Online Resources:

To Climb Higher, Carmen Munson, Life and Career Coach, http://www.toclimbhigher.com/

News Articles:

College Interviews Fade Fast as Race for Ivies Heats Up, by Elizabeth Green, New York Sun, http://www.newyorksun.com/

“When preparing for interviews with top colleges, applicants often rely on typed-out talking points and new suits to make good impressions. An Upper East Side private school, Spence, even offers a senior seminar during which a teacher conducts mock interviews.

Such preparations are not quite worth the trouble, current and former admissions officers said. It would be a rare interview faux pas that could disqualify an applicant, such as wearing a bathing suit to the interview, saying the school is only a fallback option, displaying bigotry, or admitting to patricidal fantasies, the admissions officers said. Catastrophes aside, they said, an interview bears little or no say in the race for top-college acceptance.

“I don’t know, quite honestly, how much it is valued in the Ivy League,” a college consultant in Ithaca, N.Y., who has worked at a top admissions office, Lucia Tyler, said. “I don’t think so, for most. I don’t think it’s valued as much.”