Secret to Interview Success (Part I)

Spoiler Alert! This series of posts is the most important thing you should learn from reading this site. I'm going to give away the entire key to acing your interviews. Hang on--we're going to go into some detail, but master these tips and you'll be ahead of 90% of other applicants.

Each year, a top university will receive thousands of applicants. Harvard alone received more than 27,000 applications--more than the population of many small towns!

What's that mean for you if you want to get in? Easy--you need to somehow stand out from the pack. Nowhere is it more important to differentiate yourself than in your interview.

Every year I and interviewers like me get dozens of students, all of whom start to look identical after a while. Everyone's a good student. Everyone's involved with a couple of different extracurricular activities or sports. Everyone's (typically) exceedingly polite.

How do you stand out and impress your interviewer?

It starts with knowing what makes you unique. You really are different than the other thousands of applicants--you have different strengths, different experiences, different perspectives--all of which make you better qualified to be admitted than the next applicant.

The key is identifying what sets you apart and then conveying that in your interview (more on strategies to sell yourself in your interview in later posts). But the key starting point is knowing what makes you unique and attractive to school.

So, how do you figure out what sets you apart?

If you're a Nobel laureate, the answer is easy: you're a Nobel laureate. But you're just as unique--the only difference is that you're going to need to work harder to understand what sets you apart and to convey that.

The critical first step is giving yourself an honest appraisal. There are many ways to do this, but I think reviewing yourself in three categories is a good first step.

• First, look at yourself objectively, as you appear on paper. Maybe sit down with your resume/history and review yourself as a third-party observer would. What jumps out? Are you particularly strong at specific subjects, or are you a generalist? Have you won awards in a specific field or area? Are you deeply committed to one or two activities, or are you someone who dabbles in everything? Are you a student who works within existing organizations--running for class president, or editing your newspaper--or are you someone who works outside the system (starting up a new club, or launching your own publication)?
• Second, look beyond your resume. What really matters to you? What type of personality are you? Do you have core beliefs--religious, or otherwise--that take a central role in your life? What type of person do your friends think you are, and how would they describe you?
• Finally, look at yourself as someone on a path. Where do you want to be after you graduate from college? Where do you see yourself heading? Have your experiences so far put you on some type of track toward that goal?

Don't limit yourself to your own perspective either--ask friends and family. If they were to categorize you, how would they group you? What do they think matters to you? What about your background, personality, or personal story do they think is most compelling?

Make sure you write this down. Then give it a couple of days, come back, and reassess. Maybe your list, compiled from your perspective and that of your friends and family, looks something like:

• best at English classes
• inquisitive and curious
• loves writing, always written as a hobby and enjoys reading
• most active in the school newspaper
• accomplished flautist
• have worked with middle-school students for four years after school
  

Suddenly, a picture starts to emerge--potentially that of an aspiring journalist, someone who's curiosity leads her to want to get to the bottom of things and whose strength is in writing about them? Or maybe the thread that underlies these is a desire for creativity and self expression?

Your goal is to pare yourself down to the critical, key factors about yourself. Then, to try to understand how these pieces fit together. If you can tie the salient facts about you together into a simple story, suddenly the whole is worth more than the sum of its parts!

Suddenly also, you're now a coherent picture that you can paint for your interviewer when you meet. You're no longer just a series of random interests, classes and activities (like everyone else), you're a package that your interviewer can latch onto and appreciate. Also, having an understanding of how your profile fits together will give you context and structure when approaching your interview (more on that later)

And you've just set yourself apart from the mass of applicants. ---CJ