“To be prepared is half the victory” – Miguel de Cervantes
It’s the time of the year when you start applying for colleges and prepare for your college interview. College admission interviews can be a stressful process. A lot of students suffer from anxiety despite a pretty rocking profile.
To ace college interview, you need to understand the essentials of an interview at a much deeper level. While preparing for your college interview, there are many questions that you can prepare for the way ahead. Questions about your extra-curricular activities in school, your scores and your career goals may be some questions you might be asked during your interview. You can prepare yourself by practising your answers to the possible questions that may be asked during the interview.
If you are a high schooler wanting to ace college interviews, we have the best of tips in a ready reckoner format for you, right here!
6 Tips To Ace Your College Interview
Doing the basic groundwork right
To set a positive mood for the interviewers, you must get the below questions right. These questions can be practised by making a rough outline and keeping the answer short, crisp and interesting.
Prepare for frequently asked questions like:
- College-related questions: What is the reason for the college’s reputation? What are the courses that interest you? How did you become aware of this college?
- Questions related to personality: Tell us about yourself. What are your professional goals and how will the course of your choice help in it?
- Instance-based questions: Tell us about a challenging scenario in your high school that you overcame.
- Achievement based questions: Tell us about any extra-curricular activity that you have notable achievements in.
Nail The First Impression
For a college interview, you must focus on creating an immaculate first impression. It takes up to 30 seconds to create an impression. Remember, you do not get a second chance to make a first impression.
Facial expressions are the key to making a positive first impression:
- Appear for the interview in a calm and confident attitude.
- Address the interviewer with their name, preferably first name.
- Smile genuinely.
- Create a confident vibe by maintaining a pleasant and relaxed body posture.
Smarten Up Your Soft Skills
Maintain confidence and positive body language and gesture. On the contrary to creating a first impression with eye contact and a glance, body language and gesture practices are important during an interview:
Express your zeal. Interviewers are interested in candidates who exhibit a passion for their careers. Give your 100%.
- Practice good communication skills. Try to keep answers concise and clear. Do not beat around the bush. Have a mock interview with a friend and ask them to give you feedback.
- Your appearance must be clean and you must wear a formal outfit. Try sticking to solid neutral coloured attire.
- Maintain eye contact during the conversation. Address the panel evenly.
- It is best to smile and accept your lack of knowledge for a particular topic rather than cooking up stuff.
Strike Up a Dialogue
There is usually a panel of interviewers in a college interview. Instead of making the interview sound like a one-way street, try to strike conversations between questions. Analyze the common interests between you and the interviewers to have a brief and lite conversation about those common interests to avoid monotony.
- Try asking about college alumni and discuss any if you know about them already.
- Share instances to emphasize your point.
- Talk about current affairs, they’re good ice-breakers in a conversation.
Dodge Tricky Questions Subtly
There are questions in interviews that are specifically posed to rule out unprepared candidates, these questions might seem very irrelevant to you. Such questions are posed to test your wit. You might not always know what to answer in such situations. Nevertheless, you can sugar-coat your unfamiliarity with the question:
- I have never come across this so far. However, I’d be happy to learn about it and get back to you if given a chance.
- I strongly wish I could answer this question right now. However, I have limited knowledge in this topic. I’m keen to learn more about it.
Get professional help
Sometimes even the most thorough preparation is not enough. If you need any external vetting of your prepared answers or a mock interview, get help from a professional without second thoughts.
An expert career counsellor can help you in many ways. Like
- Practising mock interviews to take away the anxiety and build
- Structuring your answers to standard questions in a succinct, impressive way
- Tailoring your answers according to a certain college’s interviewing pattern
Get expert advice for our counsellors today!
