When you go into an interview as part of your Graduate School Admissions process, you have one precious chance to make a good and lasting impression on alumni interviewers and admissions officers. Once that chance is gone, you can never get it back.
It isn’t necessarily obvious to current applicants what interviewers look for when they interview a prospect. Students have been focused on grades and tests for so long that they often forget that they’re dealing with human beings who like to be treated with respect and get a firm handshake. In order to help the current pool of applicants, I’m going outline four of the most important things that interviewers look for when they interview you.
1. Good Eye Contact
Forget your GREs and GPA for a minute. When you walk in the door and meet your interviewer for the first time, you need to greet them with good, strong eye contact. Eye contact indicates confidence and maturity in a prospective student, and is especially important when dealing with western interviewers.
If you look at your feet too much, or shift your eyes around all over the place when you meet with your interviewer, they will feel uncomfortable speaking with you. You want to give your interviewer every chance possible to feel comfortable and positive in your presence, so be sure to go in with excellent eye contact.
2. A Firm Hand Shake
One of the worst things in the world is a bad handshake. The “wet fish-handshake” as I like to call it, where you feel like you’re gripping an uncooked fish when you shake someone’s hand.
Just like eye contact, a strong handshake communicates confidence to the person interviewing you. Pump your hand 2 – 3 times, make sure your hand isn’t sweaty, and be firm but don’t crush your interviewers hand.
3. Interviewers Want to Feel Like You’ll Fit In
Interviewers need to feel like you would be a good fit for their community, and the best way to accomplish this is to get the interviewer talking about their community. Ask questions about the traditions and values of the school. By asking questions about the traditions and values of the school, you will give the interviewer a strong impression that you really want to understand what their community is all about. When they say something like “diversity is so important in our community” you are then free to echo their words and emphasize how important a value diversity is in your own personal life.
4. Sincerity
Interviewers have to meet with many potential candidates. So many candidates that their head starts to swim. The vast majority of students they interview are insincere. They don’t really want to be at the school they are interviewing for, and so the interviewer feels that their time is being wasted. Even if the school you’re interviewing for isn’t your top choice, you should always let your interviewer know that you are excited about the prospect of attending their school in the specific city in which it is located. Be prepared to talk about some of the advantages that the location has to offer, and about one of the values of the school which you genuinely respect.
If you can help an interviewer to see that you are a confident and mature young person by using good eye contact and good handshakes, and show them that you are genuinely interested in their school, they will walk away from an interview with you feeling confident you will fit in well in their community.
If you are in the process of applying for Graduate Schools or MBA Programs and would like help thinking about how to ace your interview, I’ll be offering a course called Interview Mastery which you can contact me, David, for details on at transcendadmissions@gmail.com.