 Jumping off the porch like mom's not home. So guys, it's Josh from Backing Up with another video, specifically another video in my Ivy League Secret series. Those of you that don't know, I mainly post Yale vlogs and student interviews, but every other week or so, I get a chance to reflect back on my college application process and give you guys some tips to be successful during yours. Before I get into the video, I just want to point out that I am sitting in the middle of Paris right now and that middle thing you see right there. Yeah, that's the Eiffel Tower. It may just be a normal college application-related video, but just keep in mind that how many of them are filmed in front of the Eiffel Tower, so let's get into it. Today's video is going to be about nailing your college interview and specifically impressing your top choice schools. I'll walk you through some stories from my college interviews as well as giving you some tips to be successful for your own. Before we get into it, I want to make a clear distinction. In the college application process, your interviews fall into two main categories. Your general college interviews that you'll do for a lot of your top choice, like Ivy Leagues and top 50 schools. And then your scholarship interviews, which are going to be a lot more competitive, a lot more intense. Along with these scholarship interviews come the service academy interviews, which are very similar. Today's video I'll be talking about both, so let's get into it. Let's start with talking about the general college interview. When you're applying to colleges on a common application, most of the Ivy's and other top schools will have a little box you can check. If you check that box, you'll be automatically assigned an alumnus to have an interview with. Keep in mind these interviews aren't necessarily required, so don't freak out if you can't do it or there's not alumni in your area. But if you get the chance, 100% opt for the interview. When I was applying I think I had interviews for Yale, MIT, Princeton and Stanford. Now the first thing I have to emphasize with these interviews is that in the big scheme of things they really don't matter that much. This interview will not make or break your application. I mean it serves two main purposes. First, the school wants to verify that you're an actual functioning human being and you're not just a piece of paper with a GPA and an SAT score. And second, the interview serves as a purpose for you to ask questions and learn more about the school that you're applying to from somebody that actually went there. Do not stress. I remember my first interview was with somebody from MIT. We were emailing back and forth. I was stressing about it. I showed up in a sports blazer and like slacks and a tie and everything. And then I think he was wearing like jeans and an MIT hoodie. I was completely overdressed and I think we were meeting at like a Starbucks like outside. It was just not a good look. Obviously you should look presentable but the first thing I wanna say is just don't, it doesn't matter what you wear. Most of these general college interviews are gonna be pretty chill, pretty relaxed. Just look nice, look present. I remember going in my interview and having no idea what I was going to talk about. No idea how these interviews worked. But after doing it four times, you can kind of see a pattern and the interviews all went pretty much the same way. You'll introduce yourself, you'll probably be asked to give a little background info. Keep in mind most of the time these interviewers are given none of your information other than your name and your email, contact information, stuff like that. So they really don't know anything about you. After you get comfortable, you begin talking about your interests at school and your extracurriculars. This pretty much serves as the core of the interview. They really wanna see what you're interested in, what makes you tick, and see if you would be a great fit at the school. At the end of the interview, they'll open up the floor for you to ask questions and you can ask anything you were curious about and normally they'll just tell you more about the school. All right, let's get into my tips. First of all, like I said earlier, don't show up in a tux and also don't show up in shorts and a t-shirt. There's a happy medium, fine. I think most of the time I wore khakis with a button up that wasn't even tucked in. So it's business casual. For girls, you can probably wear a blouse and some pants or a nice dress. I don't know what you guys wear. Next question I get a lot is, should I bring my CV or my resume? Do not bring your CV or your resume unless they ask for it. Don't be that guy that hands the interviewer a laminated copy of your resume that you like formatted in LaTac or something. You're there to talk. My next tip may be a little cliche, but do yourself. Don't try to put some facade on that you're actually better than you are. Like, it never works. Talk about what you're interested in, talk about your passions, that's all you need. The interviewer would much rather hear some crazy story from high school than you rattling off your stats for an hour. They could care less about what your stats are. They're there to see who you are as a person. Like, as you guys know, I'm a magician, so I brought cards to most of my interviews. Obviously, I didn't whip them out in every interview, but if the topic came up and they wanted to see something, then yeah, I was prepared to show them something. It's something that I enjoy. It's one of my hobbies and I was prepared to show them something. I mean, that's all you need. Another example is in my Yale interview, I remember talking about our favorite Christopher Nolan movies. If that gives you any idea of the types of topics that people will probably come up. These interviews are pretty casual. All right, my final tip is a very important one. Remember that this is an interview, but it's also a conversation. As in, you're not gonna be pegged with questions for an hour. This is an ongoing thing. It's between two people. They're gonna ask you questions about yourself. You should be prepared with questions about them and about their school. I would recommend coming up with a list of five or so questions about the school that