Why do schools Love interviews?
Higher Education Institutions
I love to see Vericant Interviews and I would like students to send them as often as possible because they really help us in our evaluation process. Having an interview from Vericant is something that we look forward to because we're actually able to look at the student as they are communicating and having that personal touch to an application helps us in our decision making process.
An institution will say that things are optional, and they are. But optional usually means strongly recommended... I am not a Chinese speaker and so even though the interviews are conducted in English, having people who can communicate with the applicants when there are very serious questions that they may have trouble communicating, is very helpful for us.
We really love to get interviews from our students, to help us see consistency in English language and your ability to express yourself, just like you would here in a classroom at USC.
At Notre Dame we don’t offer on-campus interviews or alumni interviews so we really encourage students from mainland China to do a Vericant Interview. This allows you to show us your English skills...talk a little bit more about yourself and add a little dynamic part to your application.
A student can't always change the grades that they got in school a few years prior, or a test score... So I always say an interview, as well as the college application essay, those are opportunities where a student can start from scratch. And really prepare and express who they are in that moment. [The interview] is helpful for us to see what a student is really like as a person... It's an opportunity for us to see what the student is like now, not necessarily who they were two or three years ago.
Being able to see your personality and see how that comes out in the interview process is something that definitely helps us get to know you better and also picture you on our campus engaging with our students already here.
We really value our partnership with Vericant… [Vericant Interviews] provide a more detailed and well-rounded view of all of our applicants. At Northeastern we receive just over 64,000 applications per admission cycle. We just don’t have the bandwidth and the ability to interview every single student and it would be unfair to only interview a select number. So really, for us at Northeastern, the interview for international students is very much part of the application evaluation process.
Want to know more about what schools look for in the interview?
We spoke with Admissions Officers about why they love interviews, their tips on how to prepare, and what they look for in the interview.
I think every student should interview one way or another- whether via video or in person or over Skype. The cost can be a barrier for some but conveying your interest is important- we admit a higher ratio of those students who are willing to interview.
The application really comes to life for me when watching or doing an interview. You can't uncover much about a student's personality through an application.
Interviews give us another chance to get to know the student as a person. We read your applications. We read your activities, but really what do they mean to the students? When they have a chance to talk about those experiences and what they learned from those experiences, through the interview, that is a great way for us to get to know them as a real person.
The interview is one of the most telling factors of an applicant. It gives you the opportunity to share your story beyond what's on paper, and helps us understand your personal passions and foster holistic learning about other cultures and peoples. The interview also benefits you and helps you learn more about our community, especially if you don't have the chance to visit, and puts you in direct contact with the counselor with whom you're going to be working throughout the college decision making process.
Secondary Schools
[Interviews] really do [help] in terms of our assessing fit and getting to know you as an individual, whether those interviews are through Vericant or in person. That's one of the best parts of the process, is getting to watch those, or talk to you, and get to know you better.
[The Vericant interview] is really helpful for us, and I totally did not expect them to interview students in such a clever and unexpected way. Through the video interview, we can understand the applicant's English speaking ability more fully. I have to say, it's really a great idea. It's definitely a good thing for Chinese families and students, because now we can remember their names and faces out of thousands of applicants. The Vericant video interview makes students far away in China seem as lively and vivid like they were standing in front of us.
McCallie uses Vericant interviews throughout the application process. They serve as a way for us to identify interested students early in the process. The interviews often give a starting point for additional conversations with a student as we are able to learn so much about their interests and hobbies even in 10-12 minutes. Finally, the Vericant Interview is a data point for English language proficiency and trajectory over time. If a student sits for an interview in August or September, we are able to compare that to our own notes from December and January.
The Chinese students applying to Ashville School are a diverse and talented group. Sometimes, this group is difficult to make sense of and evaluate. Vericant Interview helped us solve this problem. For schools, our time and resources are very limited. Vericant helped us greatly improve the efficiency of our assessment of students applying from China. In a sense, this is a huge improvement for our school itself.
We learn a great deal from a student's application, from school reports and essays, and grades and scores on standardized testing. But often the single most important part of the application is the interview. Unlike some of the other aspects of the application, the interview is about what the student might become in the next three or four years at the school that they will attend. So we look for characteristics and personality qualities that we think will be a good match for our school.
As a school with a small international admissions team, Vericant provides an essential service in allowing us to effectively pre-screen a large candidate pool without having to dedicate significant resources to the process. We do not offer an ESL program at Virginia Episcopal School, so we require all candidates from China to submit a Vericant interview prior to moving forward with our application process. Vericant’s interview format and questioning style allow us to make an initial assessment of a student’s English competency to ensure that we are inviting those students who have a higher likelihood of success into our process. We also glean information about a candidate’s interests and hobbies, family, and past experiences from their Vericant interview that we will frequently reference in our formal one-on-one interviews. Without Vericant, our process would surely be much more labor-intensive, and our candidates’ admissions experience wouldn’t be as seamless as it is.