College Campus

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Seven Tips For A Successful Interview

Dobler College ConsultingThis post originally made its debut on my blog last March, but as we’ve been talking college visits for the last couple weeks, it’s only natural that the conversation include interviews:

Last week I wrote about how important it is for students to be the ones to make the call when an interview needs to be scheduled. Today, I wanted to follow up on that idea with some tips on how to have a successful interview. In my career, I have interviewed hundreds of students – sometimes because I wanted to know more about them and sometimes because they wanted to come in and talk about their application and tell their story. I loved it when students sought me out first; when they wanted to make that concerted effort to demonstrate their interest and their potential.

From these experiences, here are seven tips to help you make the most of campus interviews:

  1. Arrive at campus at least 10-15 minutes early and make sure you have contact information for your interviewer with you. This way, if you get lost, get stuck in traffic or cannot find parking right away, and are going to be late, you want to make sure they know WHY you are late. Don’t want to worry about this at all? Get to campus 30 minutes early and then you have some time to walk around on your own and collect your thoughts prior to the interview.
  2. Have a game plan for what you want to accomplish. Yes, the interviewer is going to want to know certain things about you, but you also need to take an active role in the interview – what do you want the interviewer to know about you, your accomplishments, interests, and goals? Use your answers to provide specific examples the help demonstrate your brand.
  3. Bring a list of questions with you in a small notebook so that you are prepared for when the interviewer asks if you have any questions for them. The interviewer will be impressed that you were prepared and it will show them that you are taking your college application process seriously. Just don’t ask basic questions that can be found on the school’s website. Focus on what’s important to you in your college search.
  4. Try as hard as you can to be yourself. You don’t need to interview in a suit but do dress appropriately for the interview so that you are comfortable. The last thing you want to experience is a distraction from your ill-advised choice of clothing. Outside of your appearance, you also want to provide the school with a look at the authentic you and you’re not going to accomplish that if you are pretending to be someone you are not.
  5. Speak clearly and listen attentively – you’ve earned this opportunity, now go in and own it. Talk to the interviewer, not the floor, walls or ceiling. Likewise, listen closely to the questions you are being asked and, if you need to, take a moment to think about how you want to respond. You want to make sure you are answering the questions but also sticking to your game plan of what you want them to know about you.
  6. Don’t be afraid to follow up an answer to a question with a question of your own. For example, if you are asked about continuing a sport or activity, once you’ve answered, ask the interviewer about what they did in high school and if they were able to continue it in college. Did they find this difficult and what were the specific challenges?
  7. Always thank the interviewer for his or her time. Get their business card or (contact information if it is a student interviewer) and send them a thank you email or card within 24 hours of your visit. Keep it simple and to the point but take the opportunity to restate your desire to attend their college. Admissions counselors LOVE thank you notes!

If you have any questions about how to make the most of college interviews, please use the comment section below.

You can also email me directly at eric@doblercollegeconsulting.com for help on preparing for interviews and to complete a mock interview before you go in for the real thing.

 

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Eric Mar 03, 2013 , , , , , , , , No Comments
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How To Make The Most Of A College Visit

Dobler College Consulting

Note: I will be conducting a free college admissions workshop titled, “Navigating The College Admissions Journey” on February 26th. Please scroll to the bottom of this post to learn more.

Last week I gave you 8 great questions to ask on a college visit. As we inch closer to March and more moderate weather a lot of you will be visiting colleges. And you should. This is a great time of year to visit. But you also need to make sure you are making the most of these visits.

Typically, colleges will have you sit in on an information session where you will hear from an admission counselor and possibly a current student or two before you go out on an hour to hour and a half long tour.

You will learn a lot about the school but you want to get beyond the basic facts so that you really get a feel for the campus, the people who teach and work there and the students who go there.

And here’s how you do it:

1. Sit in on a class in your major

This is a great way to get a feel for the academic quality of the school. Obviously one class is not going to tell you everything, but it should tell you some things. If you can shadow a student in your major for a day and actually attend a few classes and meet some other students, that would be even better!

2. Meet with a faculty member

If there’s one thing faculty like to do, its talk about what they teach. Their lives revolve around their work and if you are very decided with your major and want to know more about what you can expect from this school, scheduling a meeting with a faculty member who teaches in your major is a great way to go.

3. Attend a game or event

Check the college’s schedule ahead of time and see if there is anything going on when you will be visiting such as a basketball game, a visiting comedian or even a guest lecturer. This is a great way to get a feel for just how into their school the student body really is. If you find that there really isn’t a whole lot going on, that should tell you something about life outside the classroom.

