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Your question is a great one, but a tough one to answer briefly. If I could give the sound bite right away, it would be this: context is everything.I.Let me try to explain. It might be useful to know, that in many cases, alumni interviews come in near the bottom of factors that matter much in an admission decision. Why? Part of it has to do with the lack of trust on the part of admission professionals in the alumni.In these days of enrollment managers who are trying to move up in their world, it is becoming much more common to have people in positions of power who have never attended the schools they work for. Does this make a difference? Of course it does, but how much depends on the individuals. Some people in admission see the students who come through as people they will admit but never get to know. On top of that, they have never taken classes or been all that involved with the institution itself. Therefore, when an alum writes that a student is a perfect fit for a school the person making the decision did not attend, it tends not to have the same neural pathways that click in as it would for someone who spent years as a student and has emotional ties to the school and the students. IIn addition, alums doing interviews tend to be successful people, some of whom are older and have been out of the school for a while. There is a tendency to think that old people don’t really have a good sense of what the atmosphere of the school, in this day and age, really is. And in some cases this is quite accurate. When an alum remembers a school that was single sex when he attended it, it makes it difficult to think they know much about’ fit’ in a way that is all that useful.Demographics and background also come into play on the part of admission officers’ cognitive make-up. Many admission officers are not necessarily the product of upper middle class upbringing, but the majority of people doing interviews tend to be. Why is this important? Well, say an alum writes how he (or she) could see this student being a great addition to the Greek system. A statement like this assumes the person reading the rec will be receptive to a comment like this. It is not always so by any stretch. A Greek reference may actually have negative connotations to some people in admission who perceive these groups as bastions of privilege and exclusion. And again, there is some evidence that the composition of dining clubs and Greek organizations is not anywhere near as diverse as the student body as a whole and very often not at all like the composition of current admission offices. For those who think the Greek system is detrimental to education, having an alum who mentions his great days in the fraternity will not often be given much credence and in some cases it will hurt the student. I say this based on conversations and exchanges with people in admission.As with all things in the world, our upbringing, our race, our class shape our thinking. It is essential, however, to keep in mind that colleges are evaluated as diverse or not by looking to those rubrics which emphasize group identity rather than individual quirks and voices. Schools are not rewarded in the press or anyplace else for having incredibly diverse groups of students who are all from one race or class (I think many would argue-- possibly persuasively-- that it is not possible to have an incredibly diverse group of people from one group, since diverse means, for some: race, class, demographics rather than individual life experiences; others might argue that a place like Stuyvescent High school, which is well over 70% Asian, still contains an immense amount of experiential and, demographic diversity--If we don’t just countAsians as all alike. And while we ourselves may not perceive Asians as all alike, the only percentage that matters in the glance of a school's profile, in terms of ethnic diversity, is the percetage of any given race. So whether a student has Indian, Chinese, Vietnamese etc. heritage, they are all lumped under one percentage. Pragmatically, in the current way admission works, if a student is a part of one group, they will automatically be perceived as adding to the mix; in others, even with a great individual story to tell, it will not be to the advantage of the institution in the rankings or among peers to add yet another upper middle class white kid who does not have top testing and a boatload of APs. And it's even worse for Asians.Finally, for this part of my answer, it needs to be re-emphasized that interviews are not all that important. One other reason I will cite here has to do with what philosophers call a ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’. If a school has huge numbers of alumni interviewers located around the world, it will be very difficult to impose quality control. Schools don’t have the budget to fly off to many places and train each interviewer. Instead, they often train the leaders of an alumni group in a particular city and let that person teach those who have volunteered in the region. The school supplies text and rubrics but because of the holistic nature of admission and the fear of giving out too much information, these texts tend to be superficial. If they really talked honestly about all that goes on in admission offices there would be a whole lot of discussion going on among alums, some of it positive and some of it not.Instead, the generic overview is the path most schools take. As a result, the feedback they get may or may not be all that useful. Not only do some students interview well, some interviewers also conduct great interviews. Others do not. Given the range of people doing the interviews, and the lack of specific guidelines, it makes sense to downplay their overall importance. On the other hand, a person who has done interviews for years and has a great working relationship with the admission office will have far more sway in an admission decision than another interviewer who has no record or connections.Finally, interviews are important for one other often overlooked reason: they keep alums in touch with the school and touches are useful for future fundraising and outreach of various sorts. In other words, schools sometimes use interviews more for the recruitment of alums than the students themselves. This is not what schools would admit in public, but behind closed doors this type of marketing and development office outreach is part of a larger strategic plan.Interview PrepI have already written a great deal and not really addressed your question, but as I said, knowing the context helps put things in perspective. And I would say the same is true for the students themselves. Should what a student says to an alum at