I think they're just alumni interviews. And from what I understand they don't make much of a difference in the application process. I have a friend who used to do these sorts of interviews for Harvard and he expressed similar sentiments, namely that he found it disappointing how the kids he most liked never got in (generally because they were poorer and not as polished as the wealthier kids who got in over them).
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I'm an alumni interviewer for Princeton, and that evaluation metric reads very similar to ours.
I've also experienced the limitations of making an appeals to the admissions committee based on adversity and potential and what the school could do for the student.
My sense is that the alumni interview only really affects the borderline cases or if you give a truly horrific review of the student for one reason or another.
The process selects for a certain mold of person. Diversity happens only within this smaller universe, imo.
> I have a friend who used to do these sorts of interviews for Harvard and he expressed similar sentiments, namely that he found it disappointing how the kids he most liked never got in (generally because they were poorer and not as polished as the wealthier kids who got in over them).
Those are real deserving human beings having their potential limited for lack of upper crust "polish" in modern America. Institutional class discrimination is real.
When I applied to MIT a million years ago, I also had an interview with a local alumnus. Essentially it was just going over to his home one evening and talking about what my plans were and so on. I got to ask him about what the experience there was actually like, etc etc. He was a fairly successful engineer in a big house, which I assumed was an intentional part of the show on their part.
It wasn't an interview in any of the usual senses of the word, really just a meet and chat kind of thing. I had no sense of being evaluated in any meaningful way. More to make sure I wasn't obviously psycho crazy and at least minimally functional, I imagine.