Use 7: To Get into College or Graduate School
As noted in Chapter 1, a properly targeted portfolio can give you a sig-
nificant advantage if you are competing for admission to a school that
interviews its applicants. The items in your portfolio can bring to life
and make credible the things you say about yourself in your written ap-
plication. And the fact that you have gone to the effort of assembling a
portfolio to bring to an interview conveys the impression that you are
strongly motivated, well organized, and “have your act together,”so to
speak—provided, of course, that the items you show from your portfo-
lio do not undermine or contradict statements you have made in your
written application! Here are some further things to consider.Learn about the P.E.A.K.S. the school particularly favors and likes
to develop. Talk to someone closely associated with the school about the
P.E.A.K.S. that are most valued in candidates for admission and the
particular P.E.A.K.S. that the school prides itself on being able to de-
velop. Ideally, you should talk to someone in the admissions depart-
ment prior to your interview. But you can also learn a lot about valued
P.E.A.K.S. by talking to successful students, professors, and recent
graduates. This step really should be done prior to sending in your ap-
plication, as it will help you decide if this school would be a good fit for
you.
Use your portfolio to establish your distinct identity.You should in-
clude documents that demonstrate P.E.A.K.S. that are clearly valued
by the school. But there should also be a focus to your portfolio that es-
tablishes a clear identity for you. You want to be remembered in a pos-
itive way after the interview is over, and this is most likely to happen
if you can present a set of items that establishes you as a certain kind
of person who can make a certain kind of contribution. If you want to
be remembered as being a natural leader, then make sure you have a
set of documents that demonstrates this quality. If you have a special
interest that you have developed, include three or more items that
demonstrate your interest. Or, if you have a personal characteristic like
resourcefulness or persistence in the face of adversity, be prepared to
prove it. You can have several areas of concentration or themes in your
portfolio, but if there is no distinctive way of summing up what you are
presenting, you can’t expect to get a forceful endorsement from an in-
terviewer.
Try to “stay on message”when presenting your portfolio. Since your
goal is to have the interviewer be able to sum you up in a very positive
way in a few sentences, you should try to show as many items as you
can that support the distinct identity that you are trying to establish.
You will, of course, want to be responsive to the questions you are
asked. And you don’t want to be so focused on the points you are trying
to make that you are boringly repetitive. But it’s not a bad thing to be
remembered as being passionate about your interests.
If you are very confident of your portfolio and most of the items are
self-explanatory, you should bring along an extra copy of your portfolio
that you can give to your interviewer as a way of keeping you in his
mind.Chapter 7: Getting That Raise and Other Important Uses for Portfolios 109