Monday, March 05, 2007

My Trip of 2 On-site Interviews in The US - Part II

I droped by the school S after conducting the on-site interviews with school R. I received an email invitation during the interviews with school F two weeks ago.

The interview was conducted by 5 professors in the meeting room. The questions they asked were very diffirent from those asked at school R. The director of the PhD program asked some tough questions in the beginning, such as what data should be collected if I would like to measure a company's performance. After I squeezed a rough answer, he asked "ok, what else?" Well, I totally had no idea this time. Then he said, "how about tax?" I nodded, and the 5 professors began to discuss on this blah blah blah.....as a seminar began. Honestly, I learned a lot from their discussion and enjoyed listening to their conversations, but this interview was really a tough one to me, especially as an international applicant.

The professor told me that they had received 14 applicants this year and planed to take in 2 while interviewing 4. Great, I have a chance of 1/2. When asked about my motivation to be a professor, I said that I liked the academia life. Then I was interupted by the professor, "life? There is no life in the academia. Look at Professor XXX. He doesn't even have a wife!" OMG! Professor XXX looked like over 55 already.

After the interview, I was also invited to talk with the current doctoral students. No lunch invitation.

The financial aid provided is very generous, compared to other schools I am applying to. The professor is very famous in this field and seems very strict. I am quite sure that I can get a very good placement if I graduate from this school. The question is not whether I can get admitted, but whether I can graduate.

1 comment:

dreamer said...

Thankfully my interviews thus far have been much less stressful than yours. They mostly covered some aspects of my profiles and briefly touch on my research interests. But never in such depth.