rice interview...

[worldandtime]

I was reminded of the story of my Rice interview (ie., when I was applying to Rice many years ago) by a conversation I've had with a friend of mine about people's being role models for others

Comments

[zbohannan]

I can't stand that type of interview. At my UCSD interview, one of the professors grilled me about what I would be researching and even asked me for an initial experimental design. This was after I told him I was considering several topics for a thesis and wanted to explore them before I made a decision.

I politely informed him that I had no experimental plan because I had yet to isolate a specific topic of interest. Then he lectured me for ten minutes about how successful people make plans and carry them out otherwise you just become flotsam.

My response, "Well then, I guess I really am a loser. Thanks." Exit, stage left.

Funny thing is, I still got in.

[worldandtime]

Yeah, why do they do interviews when they don't seem to count? Maybe a really good interview is a plus, but a bad interview doesn't seem to count much. Thank god...

Also, I think I wish I had your nerve: "I guess I really am a loser. Thanks." The problem is, I don't know that I'd be quite so matter-of-fact in tone as this comes across. I might verge on the sarcastic, which probably (duh!) wouldn't go over so well...

I agree that successful people make plans and carry them out, but that professor just sounds like an ass. You need to have a specific end in mind before making plans does any good. And lecturing a kid at an interview about what a loser he is is simply being abusive. To be fair, of course, I had professors like that in graduate school, so he's not exactly unique ;-).

[zbohannan]

It was especially pleasant after a kind interviewer who asked if I minded sitting outside and chatting at a nearby coffee bar while he smoked. Apparently, the last two students he talked to were pretentious and verbose "jackasses" (to quote him) and he hadn't had a smoke all day.

[savidan]

It's exactly the same preparing for internship interviews. People ask the stupidest questions but you can't not answer them because it's your only chance to give them *any* information about yourself not on your resume.

You should have gone with Jesus though...worked well for Bush.

You should have gone with Jesus though

[worldandtime]

Yeah, but this was 1970(at least, I think the interviews were before christmas in the fall of my senior year. I'm not absolutely positive after all this time)--the times weren't as religiously conservative, shall we say, as they are now. Plus, I was only 16, so cut me a little slack...