It’s hard to believe that we just released the decisions for the Class of 2026! Thank you for all of your help with interviews as we continue to shift how we engage with prospective WashU student
Let’s start with an important message: We love reading APAP interview reports! Your thoughtfulness in these write-ups reflects your engagement with students in your interview conversations, and really does impact some of our decision-making. It’s also always fun (as an alum and long-time admission officer at WashU) to see familiar names—classmates, alumni…and dare I say some of you whom I recruited to WashU when you were in high school!
We do hope the interview reports are enjoyable opportunities to reflect on your interview conversations. Part of the redesign of the questions was to prompt thinking in a way that standardized the information these reports provided. A couple of quick notes:
- Lengths vary, and that’s OK!
- We focus more on the content of the report as opposed to the numeric rating.
- The checkboxes help us align some of the qualities we look for in students’ applications. Of course, there are things outside of these checkboxes that we really value! Include them in your write-ups.
At the end of the day, the conversation with the student is ultimately more important than the interview report. We appreciate how you strive to make these informal and to reduce the intimidation of a formal interview. Many colleges have moved entirely to alumni interviews and do not request feedback through a form as we do. While we still find value in these forms, we also consider how APAP interviews are only available to certain students across the country and world, and factor that into our contextual evaluation of students’ candidacies.
As we work to make WashU and its admission policies more accessible and equitable, we are proud to work alongside so many wonderful APAP volunteers. Thank you for what you do to help recruit students, and for sharing your own WashU stories with them!