Chapter 10 (Part 1): Tackling Interview Questions About Your Background
Written by Kaashvi, Dartmouth College
Welcome back to The College Countdown! If this is your first time stopping by our blog, I am Kaashvi, your friendly neighborhood college admissions enthusiast and your guide through this series. Whether you’re a returning reader or a newcomer, I’m pumped to have you join us for this thrilling journey. After last week’s issue on preparing for college alumni interviews, we’re in a great place to kick things off with our next article and continue from where we left off last time. In today’s episode (which is the first installation in a three-parter), we are talking about questions that you’re likely to be asked in your college interview.
Once you’ve got your interview scheduled and marked on your calendar, the first thing you’ll probably do is go to Google and start browsing for common interview questions. During my admissions cycle, I had a total of five interviews—from Dartmouth, Georgetown, Yale, Columbia and Penn—and I did exactly that as well. But now that I’m on the other side of it all, I’ve realized that no two interviews are really the same.
My interview for Dartmouth was with an Indian guy in his mid-forties who worked as a managing director at a tech company. He started the interview by explaining the report he needed to fill out and all the things he wanted to cover. He had asked for my resume beforehand and so, a lot of his questions were based off of that. We talked a lot about my internship at an aquarium and he asked very specific questions, like how I managed living alone in a different city (I talked about my commute to and from the aquarium) and what my favorite part of the internship was (it was hearing my supervisor hum the theme song from the ‘Penguins of Madagascar’ movie every morning while she prepared ice treats for the penguins). He seemed more interested in knowing about how I felt than what I did.
My interview for Yale was completely different. My interviewer was a white woman in her late twenties, who had graduated only a couple years before and was now working at a law firm. Her questions were more about my interest in Yale than about me personally. She wanted to know how I saw myself fitting into the community at Yale. It felt like a question-and-answer interview rather than a conversation. Unlike my Dartmouth interview, this one was about the things I wanted to do next rather than what I had already done.
All this to say, you can’t really predict how your interview will go until you’re sitting across the table from your interviewer. The only way to feel prepared going in is by looking at questions that might come up and thinking about how you would answer them. In this piece, I am focusing on all the questions you might be asked about your background.
Question: Tell me about yourself.
This was the first thing I was asked for four of my five interviews. It is a deceptively simple question but also one that will set the stage for the rest of the conversation. Giving a short answer like this one, “Um, so my name’s Anthony and I am a high school senior at Oakwood
Prep,” doesn’t leave a lot of room to ask any follow up questions. Plus, your interviewer already has this basic information about you.
Instead, think of your answer as if it's meant to stand out in a room of thirty other students (because it is). Your interviewer is meeting a lot of applicants in a span of a couple months and after a point, all the meetings start to blur together. By not rehashing the same thing as everyone else and starting by saying something memorable, you can get and hold your interviewer’s attention right off the bat. One of my friends—who was doing the mandatory interview for the architecture program offered at Cornell—led off his interview with, “Hi, I’m Cameron and last year I built a mini Tudor-style treehouse in my backyard. It was a crazy project that combined my love for history and design and definitely tested my heat tolerance.”
This kind of an answer perfectly introduces you and one of your biggest accomplishments while naturally steering the conversation towards things you’re passionate about. That being said, you don’t want to make the mistake of jamming too much into this one answer. This isn’t the only question you’ll be asked. This is just a starting point to get a hint of your personality and get the ball rolling.
Question: What are you looking for in your college experience?
Avoid saying something generic that could apply to any university in the world such as, “I’m very excited to live on my own,” or “I cannot wait to join a fraternity.” These are both valid answers but they aren’t telling the interviewer anything about your specific interest in their university.
The way I handled this question is by first talking about my top three expectations for college life and then relating those to the university I was interviewing for. This is how it looked for my interview with Dartmouth:
“I’ve always wanted to attend a school with a tight-knit student body. With Dartmouth’s rural location, the school spirit doesn’t get lost to the vastness of a city. The school has century-old traditions like the Twilight Ceremony that build a sense of community—one that stays with its students long after graduating. I also want a combination of school and service from my college experience and that’ll be possible at Dartmouth because of how intertwined the school is with the Upper Valley. Lastly, I want my school to match my intellectual vitality. My analytic thinking is problem-based rather than being tool-based. By encouraging students to not limit their thinking to the tools available to them, Dartmouth mirrors my thought process.”
My three expectations for college life remained the same for every school on my list; the only thing that changed was how I hoped to fulfill them at each school.
Question: What class has been your favorite in the last four years of school?
The strict rule for questions like this is to not respond with a one-word answer. Start by mentioning the subject you love and then give a thoughtful reason for why you love it. Talk about how your interest developed in the subject. Maybe it was because of how a teacher taught the material or a school club you joined or a documentary you watched. You can even narrate an anecdote about a moment in class that has stayed with you. Here’s an example:
“In the beginning of freshman year, I was really intimidated by chemistry but over the last four years, it has definitely become my favorite. What I love most is how applicable chemistry is to everyday life. Ms. Johnson, our teacher, always gives practical demonstrations for all textbook concepts. Like one time, we synthesized aspirin in class and discussed its medical applications. Learning about something as common as aspirin made me understand how it interacts with our body. This hands-on teaching style has made chemistry a lot less intimidating for me so much so that Atkin’s book on physical chemistry has become my favorite read.”
Question: Which class have you found to be the most difficult?