4. Have lunch in the cafeteria

Leave yourself some time to have lunch in the cafeteria or even the student center. Let’s be honest, food is important and you want to get a feel for the quality of it. But this is also a great way to sit back and people watch. Can’t make it for lunch? Breakfast or dinner will also work.

5. Stay overnight

Some colleges will have formal overnight programs and others will not. You should always ask because if there’s a chance you can spend a day and then stay overnight in a residence hall with some current students, you will learn so much about the school.

If you’re interested in doing any of these items, especially the ones that need to be arranged, make sure you call and ask several weeks ahead of when you plan to visit. If you just show up at a college and expect them to get you into a class or into a meeting with a faculty member on the spot, it’s not going to happen.

If you have any questions you would like to ask, use the comment box below or email me at eric@doblercollegeconsulting.com. If you think this makes a lot of sense, consider sharing it with someone you know.

 

Learn More at Dobler College Consulting’s College Admissions Workshop

I will be hosting a free workshop titled, “Navigating The College Admissions Journey” this Tuesday, February 26th at the Huntington Branch Library in Shelton, CT. For more information or to reserve your seat, head over to my Events page.

The workshop shares strategies to help your son or daughter navigate the college admissions process while eliminating mistakes that tend to reduce their chances of admission. Topics include college lists, online resources, essays, interviews, campus visits and what you need to know about making college more affordable.

All workshop participants will receive information handouts and will be eligible for special discounts off private college counseling services.

Don’t live in or near Shelton? You can easily get in touch with me to set up a free 60-minute consultation to help address your pressing college admissions-related questions and issues.

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Eric Feb 24, 2013 , , , , , , , No Comments
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8 Great Questions To Ask On A College Visit

Dobler College ConsultingNote: I will be conducting a free college admissions workshop titled, “Navigating The College Admissions Journey” on February 26th. Please scroll to the bottom of this post to learn more.

 

With the long weekend upon us and a need for a change in scenery after 30+ inches of snow last week, I decided to visit some colleges. On Friday, I drove up to the Boston area and spent the day at two excellent business schools: Bentley and Babson.

While the tour guides at each school did a great job sharing information and talking about their classes and overall experience, I was really surprised that the students and families visiting had very few, if any, questions to ask. And it wasn’t for lack of opportunity either. The tour guides at both schools repeatedly invited questions but, for the most part, were met with silence.

So, I thought I would use today’s post to give you some inspiration for things you want to know more about when you are visiting a college campus:

1. Can a student in (insert your major here) graduate in four years but still complete internships and/or study abroad?

If a four year program becomes a five year program due to experiential opportunities being added in, you need to decide if the additional cost and time are worth it.

2. What’s it like to study (insert your major here) at this college?

This is a variation of the “Do you have my major?” question, but it is likely to yield a more informative answer since it asks the tour guide or admissions counselor to qualify what your four years will feel like.

3. What is the percentage of courses that close early or require signing up for a waiting list?

You want to know how the college departments handle this issue and if it prevents students from graduating on time.

4. What is the percentage of students who find work in their academic area within six months of graduating?

Four to five years of college should lead to something productive afterwards – knowing how many students in your field are finding something relevant and how quickly is worth knowing.

5. What kinds of career-related services does the school provide?

Some schools have departments specifically dedicated to career-related services that start working with students as early as freshman year. At others, the services may be minimal and not well publicized. How much career-related support the school offers matters.

6. As far as experiential learning goes, how early can students start doing internships and/or co-ops? 

While a college education is earned through time in the classroom, success after college is mostly earned through experience and the mastery of skills and abilities. In today’s economy, completing one internship is an absolute must. Completing several is even better. To do that, you have to start early. Will the college support that?

7. How is the college trying to improve itself?

Seeing active construction or a new building obviously speaks to the physical upgrading and expansion of a campus. However, improvement is not always a physical thing. How is the university or college working to improve the quality of its teaching and its services? 

8. What types of support services are offered for academics?

What is the support system on campus? Who are the advisors and what is the advising structure? Counseling? Is there a peer mentoring program or even a faculty/staff mentoring program? Is there a freshman year experience program and, if so, how is it run?

At the end of the day, tour guides are going to share with you what the colleges want them to share. Do yourself a favor by asking questions that get beyond the basics. Ask questions that affect you personally and that will help you qualify whether or not this school is the right one for you.

These are only suggestions to help you get thinking about what’s important to you, but if you have any questions you like to ask, use the comment box below or email me at eric@doblercollegeconsulting.com. If you think this makes a lot of sense, consider sharing it with someone you know.

