Alumni Schools Committee 

The Alumni Schools Committee (ASC) is an essential adjunct to the Yale Admissions Office and the admissions process.  The individual interview may be the only direct interaction the applicant may have with Yale and the AO has with the applicant. Because of the number of applicants, the AO cannot conduct on-campus interviews of all applicants and the personal interview is an important source of information to Yale in the admissions process.  Each year the ASC conducts interviews of several hundred local students applying for admission to Yale College. Our goal is to ensure that every one of those students has an opportunity to have an interview with a member of the ASC. While there are separate ASC directors for Washington, Maryland, and Virginia, and each area has its own group of interviewers, all three groups coordinate their efforts.  

Volunteers for the ASC are requested to register on the Yale ASC website or notify the Admissions Office of their interest, after which they will be assigned to a local Yale Club ASC. In the fall, members of the Admissions Office staff visit the Washington area and give a presentation to provide information for prospective interviewers. In addition, the ASC website provides guidelines, practices and procedures for interviewers. During the registration and volunteering process, the interviewer commits to how many interviews he or she can conduct.

Beginning in the fall, the ASC director for each area receives a list of high school students applying to Yale and electronically assigns a member of the ASC to conduct each interview. Early Action interviews take place in October and November with an interview report submitted by December 1. Regular admission interviews must be completed and reports filed by February 15. The interviewer arranges the interview directly with the student either virtually or in-person.

The purpose of the interview is:

  • to provide the applicant an opportunity to ask questions about Yale and provide information not contained in the paper application,
  • to humanize Yale and the admissions process, and
  • to give the Admissions Committee the benefit of a personal perspective on the applicant that it cannot obtain from the written materials in the application. 

Interviews generally last no more than an hour and follow no set format, but should not largely focus on academic performance information already available to Yale in the written application. All interviews should, of course, encourage the applicant to ask whatever questions he or she may have about Yale. As soon as reasonable following the interview, the interviewer writes a summary of his or her impressions of the applicant and sends it to the Admissions Office. The interview report becomes a part of the complete admissions file. Along with grades, test scores, and school recommendations, an interview report has become an increasingly significant part of an applicant's file because it is probably the only actual face-to-face information the AO Committee will have and gives the Admissions Committee a wholly different perspective on the applicant. 

The Alumni Schools Committee hosts a reception in April, following announcement of the decisions, for students who have been admitted. 

For more information contact: