Prospective students applying to Northwestern will no longer have the opportunity to participate in alumni interviews as part of the application process.
“Demand for interviews increasingly outpaces alumni capacity,” the Office of Undergraduate Admission wrote in an email to the Alumni Admission Council in July.
The AAC is a global network of alumni who help represent NU in their communities. Prior to this year, members reached out to prospective students for alumni interviews as part of the application process. Beginning this admissions cycle, prospective students can connect with AAC members through a new “Alumni Conversations” program, but conversations are meant to “recruit prospective students rather than evaluate applicants under review,” according to the email.
Also new this year, students who are looking to add more “candid voice” to their application will be able to film an optional video between 60 and 90 seconds, according to the admissions website.
There are now eight schools in the U.S. News & World Report’s top 20 schools, including NU, that do not have alumni interviews as part of the admissions process.
“My understanding always was that the purpose of the alumni interviews was to give students an opportunity to share more of themselves that might not come across in the paperwork, transcript, grades or essay, and give students a more open forum to discuss their passions or share interesting parts of their personal story,” former alumni interviewer Amy Buckman (Medill ’86) said.
Buckman said she conducted around three dozen alumni interviews for NU in her roughly 20 years as a member of the AAC.
She added she “understands why alumni feedback can be a little fraught” due to implicit bias on the part of the interviewer. Buckman said she thinks this change is in the applicants’ best interest.
Removing alumni interviews is just one change NU made to its application process in recent years. Starting in the 2023-24 admissions cycle, the University changed its essay requirement in response to the Supreme Court barring universities from considering race as an admissions factor last June.
Since 2020, the University has remained test-optional and has employed a holistic review process when reading applications.
IvyWise College Admissions Counselor Carolyn Pippen said that having fewer requirements is helpful for students who don’t have as many resources during the college application process.
However, she added that these changes can act as a “double-edged sword.”
“Now, students are applying to 10, 15, 20 schools because they’re getting more support and because the process is more streamlined,” Pippen said. “We’ve created this frenetic nature where there aren’t more students and there aren’t fewer schools, but the way the math is working out, it’s making it feel much more cutthroat.”
In 2013, NU received less than 33,000 applications. Ten years later, NU received more than 52,000 applications. Despite the growth in applicants, NU has not increased the number of students it admits.
Kevin Krebs (Communication ’92, Medill ’95) said he has carried out “a couple dozen” alumni interviews since graduating from NU. Krebs is the founder and managing director of HelloCollege, a college planning company dedicated to guiding students and parents through the college admissions process. He said he believes that eliminating alumni interviews is beneficial to applicants.
“Unequivocally, I think it’s a pleasant change,” Krebs said. “It takes one less stressful piece of the equation out of it for the kids. I think the way they’re structuring it now — with these glimpse videos and these alumni conversations — is hopefully going to have a better impact.”
Clarification: A previous version of this article stated that interviews were not considered in the 2023-24 admissions cycle due to an error in the University’s Common Data Set. This article has since been updated to accurately reflect that alumni interviews were considered through last year’s admissions cycle.
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