What do interviewers know about us?

[medical22]

Is it true that interviewers have only seen our personal statement and no other information about us until after the interview? I was surprised to hear this. I thought that the committee goes through everything, GPA, MCAT scores, extracurricular activities, secondaries, and then calls applicants for an interview. It's good and bad in a way, but I never thought taht they judge us solely on the personal statement.

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[doepug]

It varies widely from school to school.

At most schools, interviewers will have read your AMCAS and secondary application thoroughly. They will have very focused questions about what you wrote. In my experience, this is the most common format.

Other schools only release certain information (e.g. personal statement and essay responses), so to blind the interviewers to your statistics. I only encountered one school that did this.

Some schools have a "closed file" interview system, where all the interviewer will know is your name.

Good luck,
doepug

 

[nero]

Originally posted by doepug
It varies widely from school to school.


Some schools have a "closed file" interview system, where all the interviewer will know is your name.

Good luck,
doepug

yeup, University of South Florida does this, the interviewer knows your name and thats' it........they just bascically sit and talk with you...............

nero

 

[kathleeya]

ditto on doepug's comments...

if you check out the interview feedback section, you'll be able to see the open- or closed-file interview status of many of the schools.

 

[medical22]

Originally posted by nero


yeup, University of South Florida does this, the interviewer knows your name and thats' it........they just bascically sit and talk with you...............

nero

If that's the case, then who decides which applicants get called for an interview and what is that decision based on?

 

[gower]

Admissions Committee screeners, not the interviewers, make the decisions on who gets interviewed. The screeners see the whole file. Often, interviewers are not actually members of the Admission committee; they submit reports and recommendations to the decision makers.

 

[Mixmaster]

I know that at Rush you get two interviews, 1 person knows the numbers and has an Open file, and the other interviewer has a closed file (I believe this means they only get your statements and no statistics).

 

[mpp]

At University of Washington there is a panel interview. Two interviewers have seen your entire file and one has only seen your personal statement.

At Mayo, all interviews are open-file.

Often there is an initial screening for interview selection based on a few criteria: GPA/Science GPA; MCAT; state of residence

Many state schools (U of Washington is one) will interview ever state resident with scores above a certain threshold. They will also interview others with lower scores pending a further review of the file.