Princeton be the same as to an alum at MIT be the same? I would argue the answer is no. For students interviewing right now for jobs on Wall Street, anyone with half a clue knows they had better have done some pretty deep data mining before they step in the room. They need to know the company and if possible, know the facts about the interviewer.Once a student receives the name of the interviewer, immediately Google them. Find out every fact you can. See if there are common data sets (and at some level there always are). These will be places where the person is much more likely to respond in a positive way as you both have certain tribal ties (a phrase I borrow from anthropology and evolutionary biology). If your interviewer was a star of his or her Lacrosse team at the college and you are the captain of your team's highly ranked Lacrosse team, then you are already halfway there to having a smoother route to a conversation.I have said this in other places, but I will say it here too. Interviews are best when they are a relaxed conversation. Some interviewers follow a structure of set questions. Some want to meander. It does not really matter as long as the student picks up quickly on this. But here is the sad truth: interviews are forgettable. At least for me. I hate to say this but it is true. There are people I have interviewed that if I was hauled into court the following week and asked what that person was like I could swear on oath I had never met them (unless I consulted notes). This is not so odd or even a sign of early onset Alzheimer’s. Most people say the same things in the same way as everyone else. They are generic. And even then our mind wanders. Really wanders.A glance at the most recent issues of NY Review of Books contains an article by Oliver Sacks on the foibles of memory. One of his most specific memories of his experience in London during the war turns out to be based on a letter rather than real experience. I say this as each of us every millisecond is adjusting our senses and then our conscious thinking to external stimuli. People like Sam Harris would say that this and the internal wiring and experiences means we are essentially robots who are determined to react and act in certain ways. If even some of this is accurate, it means there are stimuli which students can input which will trigger a positive reaction that actually happens faster than consciousness itself. No, this is not some silly hypnotherapy infomercial, but it is possible to play the statistical odds and use data research to find out ways of establishing common ground.Let’s say that you find out that your interviewer is a cognitive scientist. It might prove useful for you to read some articles on the topic, maybe even a book, and then navigate the conversation onto that topic. If you come across as informed, passionate and interested in a topic in which your interviewer is an expert you are much more likely to receive a positive review. To some people what I am proposing may sound like a scam. Actually what it means is that a student may learn a great deal about a topic they did not know much about. It is an educational assignment. It also teaches people how to read others, a skill that often is essential.I think all students should watch the TED talk on no=verbal curs and lies we tell. If you pay attention to body cues you can tell if you have just said something potentially off-putting or potentially interest giving. In other words, a student needs to keenly aware of the world and the words in the immediate moment. You are reading and reacting. And so are they.If all this sounds all too calculated, it isn’t quite as bad as it sounds. If nothing else, I think an interview should be fun. People doing interviews tend to be smart, committed to education, and willing to do unpaid service. Most are not out to test you as much as to let you take the lead in a dance that can be a tango a two step or a simulacrum for an X induced Steve Aoli club mix freestyle. (Probably not the latter, but then it depends on the school and depends on the interviewer.)I have always advised students to take risks in writing and I will say the same might be true in an interview. Let’s say an alum from a school that recently got caught by US news for fudging numbers asks if you have any questions: would you dare to come up with a question about rankings that would be both interesting and challenging? Could the interviewer be offended? You bet. Could they admire your courage you bet. Will they be able to identify you in court the following week either way? You bet.The object of an interview may be for some survival, but I can safely say the best interviews I have had with students are still safely stored in my internal memory base. I can tell you that the conversation—an interview with a student I will blog about in the near future—I had today will not leave me as long as I breathe. This student knew more about why religious unrest in Nigeria will not likely spread in anything close to the same way in Ghana. (If this interests you look at the history of caliphates in Africa).Details and stories. One of several mantras I trot out as often as I can: we are our stories. We all have great stories. I talked with a student last week who said, before a job interview, she had no great stories. She was way wrong. Each of is a subset of one. Or at least that is what I tell a student to become in an interview. You are in possession of details and experiences that would knock the socks off someone. Which story, which approach, is subject to discussion. Or negotiation. Or practice.PracticePractice is the most important thing most can do to improve at any skill. It is no different when it comes to interviews. Most do not have the time to devote the 10,000 hours Gladwell cites to become an outlier in anything. So for those who want a few hints about how to practice effectively, here are a few tips from someone that has put in thousands of hours conducting interviews in various capacities over the years.Find a mentor. A mentor is someone who has experience with interviews. These mentors come in many shapes and forms. A great mentor might be a student who has just been through the alumni (or job or selective student group) interview process him or herself. You should select those students who you deem as winners. Winners are not the ones who get into every school or get 20 job offers, but success is certainly one way to help you arrow the field of people who seem to know what works. But, and this is a big but, the approach another person takes should have worked because they found a way to make themselves a subset of one instead of following a rulebook. To put this into a different linguistic register, you should find a way of learning