Learn More at Dobler College Consulting’s College Admissions Workshop

I will be hosting a free workshop titled, “Navigating The College Admissions Journey” on February 26th at the Huntington Branch Library in Shelton, CT. For more information or to reserve your seat, head over to my Events page.

The workshop shares strategies to help your son or daughter navigate the college admissions process while eliminating mistakes that tend to reduce their chances of admission. Topics include college lists, online resources, essays, interviews, campus visits and what you need to know about making college more affordable.

All workshop participants will receive information handouts and will be eligible for special discounts off private college counseling services.

Don’t live in or near Shelton? You can easily get in touch with me to set up a free 60-minute consultation to help address your pressing college admissions-related questions and issues.

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Eric Feb 17, 2013 , , , , , , , No Comments
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Must Have Items On Your College List – Part I

Last week, I talked about how to build a great college list. Over the next two weeks, I’d like to take it a bit further and talk about some of the “must haves” you should consider as you research schools and build a great college list. Today, in Part I, I’m going to cover campus size, location, majors and student life.

Campus Size
Size matters, right? You bet it does! For example, a large public university like UConn has an undergraduate student enrollment of nearly 18,000. That’s a big school though not nearly as big as Ohio State where 43,000 undergrads attend!  And that also means that a lot of freshmen courses are likely to be taught in large lecture halls – we’re talking 200 students or more in a class here. The other downfall is that these courses will often be taught by TA’s instead of tenured faculty. Why? Because at large research universities, there is more focus on research and graduate programs – not undergraduate instruction.

Think about what kind of classroom experience you want to have as well as what kind of relationship you would like to have with your professors. If you want smaller class sizes, instructors you will get to know and form relationships with, then you will want to think about smaller schools. The University of New Haven (4,600 undergrads), Fairfield University (3,800 undergrads) and Providence College (3,800 undergrads) are examples of schools where classes are smaller and taught by faculty instructors.

Location 
Stay home or go far away? Tired of your small town? Feeling like you want to go out and explore the world a bit? I get it. I also get that sometimes the greater world is so unfamiliar that students who do go far away end up transferring to a school closer to home after their first semester.

Help yourself out now by thinking about what it means to go away to college. Is it important to you to be close to your family or are you okay with just talking to them by phone, email or Skype? When you do want to go home, how will you get there? Is your college near an airport or train station? Travel expenses, especially flights, are very real and need to be factored into the “how much is this school going to cost us?” equation.

Major
For some of you this will be an easy one. If you want to go into mechanical engineering, nursing or video game design then you search for schools with these majors. But, if you’re like me when I was in high school and you have no idea what you want to do, it can get a little more complicated.

If you’re not sure what you want to do, you have a couple choices. First, you could always contact a counselor you know to help identify your VIPS – your values, interests, personality style and skills. Once you have a better handle on what you’re good at, what you’re interested in and why, you can concentrate your search on majors that are more likely to be good fits for you.

Your other option is to apply to colleges as an undeclared major. If this is the route you choose, you need to make sure (Note: NEED, not WANT) you consider schools which will provide you with options and the resources to explore them. Sometimes, taking some time to figure it out can be the best cause of action. Just don’t take too long. Some programs can only be completed in four years if you take the right courses in the right sequence from day one. Delaying that start could mean a fifth year or more of college and more money out of your pocket for tuition and fees.

Student Life
“I transferred because the school turned out to be a suitcase campus.”

This is what a student recently told me about why she was transferring out of the school that, as recently as this time last year, was her dream school. The school she had fallen in love with (without ever visiting once prior to applying) had a very small residential population and she found out the hard way that, due to its rural location, there wasn’t a lot to do on the weekends. She wanted more out of her college experience and was moving back to Connecticut to lick her wounds and start over.

College life is a balance of working hard and playing hard. Problem is I see so many students focus on what majors a school offers while neglecting to form an opinion about the social life on campus. There’s two ways to correct this problem. First, while you’re on a campus tour, ask questions about student activities and social events but ask them in a way that earns you a valuable answer. For example, asking your tour guide an open-ended question like, “Can you tell us a little about  what you’ve done over the last couple weekends?” is going to tell you a whole lot more about campus life than asking a closed-ended question like “Is there a lot to do on the weekends?”

Get details, not “yes” or “no” answers.

You also want to pay attention to flyers and announcements that are hung up around campus. What kinds of events are happening and would you be interested in going? If you are, talk to someone from the admissions office to see if you can attend as a non-student. Chances are this is a very easy “yes” on their part, but it’s always a good idea to demonstrate your interest. In other words, you’re showing the college that you want them just as much as you hope they want you. Plus, there is no better way to feel out the social climate of a school than to jump right in and try it out yourself.

