College Interview Research, Answers and Applications Part - II

Tips and advice for college interview research

Promoting yourself – think about a few strong points you got, and that you want the interviewer to remember about you, no need to mention these in every answer, but three or four times (with reference – “as I already told you, I think I am very good at managing people… that’s why I took the school paper publishing project”). If you have a problem identifying traits you want to promote – read your resume or application form again carefully and mark the points you think are worth focusing on. You can also try and add some humor to the interview, say something about the campus tour, and your impression of the college.

Application forms – take copies of them with you, remember what you told the college when you filled in the application, go over the questions you answered and remind yourself why you choose to answer this way, keep the same attitude of the application in the interview, that’s exactly what they want to see. While you collect many different application from a long national college search, you have to keep only the ones for the college interviewing you in your bag.

Non verbal communication – first thing, smile. Try and smile as much as you can, when its appropriate, absolutely in the first few minutes of the college interview when its all about first impressions, there has been wide research performed on the positive effects that smiling has, both to the interviewer and the applicant, so smile, its only going to do you good.  Another thing is body language, do not put your hands in your pockets, try and imitate the body position of the person you are talking with, do not move quickly or make long and too expressive movements, try and match your movements with the rhythm in which you speak (which should be slow).

Verbal communication – while talking in the interview it is remember a few basic, but important, things. Speak clearly and enunciate, pronounce the words and articulate as clearly as you can. Do not try and say words you are not sure how to pronounce and do not make arguments you can not support. Since you need to keep your answers short and neat, you should not have a problem wondering into uncharted territory, if you accidentally get into talking about a subject you know nothing about, try and change the topic quickly and get back to your own agenda. Turn cell phone off, pages and beepers any kind of beeping electronic things off.