illustration of who they are as an individual. While the student should discuss their accomplishments, I recommend that students also consider personal facets of their lives that may be relevant to the topics that the interviewer will ask. The student will not mention topics like cheerleading in high school, favorite color, pets, and so forth. Instead, tying in one's hobbies to community service project could prove helpful (**think about the elements you choose to discuss carefully). Admissions committees want to know that students are not just reading 24hours a day without sufficient outside interests. With that in mind, admissions interviewers 'may' (not a guarantee) ask about your hobbies or some other generic topic in order to see if the student is truly passionate about something or if the student is doing community service or extracurricular activities to gain entrance into a program.
Ultimately, an admissions interview boils down to genuineness. Doctoral admissions committees find it refreshing to have a candidate that allocates their time to projects that the student is invested in personally. Ensure that you are a student of depth. A student of depth has accomplishments but they also have true passions and interests. This kind of student does not just join organizations, hobbies, and projects in order to gain recognition. If this type of student joins a research project on substance abuse prevention, for example, then they are doing so because they truly enjoy working in this area. In contrast, a student with minimal interests attempts to join all the right clubs in order to impress an admissions committee. If this student works on a project, they do not have a vested interest in the subject at hand. They are not concerned with the people involved in the project or outcome. Rather, such a student only joins an effort in order to put the experience on their CV. While ensuring that you have a well developed CV is encouraged, students should be careful not to go through the motions of getting accepted that they only perform community service and research to make a name for themselves. It all comes down to motive.
Motive is obvious at interviews. Even in fields like medicine, admissions committees are looking beyond just a wonderful test score and several dozen activities. I recall reading about a disgruntled student that complained about being overlooked for admission into medical school, while someone else was accepted with a lower score. The disgruntled student failed to realize that personal qualities are being factored into the admissions decisions now-a-days. Admissions committees want students who can think for themselves. Memorizing an interview response is not enough anymore. If a student does not feel they can succeed with their own ideas on the interview, then they should really consider why that is the case.
