Q&A

Tell Us about Yourself

One-on-one interviews with applicants help hone the fit between prospective students and Rochester, says the College’s dean for admissions and financial aid. Interview by Jenny Leonard

Burdick

More than 11,000 students applied for admission to Rochester last winter, the second straight year that applications topped the 10,000 mark. To Jonathan Burdick, dean of admissions and financial aid in the College, that’s an indication that a growing number of high school students from around the country have Rochester on their minds as they look for a university that matches their interests and ambitions.

To help him and his staff decide who among those 11,000 prospective students would be a good fit for Rochester, Burdick has implemented a new effort to include one-on-one interviews with applicants as a way to judge potential Rochester students. Long part of the admissions process, interviews at many schools have become little more than formalities. But at Rochester, Burdick hopes to reenergize the practice in a way that involves students, parents, and alumni.

What’s an interview tell you that other applications materials don’t?
There’s a very intangible quality that you get from an interview. It’s difficult to capture the experience, but the most significant interview note is “Did I really enjoy talking with this person, did they express themselves in an excited way about the opportunities at Rochester, and did they seem like a good fit?” Those elements don’t communicate nearly as well in an essay. I’ve found in 20 years that students who are bright and think off the cuff don’t always conform to a testing environment, so you might not see that intelligence reflected in scores, even verbal scores, on standardized tests. But when you meet them you understand how quick they are; you have an insight that you would never have otherwise.

What role does the interview play?
At the University of Southern California where we did this for 15 years, I evaluated it and came to realize the interview probably had an effect at the margins for about 15 percent of the student body or, effectively, it was about 15 percent of the decision. So students who, based on grades, curriculum, and test scores, might not be right there, could often pull themselves up with an interview. Another important role is talking about merit scholarships and getting students to think about those.

I always tell students that if they have an opportunity to interview and if a school that’s one of their top three choices is offering it, they should do the interview. It’s to their advantage in a way that they ought to prioritize. Students will often decide to apply to six, eight, ten, maybe twelve schools, and they’ll spend quite a bit of time filling out applications, but they’ll not take the interview because they are committed to that writing process.

What’s an interview like?
If you visit our Web site, you’ll see that we take a very friendly, upbeat approach. When people ask, we stress that we’re not going to be asking calculus questions. We’re trying to get to know them better.

In part, you let the interviewer and interviewee decide what’s going to take place. The central tendency is for the interviewer to ask wide-open questions to see what students are prepared to say and what they want to say about themselves, and it sort of goes from there. We try to discourage interviewers from having a preset list of questions that they’re trying to get through. But I think a lot of interviewers want to make sure there’s a group of questions they ask everyone so there’s a basis for comparison.

We set 45 minutes for our interviews. Sometimes a half hour is adequate.

What are you looking for in a student?
Counselors are trying to assess whether there’s a fit for Rochester. Of course, there’s a lot of variety in the people who do well here, so we’re not trying to look for one specific type of person. When we train alumni, we tell them not to go in looking for a specific answer to questions. I don’t want them to go in saying “I’m looking for X,” and then comparing how the student measures up to that idea. You have to have more of a feel for it.

You’ve got to know Rochester pretty well and understand the variety of students who have succeeded here. And you’ve got to watch against the tendency for people to try and select people who remind them of themselves.

One thing that I do think is true of university environments in general that works well is a tolerance of other points of view. And it’s rare to find a student with a rigid, fixed perspective, but that’s always a red flag in my mind. We look for some way in which they express their appreciation for the diversity they will encounter here.

The other thing that’s specific to Rochester is we need people who have a lot of confidence and self-initiative. For the students who arrive, one of the first questions they’ll encounter is, What do you want to study and what kind of classes do you want to take? Some students will find their way based on a goal such as medical school, but many won’t. So you need the kind of students who can be excited about assembling their own schedules. We find that 50 percent of the students coming in say the Rochester Curriculum is appealing to them because it’s unique. So we look for student who will have an appreciation for the freedom offered here.

With 11,000 applications, you can’t interview everyone, can you?
The Class of 2008 was the first group that interviews had such a priority. We probably got close to 1,500 interviews, but I think if we go out with a fixed campaign to encourage interviews, I think we could easily double that.

What role can alumni play?
We had a wonderful team of people between the College advancement office and admissions to arrange for alumni to help. The alumni took to it like ducks to water. They really seemed to enjoy it. In some ways it seems we’ve lucked into a process that I had no way of knowing in advance would work so well, although with 20/20 hindsight it makes sense. We gathered alumni with admissions counselors in cities all across the northeast and saw anywhere from 50, 60, to even 100 applicants with big teams of interviewers.

I see two advantages to that: One is that alumni got to see each other. The other is that if students see a room full of people, they get a chance to interact with a lot of alumni.

Another good side effect was alumni and counselors were able to talk with parents in a waiting area which was a whole other type of encounter that makes for a really nice impression of Rochester. And that has a ripple effect beyond the student. If someone has a really positive interview experience on a Saturday in October and goes back home and talks to their friends about where they’re applying, people hear that and understand that this is a good place.

Are there other benefits?
In the end I think we’ll make better, more fair decisions about who we offer a chance to attend. It’s an effective and strategic thing to do—the more students we interview, the better idea we’ll have if they are really bonded to and excited about this place.

It’s also a really good encounter with a Rochester person or alum, and that kind of bonding and connection makes people like the place better. The applicants already like the school on paper. The interview adds a whole other pull into Rochester. It’s an invitation to the wedding. You give it to people you know will be celebrating with you.

That’s who we want to admit, students we know will be celebrating the fact that they can come to this place.