Questions to Ask During a College Interview
Questions to ask during a college interview, matched to who is across the table: an alumni volunteer, an admissions officer, or a current student, plus what to ask about your own application.
The questions
Open any question for the note
How are you connected to the college?
Why ask it
Alumni volunteers, admissions staff and current students can answer completely different questions, and asking first stops you spending your time on facts this person cannot know. It also opens the conversation on their experience rather than yours.
What made you choose this college, and would you choose it again?
Why ask it
The second half is what makes the question work. Almost everyone answers the first part smoothly, and the pause or the caveat on the second is where you learn something.
What kind of student does well here, and what kind struggles?
Why ask it
Interviewers usually have a specific picture in mind and describe the culture more honestly than any publication does. Listen for whether the description sounds like you rather than whether it sounds appealing.
What do people misunderstand about this school?
Why ask it
Every institution has a reputation that is partly out of date: too preprofessional, too remote, too intense. The correction tells you both what the place is like and what it is tired of hearing.
How much do students here work together, and how much do they compete?
Why ask it
Grading practices and preprofessional pressure vary widely between schools that look alike on paper. Ask for evidence: shared notes, study groups, curved courses, or people hiding library books.
How hard is it to change direction here, to switch majors or add one?
Why ask it
Some schools admit you into a specific college or major and moving between them is competitive. Hearing about internal transfer requirements now is better than discovering them in your second year.
What did you study, and how did the department treat undergraduates?
Why ask it
Departments inside one university differ enormously in advising, access to faculty and course availability. An interviewer who studied your subject is the most useful person you will talk to.
How accessible were your professors, and how did you come to know them?
Why ask it
Access is less about class size than about habit. The answer usually contains a specific route: office hours, a research job, a small seminar, which tells you how relationships start there.
Which classes do students talk about, in either direction?
Why ask it
The courses with reputations reveal what the school takes seriously and where the teaching is weak. Both lists are useful, and interviewers enjoy giving them.
What is the first year like socially, and how do people find each other?
Why ask it
Ask about the mechanism rather than the atmosphere: dorm assignments, first-week programming, whether most students join something. This is the part that decides whether a large school feels large.
What do students actually do on a Saturday?
Why ask it
The honest answer says a lot about location, weather and social structure, including how much of campus life runs through parties, sport, or leaving town. Ask what someone who wants none of that does.
What is the town or city like for a student without a car?
Why ask it
Location constraints are invisible in photographs and shape four years. Someone who lived there can tell you what is walkable, what needs a bus, and what closes early.
What support exists for a student who arrives underprepared in one subject?
Why ask it
Every incoming class contains people who are behind in writing or mathematics. Whether the school has a route back, and whether using it is normal, matters more than the average test score.
How did students you knew find internships and jobs?
Why ask it
Ask whether it ran through the career centre, alumni, faculty or nothing in particular. The answer tells you how much the school does for you and how much you would be doing alone.
What was the hardest part of your first semester?
Why ask it
Specific difficulties, such as a required course, a registration system, or homesickness in a small town, are more informative than general reassurance that everyone adjusts.
What do you know about the school now that you could not see as a student?
Why ask it
Distance changes the account. Graduates a few years out will name things they took for granted, in both directions, that a current student would not think to mention.
What is the alumni network like in practice: who actually reaches back?
Why ask it
Networks are described as strong everywhere. Ask for an example of a graduate helping someone they did not know, since that is the only version that would be available to you.
What do you look for in a conversation like this?
Why ask it
Interviewers usually answer honestly, and it tells you what their written report will emphasise. Asking it also signals that you take the process seriously without asking them to evaluate you on the spot.
Is there anything in my application you would want me to explain?
Why ask it
This gives you a chance to address a gap while someone is still listening. An interviewer who names something specific is handing you an opening; one who says no has usually already formed a positive impression.
What happens after today, and when would I hear anything?
Why ask it
It closes the meeting on practical ground and prevents weeks of uncertainty about whether you should follow up, and with whom.
Preparing for the questions you get to ask
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Match your questions to the interviewer
An alumni volunteer
- Their own experience, department and friendships
- What has changed since they were a student
- Why they still volunteer for the school
- Not current policy, aid figures or admission odds
An admissions officer
- How the process works from here, and the timeline
- Internal transfer between colleges or majors
- Support programmes and who they are designed for
- Not personal predictions about your chances
A current student
- The first year, housing, dining, registration
- What a normal week and a normal Saturday look like
- Which courses and advisors people warn each other about
- Not long-term career outcomes they have not reached yet
Practical preparation
Bring four or five questions and expect to use three
Interviews run twenty to forty minutes and most of it is you answering. Rank your questions so the two you care about most come first, since the end often disappears to logistics.
Do not ask what the website answers
Enrolment, deadlines and lists of majors are published, and asking about them uses your one chance on nothing. Read those first, then ask about the things only a person can tell you.
Write the answers down afterwards, not during
Taking notes mid-conversation changes its tone. Sit somewhere for ten minutes after and record what was said, especially anything that contradicted another school's account.
Common pitfalls
Asking questions designed to impress
Interviewers hear the flattering ones constantly and they produce nothing you can use. A plain question about the hardest part of the first semester tells you more and reads better.
Asking about your chances
Most interviewers cannot answer and none enjoy being asked. If you want to know about your file, ask whether anything in it needs explaining instead.
Skipping the closing question
People leave without knowing the timeline or whether a thank you note is appropriate. Ask what happens next; it is a normal question and it settles both.