The other way to gather information, especially if you don’t have the opportunity to visit in person, is to read the student reviews on College Prowler and Unigo. Both allow college students to upload reviews of their schools, the topics of which range from accessibility of faculty to how much students party throughout the week.

Next week, we’ll talk about types of admission, chance of admission, graduation rates and cost.

If you have any questions about building a great college list, please use the comment box below – I would love to hear from you!

You can also email me directly at eric@doblercollegeconsulting.com.

 

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Eric Jul 22, 2012 , , , , No Comments
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Why You Shouldn’t Love Or Hate Your Tour Guide

I spent the better part of this weekend touring some Rhode Island schools. Of course, I failed to follow my own advice to students about pacing themselves with visits, but I only had two days to play with. So, in just under 36 hours, I visited The University of Rhode Island, Bryant University and Providence College.

While each of these schools is distinctly different from the other, some particular differences came up during the course of two of the tours that really had nothing to do with the schools themselves but, rather, with the tour guides. Now, I’m a big believer in doing college visits before you decide on where you are going to enroll. I know it’s not always easy to visit, but if you have the opportunity to visit the schools you are applying to, you absolutely should. While the goal is for you to get a feel for the campus, the people, the programs and what it means to be a student at each particular school, the tour guide can often have a significant impact on how you ultimately end up qualifying your feelings about the school. This concept was in full force over the course of my Rhode Island weekend.

At Bryant University, which is known for its outstanding business program and international focus, my tour group was being led by a sophomore tour guide. The group was roughly a 50-50 split of juniors and seniors. For the juniors, this was their first visit; the first impression. For the seniors, well, they were trying to decide if this was going to be home for the next four years. While the day was absolutely beautiful and the Bryant students were out and about all over campus, the tour guide was quickly having a negative effect on the families in attendance. She wasn’t doing a terrible job by any means, but quite often she seemed very unsure of herself. The problem was that she was trying to quote statistics and facts along the way but appeared to be guessing. Having run a tour program myself for several years, it was obvious that she was not well-versed in a lot of university information. I watched the facial expressions of a few families during the tour and it was obvious that they were disappointed. I heard one student utter quietly to his mother that, “this tour guide doesn’t know much.” You could see their disappointment and feel their frustration.

At Providence, a Catholic institution that focuses on educating the whole student and service to the community, I was part of a rather large tour group. Immediately it became clear that our tour guide, a very engaging, young man who reeked of cool confidence, was born for the position. He had the tour group eating out of his hand within the first couple minutes and you could see how much he affected their impression of the school. He didn’t share a lot of statistics and, in fact, I don’t think he shared any. What he did do, however, was talk about experiences; the friends he had made over the past three years, the courses he took, the instructors who had helped shape his experience, the activities he was involved in and his mission to win an intramural championship in Ultimate Frisbee. They take their intramural sports very seriously at Providence.

So, here you had two really great schools with some outstanding programs. But the experiences were night and day based on how the tour guides conducted the tours. One tour guide struggled to remember facts while the other shared his personal experiences. Along the way, our Bryant tour got smaller and smaller – families were leaving without even saying anything to the tour guide. While they may have had an appointment to keep elsewhere, I couldn’t help but get the feeling that Bryant just got crossed off their list. On the other hand the Providence families couldn’t do enough to get closer to our tour guide. These observations reminded me of just how important a role the tour guide can play when you visit a campus. Whether they do an amazing job or a terrible one, be careful not to pass judgment too quickly. Fall in love with a school because you love it, not because your tour guide loves it. Conversely, allow yourself to let go of a school because you’re not feeling the school rather than the tour guide.

How can you help yourself in this situation? Get to campus early and walk around before your tour. Pick up a campus newspaper and read through it. After the tour, if you have time, see if you can find a couple students on campus and take a few minutes to ask them about their experiences, why they chose that school and what they would change about it, if anything. Sit in the student center and people watch – what do you see and hear all around you? Could you see yourself here? Do you feel comfortable? Do you feel welcome?

Basically, the best thing you can do is take the time to qualify your impression of the school by tapping into multiple resources. Form your own opinions and let the tour guide be one small piece of the equation.

If you have any thoughts you would like to share on tour guides you’ve loved or hated, please use the comment box below. You can also email me directly at eric@doblercollegeconsulting.com.

Eric Dobler is the president and founder of Dobler College Consulting. Follow him on Twitter.

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Eric Mar 25, 2012 , , , , , 1 Comment