Originally Posted by
Rock-of-Truth
It sounds as if our kids have a slightly different track record going into the application. Mine is in the top 20 in a class of 400, National Honors Society, but by no means the Valedictorian. Congratulations on that, I bet you were on the Moon during Graduation. His ACT score on the other hand is pretty good. The alumni interview is still a wild card to me. An Aerospace-Engineer interviewing a Bio-Medical Engineering applicant ... hopefully they find some common ground other than Math and Science. Strike that, hopefully there is no awkward silence!
I too did alumni interviews in the NJ area for several years. I met with some amazingly talented and mature kids with unbelievable grades, class standing, academic achievements and extracurriculars and they were well-spoken as well. These kids were tremendously impressive and, needless to say, I wrote some glowing recommendations. If I recall correctly, however, only one of my interviewees got accepted and she turned Duke down for Dartmouth. Anecdotally I heard of others who were admitted who did poorly in the interview (no eye contact, no personality, etc.) but their #'s were just so out of this world that Duke accepted them. Frankly, that bummed me out so much that I stopped doing the interviewing.
All in all I would agree with those on this Board that these interviews don't mean all that much and are really a conduit for Duke to say that every kid has an opportunity to have an interview. If it does have any bearing on admission (and I personally don't think it does), it's waaaaaaaay down on the list of deciding factors.
Rich
"Failure is Not a Destination"
Coach K on the Dan Patrick Show, December 22, 2016