When Alumni Interviewers Screw Up, Things Get Weird

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At first, the message seemed harmless. On November 8, dozens of high-school seniors in the San Diego area received an email from an alumnus of Harvard University. “Thank you for applying,” it began. “We look forward to meeting you this Sunday.”

The recipients had signed up for one-on-one interviews with Harvard graduates, which would take place four days later in La Jolla. The email described the event as an opportunity for alumni “to get to know you better and help advocate for your admission.” The message included logistical details and a plea for punctuality. It also included something strange: personal information for more than 80 local applicants.

Sent by accident, the attached file listed each teenager’s name, telephone number, email address, high school, and academic concentration. One column appeared to indicate whether an applicant was a first-generation college applicant. Another column, labeled “iv profile,” contained numerical ratings for several students who had already been interviewed.

The breach of privacy alarmed some students and parents. Soon, telephones were ringing in high schools throughout San Diego. In an interview with The Chronicle, one college counselor described a student who was shaken by the email: “She didn’t want other kids in her class to know she was applying to Harvard, and now students throughout the entire county know.”

The incident underscores the potential hazards of bringing outsiders into the application process. Sure, anyone can commit an email goof. Yet some college counselors and admissions officers have long believed that alumni have no business interviewing students in the first place — and that such interactions often do more harm than good. As much as colleges might cherish the ritual, the benefits to applicants are murky.

“It gives alumni a sense of power that they really don’t have,” said Terri Devine, dean of college counseling at the Francis Parker School in San Diego. “And it makes students jump through a hoop that’s completely unnecessary.”

A handful of other college counselors whose students received the email declined to share their concerns publicly, fearing that they might harm applicants’ chances of getting into Harvard, one of several high-profile institutions that offer alumni interviews. Yet when contacted by The Chronicle, Ms. Devine welcomed the opportunity to discuss what she sees as an outdated practice.

“It’s time for colleges to really examine this more closely,” she said. “I hope it goes away.”

‘Sorry for the Confusion’

The email came from Jim Chenevey, co-chair of the Harvard Club of San Diego’s Schools Committee, which coordinates alumni interviews. In a subsequent message about 12 hours later, he asked recipients to delete to the “confidential” file he had mistakenly sent. “Sorry for the confusion,” he wrote.

When Ms. Devine saw Mr. Chenevey’s initial email, the disclosure of personal data wasn’t the only thing that troubled her. Ironically, the same message that revealed applicants’ private information invited them to share even more of it. “Please complete the attached Interview Questionnaire,” the message said, “print it out, and bring it with you.”

The three-page questionnaire asked about academic interests, languages spoken, how students spent the past two summers, and the books they had read outside school. Applicants were also prompted to share their ACT/SAT scores, grade-point average, and class rank. Although the email described the form as “optional,” any teenager hoping to get into Harvard, Ms. Devine said, would consider it mandatory.

Was another round of questions necessary, though? Harvard’s admissions office had not seen or approved the questionnaire, which apparently went beyond what the university instructs alumni to ask for. Interviewers are encouraged to inquire about academic interests, extracurricular pursuits — things that might reveal students’ personal qualities.

Still, there are definite no-no’s, according to two former Harvard admissions officers who did not want to be named because they still work in the field. Harvard, they said, tells alumni chapters not to ask applicants for grades and test scores. “But some of them do it anyway,” one told The Chronicle. “The last thing you want to do is sit down with 17-year-olds and ask ‘What are your grades and test scores?’ It immediately puts them on the defensive.”

Harvard officials declined to comment on the incident. On Monday the university forwarded The Chronicle a copy of a message that admissions officials recently sent to the chairs of its alumni groups. “We were deeply concerned to learn that some applicants’ information was inadvertently released by our alumni to applicants in the San Diego area in the course of arranging interviews,” it said. “Harvard appreciates the private nature of the information that our applicants choose to provide to us.” The officials also said they had made unspecified “adjustments” to information that alumni could access through an online portal.

As of Monday night, Harvard apparently had not apologized to applicants whose information had been released. Mr. Chenevey, chief executive officer of EarthLite and Living Earth Crafts, in Vista, Calif., did not respond to voicemail messages left at his home and office earlier this week.

The interviews in La Jolla proceeded as scheduled, on November 12. Not all students went home happy, though. The next day, a Harvard applicant came to Ms. Devine’s office and complained about the experience. The student told her that the interviewer had griped about the length of the responses to the questionnaire. “You wrote too much,” the teenager recalled being told. “It made my eyes hurt.”

How Alumni Interviews Help

As the volume of applications keeps growing, as the number of email solicitations keeps multiplying, the admissions process can feel downright impersonal to everyone involved. Admissions officers can’t go to every town and meet with every applicant. At their best, face-to-face conversations are a refreshingly human antidote to all the numbers colleges use to assess students.