how their voice works in the same way people do when learning to write effectively. Part of successful writing is the content and part is the form. A student needs to work on both analogous parts for an interview.For example, one of the things that the national business fraternity, AKPsi does with its new members is to teach them interview basics. And by this I don; mean answering question. Instead, they start from the round up. They evaluate the way a student walks in the room, the eye contact, and the handshake. And I think they are absolutely right for doing so. Studies with what I would call scientifically based data demonstrate that humans make instant classifications when meeting someone. This helped for survival in hunter-gatherer days and it still helps, sometimes, in a world in which we are meeting endless streams of people in life. Friend or foe might be the rubric.We all have an aura. We have all met people who command the room. And we have all met people who seem to want to do be invisible. Is it possible to teach an invisible man to command a room? Maybe not, as we are genetically wired ad have years of life training that largely form who we are by the age of 17. But practice works. A dead fish handshake is not something hard to change. A smile and confident eye contact are easy too.By the time the formal greetings are over the person doing the interviewing has already both consciously and unconsciously made a huge number of assessments. Those first 20 seconds are, like the opening of a commercial or an episode of a half hour show, going to determine if what follows will be entertaining. Mentally, an interviewer may have already revved up for something fun or already be thinking about dinner and kids and who knows what else.One of the brightest students I ha even met had a verbal tic. It’s one many people had. She said like a lot. Once again, studies show that in stress situations and when we are trying to create a tiny bit of time between thoughts, we often insert verbal tics. I have noticed among the people I talk to today that the once quite ubiquitous “uhm’ has been replaced by ‘like’ or a few other words. With the student I mentioned she was at a disadvantage since English was not her first language. The likes slowed things down to let her choose good words but the like itself served as a barrier to coming across as a genius level person. So every time I would talk with her and she used like I held up my hand and let her know. One. One finger, two, three etc. At first it made her incredibly self-conscious and she stumbled again and again. But with practice at home and with others she successfully excised like (for the most part). She has the job she dreamed of (although those who head up to the top shops on Wall Street sometimes find that the image of being a big banker is not always quite as glamorous or interesting as one had imagined it to be.If fellow students are sometimes good mentors, those people in career services offices or who work in guidance offices in high schools, or teachers who help students prepare for interviews with students trying to earn academic scholarships can all be great. They too will give basic advice like I have just given. They too will impart useful knowledge. Seek them out. Be assertive. The latter two things are skill sets that people look for in students and employees. It is good practice to reach out and network.Students should spend lots of time talking to adults. It is great practice. The language a student uses with adults should not be the demotic argot of current phrases passed effortlessly among peers as code for entry into the young adult club.Everyone knows this but knowing and doing are often at odds.Studies show that single children often are better at thins like interviews simply because they have spend countless hours around a dinner table talking to grown-ups. I have interviewed hundreds of students from China and I can say that the one child policy has prepared many of these studens well to feel completely at ease with an adult even in a second language. At one of the magnet schools I visited in China I conducted 14 interviews in a day and I can still remember almost all of them. They were, as a group, the most impressive set of interviews I have ever been a part of. I asked about this and they said the school had trained them to interview; in addition, they had practice with their parents by doing ‘interviews’ over dinner. To some this sounds like really hard work. For others, it becomes something they enjoy and then pursue. The cliché take pride in your work applies to learning interview skills.When I work with students on interviews I make it clear from the outset that I have absolutely no filter. I will ask anything and expect an answer. I tell students that if anything makes them uncomfortable, then it is their responsibility to speak up. If this sounds like a worst nightmare scenario it usually isn’t. I don’t have time to spend on things that anyone can learn from a guidebook or a basic overview on interviews.The other night a student I have worked with introduced me to her friends as the guy whose first question to her was: “Are you smart?” I ask this a lot. For several years, I would always ask, in part for sociological reasons: “Are some cultures better than others?” If the answer is no, then I challenge this with every rhetorical tool I have. If the answer is yes, same thing. It is not often about looking for right answers; instead, it is looking for a person’s ability to defend a position wish detail and substance rather than mouthing spoon fed platitudes or set answers.Today, I asked two students I talked to from Central and South America about the cultural practice of saying yes to things and then not following up on them. They took no offense, but simply said this is a common cultural practice. Saying no outright is perceived as rude, so they say yes even when it means maybe or no. For those doing business in many parts of the world having the people on the ground fill you in on things like this are what make interviewing a data treasure trove. I learn more from my conversations with students about educational systems and the inside story of schools and much much more than if I simply consulted books or read websites. For those who are training people to do interviews it is a great opportunity to expand your database by asking a wide range of questions.I realize I have broken the golden rule of interviews. I have gone on way too long. There is much more to say, but I will stop here and hope that you or others might ask follow up questions. I apologize for going on so long, but the question helped me to think a little more systematically about the process. Again, thank you for asking the question.