Unique Questions to Ask in a College Interview
For the applicant who does not want to ask what everyone else asks. An alumni interviewer has answered the questions about class sizes and advising forty times; these are the ones they have not heard, about the empty campus in February, the thing the school quietly stopped doing, and what the place asked of them that no tour mentions. They work best late in the conversation, once the ordinary ground has been covered by Good Questions to Ask in a College Interview.
The questions
Open any question for the note
What was your own experience there, and what surprised you most?
Why ask it
The best opening question because it is the one your interviewer is most qualified to answer, and most applicants never ask it. Alumni interviewers are volunteers who chose to do this, so the answer is usually generous and gives you material for everything that follows.
How did you decide on it, and what was the other school you nearly picked?
Why ask it
Gets you an honest comparison between two real options rather than a pitch. The reason they chose one over the other is frequently the same reason you are trying to weigh right now.
What does the place ask of you that nobody mentions on a tour?
Why ask it
Every campus has an unstated demand: constant self-promotion, a car, a tolerance for cold, money you did not budget for. Alumni answer this readily and admissions material never will.
What did you learn there that had nothing to do with a class?
Why ask it
Moves the conversation off the curriculum and into the part of the education people actually keep. Expect an answer about arguing, organising or living with strangers.
Was there a professor who would have written you a reference, and how did that come about?
Why ask it
Access to faculty is the difference between a name on a form and a real recommendation. Asking how it happened gets you the mechanism rather than a reassurance that it is possible.
What is the thing about the place that people either love or cannot stand?
Why ask it
Forces a genuine characteristic instead of a selling point. Whatever they name is the trait you should test yourself against before committing four years.
What did you do in your summers?
Why ask it
Summers show what the network is actually good for and how early students start using it. Whether they found their internship through the school or entirely on their own is the useful detail.
What has the school quietly stopped doing since you were there?
Why ask it
Discontinued programmes, closed departments and dropped traditions say more about direction than any announcement. Alumni notice these and nobody ever asks about them.
Which building or room did you end up spending the most time in, and why that one?
Why ask it
A small, concrete question that produces an unusually vivid answer. It also tells you where the real life of the place happens, which is rarely where the tour stops.
What's something about the place that doesn't come across on a visit?
Why ask it
Tours and open days are performances. This asks for the part that only appears once you live there, which is often about pace, or how people treat each other in the week before exams.
What's the town like when the campus is quiet?
Why ask it
Four years is mostly ordinary weeks rather than orientation. The answer tells you whether students stay at weekends, whether you need a car, and whether the surrounding town is part of student life or separate from it.
What did you have to be good at there that you did not expect?
Why ask it
Names the hidden requirement: writing fast, asking for help, sitting alone, managing your own time. It is the most portable thing an alumni interviewer can tell you.
Did that education show up in your work later, and how?
Why ask it
Puts the value question to someone with years of hindsight rather than a projection. Answers about how they learned to write or to argue are more credible than answers about the name on the degree.
What do people do in the first two weeks that makes the rest of the year go better?
Why ask it
Practical and specific, and interviewers enjoy answering it because it is advice rather than assessment. Expect something about joining one thing early, or introducing yourself to a professor before you need anything.
What advice do you give applicants that they usually ignore?
Why ask it
The phrase usually ignore invites the blunt version. It is also a question that quietly tells you what your interviewer values, which is worth knowing before the conversation ends.
What would you study there if you were starting now?
Why ask it
Lets them talk about the parts of the school they find most interesting today, including departments that did not exist when they were a student. Often surfaces a program you had not considered.
Do people stay in touch after graduating, in your experience?
Why ask it
Asks about the network as a lived fact rather than as a marketing claim. The concrete version of the answer, meaning who they still speak to and how they met them, tells you more than any figure about alumni engagement.
What should I read or look at before I decide?
Why ask it
Signals that you intend to keep working at the decision, and the answer is usually a specific department page, a student publication or a person to contact. Follow up on whatever they name and mention it in your thank you note.
What is the strangest thing you still associate with the place?
Why ask it
A question no interviewer has been asked before, and it usually produces the moment they enjoy most in the conversation. Odd details are also what make a school real to you.
What do people admit about that place years later that they would not say at the time?
Why ask it
Distance changes the story. The retrospective version is more honest than the one current students give, and it is the closest thing to a verdict you will get.
Using Your Questions Well in an Interview
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Know Who Is Across From You
Alumni volunteers
Most college interviews are conducted by graduates who volunteer their evenings, sometimes decades after leaving. They can speak vividly about their own experience and cannot tell you current admission statistics or department policy, so aim your questions at what they lived through.
Admissions officers
If your interviewer works for the school, you can also ask about process, deadlines and how applications are read. Their read on campus culture will be more current and more official at the same time.
Current students
Some schools use senior students. They are the best source on housing after the first year, food, workload and what the winter weekends are like, and the worst source on outcomes after graduation.
How much it counts
At many schools the interview is one modest input and at some it is optional. Treat it as a conversation that could help slightly and a source of information that could help a great deal.
How to Ask
- Bring three questions written down and expect to use two. Reading a list of fifteen turns the last five minutes into a survey.
- Ask about their experience rather than about the institution. It is the subject they can speak about honestly and at length.
- Follow up once on whatever they say, using their own words. One real exchange is worth more than four separate questions.
- Save the question about your application for near the end, once the conversation has been comfortable for a while.
- Write down what they said the same evening, along with their name. Two weeks later, four interviews blur into one impression.
What Not to Ask
Do I have a good chance
They do not know and cannot say, and it puts a volunteer in an uncomfortable position. Ask what happens next in the process instead.
Anything from the website
Class sizes, majors offered, deadlines. Asking these signals you have not looked, and it spends a question you only get a few of.
Rankings and prestige
The answer is always some version of the same tactful line. It also frames the conversation around status rather than fit, which is not where you want to be remembered.
Questions built to show off
A long question with your own achievements folded into it is transparent, and interviewers see many of them each season. Ask something you genuinely want to know.
Nothing at all
Saying you have no questions is the one clear mistake available in this part of the interview. Even one question about their own experience is enough.
Afterwards
- Send a short thank you note within a day, referring to one specific thing they told you. Two or three sentences is right; a long letter is not.
- Follow up on whatever they suggested you read or look at, and mention it if you have further contact.
- If they raised a concern about your application, deal with it wherever you still can, in a supplementary essay or an update to the admissions office.
- Add what you learned to whatever you are using to compare schools, while the answers are still exact.