Despite the challenges they might pose, alumni interviews can prove helpful to applicants and colleges alike, Christoph O. Guttentag believes. “Applicants often appreciate being able to present themselves as a person, rather than just as an accumulation of documents, recommendations, and essays,” Mr. Guttentag, dean of undergraduate admissions at Duke University, said on Monday. “For admissions offices, it can be a chance to learn about what moves, motivates, or excites a student, from someone interested in giving a student a platform to talk about themselves.”

Typically, alumni interviewers send admissions offices short write-ups of each interview, often including a numerical rating. Those conversations are similar enough to application essays: Most of the time, what an applicant says or writes won’t really sway an admissions decision one way or the other.

Yet for some applicants, they matter. Interview reports are especially helpful when the rest of the application doesn’t point to a particular verdict. “There are times when the insight of an interview highlights some particularly salient aspect of the file that helps the committee in making a decision,” Mr. Guttentag said. A strong applicant whose file makes it all the way to an admission committee meeting can probably assume that his interview report will be read.

An applicant can’t assume, however, that every alumni interviewer has received any real training or guidance. Preparation for graduates engaging with students varies from campus to campus, according to admissions officers who’ve worked at multiple colleges. Duke recently revised the training module for its 6,000 interviewers. It includes explanatory videos, infographics, guidelines, and expectations for behavior (“do not be alone with a single minor,” “do not invite individual minors to your home”). Not every college is so thorough; even those that are can’t police what hundreds or thousands of interviewers might say or do.

Good things can happen when graduates interview applicants, says Emmi Harward, executive director of the Association of College Counselors in Independent Schools. A former college counselor herself, she has known students who developed close (but appropriate) relationships with their interviewers, who sometimes helped them get internships later on. She recalled an alumna who went out of her way to help a minority student hoping to attend medical school.

Still, the negatives outweigh the positives, Ms. Harward says: “Colleges don’t realize how this can backfire. When something goes wrong in an interview, it can take a college right off the student’s list.”

‘That Guy’s Such a Creep’

Things do go wrong. Most college counselors have stories about middle-aged men who invited female applicants to their homes or offices, who made inappropriate comments about their clothing, and even some who asked them out on dates.

Ms. Devine, at Francis Parker, recalled an alumnus of another Ivy League university who took photographs of several applicants he interviewed. “Girls were really uncomfortable with him,” the counselor recalled. “One came into my office afterward, saying, ‘That guy’s such a creep.’”

Gretchen Gleason, director of college counseling at the Bishop’s School, in San Diego, recalled an alumnus of one Ivy League college who repeatedly contacted an applicant he had interviewed, asking for help with a project. “The kid felt really uncomfortable, but he didn’t want me to contact the university,” Ms. Gleason said. Finally, his parents agreed to let her to do so.

Although highly selective colleges have become racially and socioeconomically diverse, alumni interviewers tend to be white and affluent. That can lead to awkward moments, said Ari Worthman, director of college counseling at Lakeside School, in Seattle. He recalled a low-income student who sat down with the graduate of a big-name college a couple of years ago. I’m so glad you’re looking at our school, the applicant was told, because we don’t normally interview students like you.

An admissions officer from a prestigious college once told Mr. Worthman that one of his top students had been denied, in part, because the alumni interviewer found him “really quiet and hard to engage.” The counselor knew that the student’s cultural background helped explain why he was often reluctant to talk about himself.

“A lot of these interviewers aren’t the most culturally competent people,” Mr. Worthman said. “If there was actually good training and more accountability, I could see alumni interviews being an awesome opportunity to connect with students. But the reality is that’s not what’s happening.”

Before interviews, Mr. Worthman helps students prepare for “inappropriate” questions. Perhaps the most common one is, “Where else are you applying?”

Two years ago, the National Association for College Admission Counseling changed its ethical guidelines to forbid colleges to ask applicants the same question on applications. Yet many counselors say alumni — who might not have even heard of the admission association — ask it all the time.

Perhaps the bottom line is that alumni interviews, like colleges themselves, are many things at once. Sure, they’re a chance for adults who care about their college and community to peer into young people’s hearts. For many colleges, they’re also an enrollment-management tool, a way to measure an applicant’s interest in attending if accepted.

And they’re a means of keeping alumni happy and engaged, which might make them more likely to donate to their alma mater. Moreover, some graduates know that serving their college as an alumni interviewer year after year makes a strong impression, which certainly can’t hurt when their own children apply.

“In the end,” Mr. Worthman said, “the question is, Who does this really serve?”

Eric Hoover writes about admissions trends, enrollment-management challenges, and the meaning of Animal House, among other issues. He’s on Twitter @erichoov, and his email address is eric.hoover@chronicle.com.