Yair Gritzman Week 9 - My College Interview Experience

 Yair Gritzman Week 9 - My College Interview Experience

I just concluded one of the most nerve racking 30 minutes of my life: my first college interview. When the interviewer asked his first question: “Tell me about yourself”, I think my heart stopped beating for a second. I responded with what felt like me repeating the same sentence 5 times over. Looking back, it would have made much more sense for me to say “I’m Jewish, I play tennis, I quit piano, and now I code instead.” At least that would have given my interviewer some sort of understanding about me.

The next question was even harder: “What attracts you to our school?”. The interview “experts” say not to talk about factors such as reputation, location, and weather, but in reality that is all that matters to me. I followed the advice, and shared my rehearsed response about how I want to study computer science and some random and specific program in applied mathematics, and I can only get those offerings at this specific school. In reality, almost every word I said in that answer was a lie -- all I care about is the school's reputation, duh.

I thought that most of the interview would be responding to questions about myself, but after 15 minutes he was all wrapped up and asked if I had any questions for him. This scared me because the interview was going to be 30 minutes long regardless, and we were headed to a point where we would have nothing to talk about. I had a few questions prepared to act like I was interested in learning about my interviewer, but nothing to last 15 minutes of conversation!

Those 15 minutes were fairly awkward at times as I tried to keep the conversation going for at least 30 minutes. Anyways, it was also really nice to hear what my interviewer had to say about the school, regardless of the fact that most of my questions were scripted. 

Overall, I think that college interviews are an excellent experience. While the conversation is frightening for the first 5 minutes, the last 25 minutes are somewhat enjoyable. My interviewer was really nice and laid back, which eased my nervousness as well. If anyone has the opportunity to interview for a college, I would 10/10 recommend it. There was valuable information to learn from my interviewer’s firsthand experience, and it hardly affects the application result in the end.

Have you had any college or job interviews? If so, how was your experience? Are you afraid of interviews? Why or why not? Do you have any tips for handling interviews?