How should you prepare for a college interview?

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Jerome A. Cole, MA
Director of College Counseling, The Edmund Burke School
coleecs.googlepages.com/home  
(301) 625-5066

Jerome A. Cole, M.A., is the Director of College Counseling for the Edmund Burke school in Washington, D.C. and the founder of Cole Educational Consulting Services (Cole ECS.) He has worked with students and families for over seven years to help them plan and strategize for college. As a college counselor at Burke, an independent college preparatory high school founded in 1968, Mr. Cole oversees a program that is designed to support students and families as they go through the selection and admission process for college. Mr. Cole advises over 100 students each year in a small academically challenging environment where every senior is expected to apply to and enroll in college. Prior to Burke, he was a school counselor at Bethesda-Chevy Chase high school in Montgomery County, Maryland. He has successfully counseled hundreds of students and helped them prepare for admission to a variety of schools such as: American University, Clark-Atlanta University, Davidson College, George Washington University, Harvard University, Pitzer College, Stanford University, Temple University, and the University of Maryland at College Park, to highlight just a few. He established the consulting firm Cole ECS to provide students and families with the necessary information and support to make the best choice for college. Cole ECS defines the best choice as the optimal learning and social environment to ensure a student’s holistic success, culminating in on-time or early graduation and desirable post-graduate options. Mr. Cole earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from Catholic University, and then went on to obtain a Master of Arts in Education and Human Development from George Washington University. He is certified as a school counselor and is a member of the National Association of College Admissions Counselors (NACAC).

How should you prepare for a college interview?

In this video, Jerome Cole tells you everything you need to know to complete the perfect college application and have a great college interview.

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Speaker: How should you prepare for a college interview?

Jerome Cole: I think that the key to preparing for a college interview is -- there are several. I think the first one is to practice; to do as many interviews, if you will, mock interviews or role-plays before you actually do the interview and there are several ways to go about doing that. I think one is to approach your school as your school counselor or teacher, if in fact they would agree to sit down and help you prepare for an interview, to do a practice, if you will. So I think that's the one thing you can do.

The other thing that you can do, which a lot of students probably are not aware of is you can actually visit a local college. Some places in your immediate area, call them up and say, hey! I would like to come over and do an interview; I would like to come over and do a tour. They will agree to do that and use that, if you will, as a practice.

Before you do your practice interviews, what you want to do is you want to do a little research. So the second step is to go through the school website; go get your college guidebook and get some basic facts about the school that you are applying to. You want to know, for example, a location, how many students are enrolled on campus, what measures they offer, just some general facts about it. So have some knowledge, some insights into the university.

So I think preparation and then practicing are the two keys to have a successful interview.

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