So, say you are interviewing out of town for one of your top schools with alumni. The arrangement has been a bit weird (decided well before the following - no real contact as if anything you had said to them had been observed).

And you meet with them, say yes to some water. Then they go back to their desk. Then come back, disinterested, tell you a bit about themselves, and ask one or two CV, school questions.

Then, ask you if you have any questions. And cut it off after one. And then, say, express surprise about where you are in the application process, because it must have all changed since they were there (ie - interviews were for all applications then, not screened).

So you are stood outside, 12 minutes of interview later feeling that you may as well have not bothered at all and with a really bad impression about the school.

What do you do:

a) phone the interviewer having calmed from the weird it was and explain you are somewhat unknerved
b) get in touch with adcoms pretty soon and try to explain, best you can, without saying anything negative, that the i/view was stranger than a five legged frog
c) decide you are being overly paranoid and it is all in the stars anyway

hmmm. To be decided by tomorrow, so I can make that hypothetical call to whoever. Say, in an imaginary sense.

Because it isn't real at all. No, honest.

C.

Cheers for the hypothetical advice.

The guy is really quite surprised that the whole principle and process of admissions had changed. That is what makes the scenario odd - that the very short twelve minutes you have had were under a different pretence to how the interview would be valued.

It is possibly the most bizarre thing ever. The story has so many other bizarre nuances.

In this imaginary scenario I don't care so much whether he has recommended or not, just that I would have to wait another 1.5 months knowing that this would be a big part of it.

I recently had a bad experience with my back-up school and I kind of feel like calling up the director of admissions and telling him his operation is complete sh*t, but I suppose I'll wait to see how it pans out before making a commotion.

In your case I would not worry about it because I don't think there's anything you can do. If you call the ad-com and say that you are worried by the short interview, worst case scenario they think you're paranoid and uptight, best-case scenario they apologize and then re-evaluate whether they'll use the interviewer next year. Not a lot of upside I would imagine.