What to Wear to a College Interview
Dress modestly, neatly and with sense for the season. Girls should wear dressy slacks or a
knee-length or longer skirt and pantyhose, dressy shoes, tall boots, or dressy sandals
depending on the season and the weather, and a modest top, either a knit or woven fabric. No
midriffs or navels should show. Wear clothes that fit you. There is nothing worse than bulges
that pour out over too-tight clothing. A good outfit for agirl might be a black dressy silk skirt or
black dress slacks, with a royal blue, fitted shirt with 3/4 length sleeves, black hosiery, and black
heeled shoes. Another girl we saw at an interview in the summer looked great in a floor-length
light blue, clean A-line denim skirt, a white sleeveless top with an eyelet pattern, and attractive
clean, leather sandals. Both are good examples of what to wear.
Guys can wear khakis or dress slacks and a button down shirt and tie, with a sport coat or
dressy sweater if the weather is cold. A suit is not necessary. Both genders should avoid jeans
for a college interview. Girls, if you wear a fitted blouse that is cut to be worn untucked that is
fine. However if either gender wears a dress shirt or oxford cloth shirt that is designed to be
worn tucked in, for heaven’s sake, tuck it in! If you wear slacks with visible belt loops, definitely
wear a belt. No droopy pants and no sports jerseys. You are not trying out for a sports team,
rap group, American Idol or a beauty pageant. A little bit of jewelry is fine, especially if you
made it yourself (you can talk about how you made it in jewelry class as an example of your
work), but nothing over the top. You want your school record and your personality to be the
stars of the interview, not your clothes or jewelry, right? The clothing and jewelry should be
clean and neat yet fade into the general background. Do not use perfume or after shave since
some admissions officers will be allergic to fragrances. Shower and wash your hair the night
before or the day of the interview. Use deodorant. Be squeaky clean and tidy.
When you interview on campus you will have made an appointment at least a month in advance
and will know the rest of your schedule on campus for that day because admissions officers will
try to see that you get a student-guided tour of the campus and perhaps also a group
informational session for parents and students combined.
If you interview and take a student-led tour on the same day you may wonder what to wear to
accommodate both activities. If you interview first and take the tour second, wear your better
clothes for the interview and then change into jeans and Nikes for the tour, since tours involve a
good bit of walking around campus. Admissions officers do not care what you wear on the tour.
They prefer that you be comfortable. If the tour comes first you can wear comfortable tour
clothes and then leave the tour a few minutes early if it is time for your interview, and change
into your more formal interview outfit in the admissions office or student union lavatory. Or some
students just go ahead and wear their interview clothes if the tour comes first. It is up to you.
Other students will be doing all these things on the same day too, so you will not be the only
one dressing for different appointments and activities that day.
If you wear new leather shoes to your interview and plan to wear them on your tour, put band
aids on the places where the shoes rub before you put on your hosiery or socks. This will
protect your feet. On a tour of three colleges, our daughter wore new shoes to her first interview
and tour, and developed nasty blisters that hurt and bled all the way through two more college
visits. Ugh! Take Band-aids and anti-bacterial cream and be prepared. Also, if you intend to
eat in your good clothes prior to your interview, take along an extra shirt and tie or blouse just in
case you dribble food on your clothes.
Also bring rain gear, bottled water, and a camera or videocam and allow a friend or sibling to
videotape or take photos while you look around and concentrate on what the tour guide says. If
you are too shy to ask questions (most high school students are too insecure to want to appear
unknowledgeable in front of strange peers), tell your folks to ask your questions for you. We
notice that few students ever ask questions on tours, and often parents seem strangely
uninformed about campuses as well. Do your research and have questions ready! This may be
the only time you get to ask them before your teen must make a decision about where he/she
will go to college, and you may never get to walk around campus with such thoroughness again.
Likewise, an interviewer will also be able to tell whether you have done your research by the
questions you, the student, ask at the end of an interview. You do not want to apply to a college
just because your Uncle Fred went there, or Mom and Dad are pressuring you to apply there. If
they sense you are a bad fit for their college admissions officers may suggest you apply
elsewhere in addition to applying to their college (if for example, the subject you wish to major in
is not even offered at their college, in which case you are just wasting everyone’s time.)
However, usually admissions officers are very enthusiastic about their college and paint very
rosy pictures of how well you would fit in (how do they know? That is up to you to determine.
They do not even know you!). Their job is to generate applications so they can reject as many
students as possible to raise their selectivity rating and thereby appear make the college appear
to be an academic powerhouse. A student who has researched the college well beforehand will
create a lasting good impression. You can find many of the questions admissions officers will
ask you elsewhere on this web site, so take a look at them and begin formulating some answers
in your mind that you’d give beyond the typical yes or no.
Thank-You Letters after College Interviews
Write a thank-you letter upon your return home from each interview whether with an admissions
officer or a local alumna. This courtesy helps the interviewer remember you in a positive light.
Keep a template letter in a computer file at home, and simply plug in the correct heading with
the interviewer’s name and address. It also helps to add a little extra personalized sentence,
such as, “Thank you for telling me about Gianelli’s Restaurant in Collegetown. We ate there
and enjoyed our dinner.”
To send a thank you letter you have to get the interviewer’s name and address at the time of the
interview. Either ask the interviewer directly for that information (they may give you their college
business card), or ask their receptionist for it. This business card goes in your application file
for that college. Do not neglect sending a thank you letter. The interviewer has given you his or
her time and done you a courtesy. You will reap benefits from both the interview and the thank
you letter. We are convinced our son got into his dream college because a local alumna
interviewer, a surgeon, was very impressed with him and wrote an outstanding letter of
recommendation to the admissions office which supported and enhanced our son’s scholastic
and extracurricular record.