Don’t say something like, “I hate history because I got a C in it,” or “English, because my teacher is boring”. This feels like a shallow answer. Pick a subject that you actually enjoy but still find demanding in some capacity. Tell your interviewer how you changed your study habits to better manage the course load and what you’ve learned from the experience.
“Although I found taking AP Psychology as my first ever AP class to be incredibly tough, I have no regrets about it. Not only did it teach me a lot about human behavior and cognition, but it also pushed me to develop a new kind of discipline. Inspired by what I had learned about classical conditioning and stages of memory in class, I started making mind maps and flashcards to keep up.”
Question: What have you learned from participating in [specific extracurricular activity]?
There are a couple things you definitely should steer clear of. Don’t say anything overtly negative or complain about the activity as that can make you come across as disinterested or ungrateful. Don’t parrot things from your resume either.
Instead, talk about the challenges you’ve overcome like getting cut from the varsity basketball team freshman year but trying out again sophomore year after a year of consistent training and making it. Or, share how in your role as the editor-in-chief of the school newspaper, you faced criticism for switching to a digital platform until the change showed an increase in viewership and got your collaborators on board. You can also focus on the leadership experience you’ve gained like organizing and budgeting food donation drives for your high school’s chapter of the Interact Club or recruiting new members to join the Quiz Bowl Team. Hone in on the specific skills you’ve gained, your accomplishments, the lessons you’ve learned and the values you’ve picked up.
I was asked this question for my baking business and this was my response: “The biggest thing I’ve learned while running my own business is how to trust others. At one point, I was the baker, manager and delivery-person all in one because I was hesitant to delegate tasks. I decided to refocus and spend my time making orders, communicating with clients and trying new recipes while my team handled the logistical part. This simple change helped both me and my business grow manifold.”
Question: If you could change one thing about your high school, what would it be and how would you go about doing it?
Now, this shouldn’t be mistaken as the time to rant about your school and tell the interviewer everything wrong with it. Don’t say anything too negative like, “Our principal is a killjoy,” or “My classmates are very competitive and nerdy”. The purpose of this question, like all others, is to understand how you think.
This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be inauthentic in your answers. If you think your Spanish teachers are terrible, say that you wished your school’s Spanish program was a little stronger and then, tell your interviewer how you think the program could be improved. I would say something like, “If I could change this about my high school, I would hire teachers whose native language is Spanish because they would be more enthusiastic about teaching their language. One thing I’ve done on my own to supplement my Spanish education is meet every other week with a foreign exchange student from Spain. In return, I help her with her English. I also think adding more books about Spanish literature to our library would help.”
Question: What do you think is your biggest weakness?
The weakness you decide to talk about should take up only a small part of your response, the rest of it should be about how you’re working to overcome it. While interviewers appreciate honest answers, saying something unfiltered like, “I waste too much time,” or veiling a strength as a weakness like, “I work too hard,” is not the best way to tackle this question. It’s probably not a good idea to mention anything unethical or illegal.
Instead, think about the question and admit an actual weakness. It could be anything—that you’re afraid of public speaking or that you’re too self-critical. You can tell the story of how you came to discover the weakness and then describe the progress you’ve made in resolving it. Consider this:
“One of my biggest weaknesses is that I have a hard time asking for help. I’ve always been someone who tries to figure things out on my own, but sometimes this just makes things more difficult. I first realized this was a problem when we were learning about genetic composition in AP Biology last year and I spent hours trying to understand it by myself instead of asking my teacher for help. Since then, I’ve made it a point to ask questions in class whenever I get stuck and reach out to friends to share my struggles.”
Question: What do you think is your biggest strength?
The most common pitfall of this question is giving generic answers like, “I’m a team player”. Nothing wrong with being a team player but by itself, it doesn’t really say much about you. Rather, think about a specific strength that either really speaks to who you are or has been a recurrent theme in your application. In my interviews, I said my greatest strength was my ability to notice small details and then went on to talk about how this knack for remembering things helped me celebrate people’s individuality.
With that, we are one-third of our way there when it comes to questions that might pop up in your interview. The key to having a great interview is to treat it like a conversation and the rest will follow. A massive thank you from the bottom of my heart to all of you for joining me today and sticking around till the end, this one was a very lengthy one (I’ve been saying this for all the chapters lately). I’ll see you soon with the second part of this issue where I’ll be sharing questions that you might be asked about your interest in the school and walking you through the process of answering them effectively. Until next time, keep dreaming big!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Hey there, college-bound crew! I’m Kaashvi, an undergraduate student at Dartmouth College from India. I’m the brains (and heart) behind the College Countdown series here at The Ivy Institute and I am stoked to be your guide through this process.
So, a little bit about me: I was a STEM kid through and through in high school and all my classes were the highest level ones offered at my school and graduated at the top of my class for three consecutive years. Outside of class, I was involved in activities that let me nurture my love for inventiveness, responsibility and storytelling. From designing a vehicle to aid oil spill cleanup to working as an elected representative for the youth advisory council to volunteering at the local deaf school—I devoted a lot of my time to projects that were true to my values.
When I’m not typing away at my keyboard, dishing out college advice to people in my inbox and on this blog, you can catch me exploring new hiking trails, whipping up some questionable (but oddly delicious) desserts at my bakery or getting lost in a gripping mystery novel.
As an international student, the application process wasn’t just about finding a spot at a prestigious university but also about finding a place that felt like a second home. Now that I’ve made it out alive to the other end (with a boatload of stories to tell), I'm here to spill all the tea on how you can do the same. With some guidance and a whole lot of oversharing, together we’ll crush this admissions game like absolute pros.
Catch you on the flip side,
Kaashvi
