No Shoes? No Problem for This College Interview

For her college interview, Avery Cullinan put on her best outfit but didn't bother with shoes. She sat in her living room, smiled into her computer's webcam and told an admissions officer more than 800 miles away that Wake Forest University was right for her.

"It's hard to part with money for a half-hour interview," said Cullinan, who avoided a costly trip from her home in Newburyport, Mass., thanks to the pilot program at Wake Forest. She was later accepted to the Winston-Salem, N.C., school.

The online interview was part of a push that started in May at the university. Admissions director Martha Allman said she eventually wants to give each applicant — more than 9,000 of them each year — a more individualized review before inviting them to Winston-Salem as part of the school's 1,200-student freshmen class.

Although a new process at the undergraduate level, webcam technology has been used for years by at least a dozen graduate programs — including Pennsylvania State University, the University of Georgia and Arizona State University — to interview prospective students.

David Hawkins, public policy director for the National Association for College Admission Counseling, said he expects the trend to grow.

"Looking ahead, colleges will try to pursue the kind of technology that will create a personal approach to the admission process," said Hawkins, noting he was not aware of any school other than Wake Forest offering webcam interviews to undergraduate applicants.

But while colleges and universities have increased their online outreach to a generation raised on the Internet, there are still logistical hurdles to webcam interviews. The most notable, Hawkins said, is that financially strapped students may not have the easiest access to a computer.

"There are some limitations to it," he said. "The technology is still not as widely available in order to make it effective."

But Carrie Marcinkevage, MBA director of admissions at Pennsylvania State's Smeal College of Business — where webcam interviews have been offered for three years — said it's more about schools not being open to change than students not having Internet access.