It is grad school interview season in North America. Amusing how esteemed social psychologists through all social psychology knowledge out of the window when approaching this topic. Despite interviews having no benefits for estimating students' future performance, many favor them
"I want to see if the student is a good fit", "I want to screen out 'weirdos'" are common arguments. Arguments that are ad-hoc, ignore the situation (full day of interviews), and rely of idiosyncratic preferences
"I want to know if the student is really really smart" is another argument. Apparently, GPA and GREs are not enough. Apparently, social psychologists are expert judges of IQ, which is apparently the key to students success.
"I want a student who knows what they want in graduate school" - really? how many of us knew from day one what we wanted to do in graduate school? Or stayed on the same topic we started with? Is it always desirable or diagnostic of a good student?
There are so many things that are wrong with the interview and IQ-focused approach to admissions. First, it neglects motivations and the ideas that performance in graduate school depends on a wide range of factors beyond student's "g."
Second, it makes an assumption that performance on a super stressful interview day is indicative of performance in graduate school, or indicative of prospective student's true self (whatever it may mean).
Most interestingly, it provides a beautiful example how one may be tempted to undervalue baserate and other diagnostic info in favor of personal "insights" during a judgment process.