you're ready to ask at the end of the interview. That's what I did. It seemed to work well and it seemed to cover the right amount of time to make sure that we weren't there too long or we didn't just leave after the first part. If it comes down to the time where you're supposed to talk about the school and you don't have any questions, the conversation's gonna die pretty quick and that doesn't look good. All right, that pretty much concludes my tips for general college interviews. If you're still feeling unsure about the interview or maybe you're unsure about another aspect of your college application, I highly recommend checking out the sponsor of this video, Crimson Education. If you've been watching my channel for a while, I guarantee you've been recommended at least one of their videos. Crimson Education's main goal is to connect students with team of strategists, mentors, and tutors that will help them create a successful college application whether that be extracurricular and leadership help, college essay topic brainstorming or editing or SAT prep and tutoring. Best part is that it actually works and they've had over 460 offers to top 50 colleges just since 2015. For those of you applying internationally, don't worry. Crimson now has over 25 offices across the globe. If you have ever felt lost in college applications or just wanna stand out in the growing competition, definitely get in touch with Crimson ASIP and hear about a plan that can be customized exactly for you. A lot of my friends at Yale used a college consulting service similar to Crimson and they only had great things to say so I highly recommend it. Leave the link below in the description. You definitely wanna check it out. All right, now let's get into the second type of college interviews that you'll probably encounter. Your scholarship and service academy interviews. A lot of the time state schools will have full ride scholarships for students. I know the University of Virginia had the Jefferson Scholarship and I'm pretty sure other states have similar scholarships that are super competitive. They only pick like one person from each district of the state and you have to go through like a long interview process and submit extra essays and everything but at the end of the day, it gives you a full ride to school which is a big deal. Similarly, when you're applying to a service academy, you'll have to get in touch with your congressman because if you want an appointment to a service academy, you also need a congressional nomination from one of your two senators or your house representative and they only have a certain number of nominations that they can give so it's normally a pretty intense interview process to secure one of those. First of all, unlike your general college interviews, show up in a suit or a blazer unless otherwise stated. You want to make a good impression unlike the other interview, which is a conversation. This one, they are probably going to be pegging you with questions for an hour, so bring your A game. Next, similar above, you want to be able to talk about yourself. I recommend getting in front of a mirror and practicing your response to the question, tell me about yourself. You have a story, find it, practice it and be able to spit it out when you get asked it at an interview. Next, you'll probably be asked at least one of the following questions. What was a time when you faced a big challenge and you overcame it? Describe a time when your leadership was tested. How did you overcome it? Tell me about a time when your integrity was put into question. How did you react? These are pretty much your general textbook questions when it comes to interviews like this. My suggestion is to make a list of these questions and similar ones that you can probably find online and have a story to respond to every single one of them. Now when I say have a story, I mean, you don't just want to be asked your response and just say words that don't necessarily mean anything. You want to have a concrete example from your life that would be able to support this idea and make a cohesive argument. Don't dodge the question, answer thoroughly, use evidence just like if you were writing an essay. Obviously also your interview will probably be aimed towards a specific subject area. I.e. if it's an engineering interview or maybe an interview for a writing scholarship, you're probably gonna have another set of questions that falls into that category. Like for example, if you're at an engineering interview, you might be asked about an engineering problem or maybe an engineering project that you've been working on recently and how it's affected your growth in the subject area. I remember at one of my Air Force Academy congressional nomination interviews, I had somebody ask me name a current event in the United States Air Force. That's it. It was just like name one. It was very out of the blue and I couldn't do it. So I guess one piece of advice is if you're applying to a service academy, make sure you're up to date with the current events of that branch of the military. But overall when it comes to these interviews, be prepared, do your research and you should be fine. All right, that's about it for this video. If you found this video helpful, feel free to drop a thumbs up down below. It helps me and the channel a lot more than you think. Or if you think this video could help some of your friends that are also going through a similar thing, definitely share with them. I mean, we're trying to help as many people here as possible, so that'd be great. I know college interviews are one of those things that a lot of people just don't really know about or don't know what the experience is gonna be like. So I was glad I was able to share with you and hopefully this helped. Comment down below any questions or any ideas for my next Ivy League secrets video. I definitely would enjoy those. So drop those down below. And I guess that's about it. I will see you guys in the next video. Oh, also, subscribe, subscribe if you're new. That's the big deal. If this is the first video that you've seen of mine, definitely subscribe. There's a lot of good college related content on this channel and you'll also get a peek into my life at Yale and the fun stuff I'm doing this time. So I'll see you.