When I was nervously preparing for my MIT interview I loved reading this sub’s stories. So now that I’ve finished I’m here to share my own.
My interviewer: My area doesn’t attract a lot of people from MIT so the one EC we have has been interviewing for 40 years. (After graduating in 1966), in other words, the MIT he attended is very different from now.
The interview: It lasted 3 hours—not in the coveted “me and my interviewer clicked so well we couldn’t stop talking” way, but in the “this could’ve taken 1 hour without any information being lost” kind of way.
The packets: I sit down and 40 pages of printed MIT info is dropped on the table. For the first hour we go through maps of MIT, ...
When I was nervously preparing for my MIT interview I loved reading this sub’s stories. So now that I’ve finished I’m here to share my own.
My interviewer: My area doesn’t attract a lot of people from MIT so the one EC we have has been interviewing for 40 years. (After graduating in 1966), in other words, the MIT he attended is very different from now.
The interview: It lasted 3 hours—not in the coveted “me and my interviewer clicked so well we couldn’t stop talking” way, but in the “this could’ve taken 1 hour without any information being lost” kind of way.
The packets: I sit down and 40 pages of printed MIT info is dropped on the table. For the first hour we go through maps of MIT, majors offered, UROC openings, activities, and anything else you could find within a quick google search. This part was more of the walking tour info session than any stretch of interview, but eventually we moved on.
The interview in the interview: It’s hard to explain this part but he didn’t really ask any questions. The final thing we discussed in the packet section was MIT’s ice rink which he pointed out on the map, so I talked about how I enjoyed skating and dance and he just told me to “keep talking, the more you talk the more I can put in your write up.” I asked if there was something specific he wanted to know about me, and he told me to just keep talking, about anything related to myself. So I went through what I had assumed MIT would want to know, majors, activities, passions, etc. But still he never had follow up questions or even the classic “why MIT?” he simply said keep talking, so I did.
The last hour: Now, he had a confession, he had wanted to learn Mandarin for a few years now and getting in touch with me (a native speaker) inspired him to start. (He said he wants to be more polite at Chinese restaurants by speaking to employees in their native language.) So he whips out a mandarin dictionary and a piece of paper and asks me to show him how to pronounce a few classics. Please, thank you, etc. I know this seems like the type of thing that would boost an interview, but it really just felt like a plain expectation of his, not anything especially interesting on my part.
Conclusion: I spent a lot of time leading up to it reading stories and potential questions. However, no practice questions could’ve prepared me for “just keep talking” or “how do you pronounce this?”.
If I were already going to get into MIT my interview won’t change that, if I wasn’t, it won’t tip me over the edge. So just enjoy it. Overall it became a pleasant experience to crystallize what I know about myself.