For many students there is nothing more nerve-racking, stomach-churning, and downright intimidating than college interviews. The other components of college applications–application forms, essays, transcripts, and recommendation letters–are evaluated in the private offices of admissions officers. However, college interviews put you face to face with an actual person.
Many colleges require interviews with an admissions officer or alumnus. They use interviews as a way to get to know you beyond the dry facts of your application and to let you ask questions about the school.
The Most Commonly Asked Questions
The secret to doing well on interviews is to practice. Do a mock interview with your parents or teachers. This may sound strange, but once you hear how much better you answer the same question the second time around you will understand.
To give you an idea of what kind of questions you will be asked we have compiled a list of the most commonly asked interview questions. Try to develop answers to these questions for yourself and use them in your mock interviews.
- Why do you want to attend X university?
- What is your strongest/weakest point?
- What have you done to prepare for college?
- What has been your greatest experience in high school?
- What do you want to do in the future?
- Tell me about yourself. (You should focus on about three things.)
- Tell me about your interests.
- Tell me about your involvement in extracurricular activities.
- Tell me about your family.
- What do you think about (insert a current event of the past week)?
- What is your favorite book? Who is your favorite author?
- Which of your accomplishments are you the most proud of?
- If you could meet any important figure in the past or present, who would it be and what would you talk about?
- If you could be any animal what would you be? Why?
Practicing answers to these questions will give you a huge advantage during the actual interview. Plus, think about how much less nerve-racking your interview will be now that you already have the answers to the questions.
Why Blowing It Is Not Blowing It
If after your interview, you feel that you did not do as well as you wanted to, you are not the only one. Everyone has doubts after their interviews, especially the first one, and regrets not having asked a particular question or made such and such an insightful comment. All of this is apparent only after the interview is over. (Of course!)
As you replay the interview in your head, all kinds of clever responses that you could have made will come to mind, and your few mistakes and stumbles will appear glaringly large. This is perfectly normal. Fortunately, unlike you, your interviewers were not placing your every gesture and word under a microscope. While you may remember that you accidentally ended a sentence with a preposition, your interviewers will not.
Interviewers are looking not for the details but for an overall impression of you. If you did your mock interviews, appeared relaxed and confident in answering their questions, and engaged in two-way conversation, you will have made a good impression. But since nothing will keep you from thinking about what you should have done, take advantage of this, and try to remember some of your better ideas. You may have an opportunity to use them in your next interview.
1. Max Out Your Experience.
While you’re still in school, find time to fill any experience voids in your resume so that by the time you begin your job-search, you’ll be an unbeatable prospect to employers. If you have not yet worked in your field, now is the time to secure an internship — whether during one of the terms or during your holiday break (or even during your spring break). Internships are your strongest experience, but certainly not your only experience.
If you’re like most college students, you probably belong to a few student organizations. As a senior, you’re typically expected to help lead — and employers want to see that leadership ability, so grab a leadership position in at least one organization.
Of course, many other types of experiences can benefit you — some of which few students ever list on their resumes, such as work-study, part-time jobs, volunteer work, team sports, and class projects.
2. Use Your Career Services Office.
As a college senior, you should be well acquainted with the multitude of services offered by your school’s career center. No? Sadly, you’re not alone. But it’s not too late to learn of all their services — and to take advantage of as many of them as you can.
Some typical services you can find in your school’s career center include resume-writing assistance, internship and job leads, career and job-related workshops, resume posting on the school’s job site, mock interviewing and other interview tools, employer information sessions, on-campus interviews and career fairs, and networking connections (including one of the best networking sources: alumni).
In fact, most of the folks who work in these offices will do everything they can to help you prepare for the job market.
3. Develop a Job-Search Plan.
Maybe in a good economy you can get away with just winging it and seeing what happens come graduation, but in a bad economy one of your best tools in landing at least one great job offer is developing a job-search plan. This month-by-month plan maps out the rest of your senior year, providing a broad strategy and timetable for perfecting and implementing your job-search. Your job-search plan — which you should develop and implement as soon as possible — includes all the sources of job leads you intend to use, including informational interviews, your network of contacts, career services office, college professors, job fairs, job boards, and cold-calling. It also includes all the activities you need to accomplish before starting your job-search, such as polishing your resume and prepping for job interviews.
Start your job-search plan with the basics of what you seek — the type(s) of job, the nature of employer (corporate culture), and the geographic location of where you want to live. If you’re not really sure of any of these things, then start your plan here — because these basics are the foundation for success. But your job-search plan will also include all three elements listed above for new grads, including finding job leads, polishing your personal career brand, and following up everything.
Learn more about developing your job-search plan in this article: For Job-Hunting Success, Develop a Comprehensive Job-Search Plan.
Final Thoughts
Some of our students and former students jokingly refer to Quintessential Careers as a black hole because of the depth of information we have on these subjects — and it’s true… you can go as deeply as you want on all the topics discussed in this article because of the site’s goal to provide you with all the tools to empower your first real job-search.
So, with that depth in mind, here are a few more key resources for recent college grads and college seniors.
