Well, let's see. My interview at Shenandoah was completely different than Drexel. First of all, Shenandoah told me to expect to be there between 4-5 hours. My interview was at 8 am, which made for a very long day (I had to work 4-midnight at the library, and its a 3 hour car trip home...). Anyway, there were about 50 people in my interview. Shenandoah was bringing in 4 groups of interviewees over a 2 day period, which by my calculations means they interviewed approximately 200 people.
The way Shenandoah accepts students is, they offer acceptance to 40 people, and then have a maybe group, and finally a no group. The "maybe group" is ranked in the order in which Shenandoah wants to accept them. We were told this is always changing, as grades come in and they find out more about us. Once a student receives an acceptance letter, he or she has 30 days to either accept or decline the offer of admission. If a student decides to decline the invitation, Shenandoah then goes to the next person on their "maybe" list. This continues until they get 40 people who accept admission. As I was talking with some of the students, I found out that this can go up until a week before school starts. This seems crazy to me, but it does make sense in some ways. The school can control exactly the caliber of student they offer admission to and also make sure they get the number of people they want, no more, no less.
Ok, now the interview. This interview was a lot tougher than the Drexel interview. I was in the group with the first interviewees at 9am. (Interviews were 25 minutes long with a 5 minute break for the interviewer to make notes) I had one professor and one student in my interview. They took turns asking (firing) questions. I could definitely tell that the interviewers were looking for answers at some points. Some of the questions they asked...
How would you handle a group situation?
What would you do if a person was clearly not doing their share in the group?
How would you handle a patient who is clearly not doing their home exercise program?
What would you do if a patient came to you with a prescription from a doctor for PT, but you believed that the patient may be injured somehow due to treatment?
In typical interview fashion, I was allowed to ask questions at the end. This is always my weakness, because I'm more apt to ask questions during the actual interview, than to save all my questions for the end.
After the interview was over, we were led back to the room with the rest of the interviewees. It really felt like a holding pen for livestock. The tension in the room was palpable, but I was relieved to be done with my actual interview. During the waiting time, we were given a tour of the facility by students, and had a time to ask questions to both current students and prospective students. I really had a good time during this because there was no more pressure on me, and I could ask whatever I wanted. However, I was always aware that the interview could actually still be going on. There could have been someone planted in the room just to look and see what we were up to, and how we were handling ourselves in a big group of people. I was pretty excited when it was all over. If they had offered me a spot right then, I probably would have taken it.
Now, I have to take sometime to think about this decision, and weigh my options. I'm not sure exactly how I'm going to do it, but I'll be updating this blog as I move forward in my process...
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