Group Interview:
Quite a few people there, most were dressed in business casual or at least not wearing jeans and their PT shoes. Got in line, told them my name and got a name tag. After turning in all my paperwork, sat around and talked to different people for about an hour while everyone else got signed in and paperwork turned in. Healthy mix of all types of people.
First thing was an overview of the program and what they do. After we got a brief on the first event.....team event with Lego pieces. 5-6 people teams with the goal of working together to put a "robot" together. The kicker is at your table nobody can leave to go see the model robot that you need to copy except one person at a time. So basically one person goes and looks at this "working robot" and comes back to the group and tells them what pieces go with which. We had people switching on and off to go look at the working robot instead of one person. I knew something like this would be there, and to be honest I felt useless. If there were peers, I would have been the lowest. I won't bullshit, after I realized I am not good at remembering what pieces were combined with which, I just started to try and help coordinate the larger group effort.
During everything, there are staff walking around with notepads taking notes.
Second event and third events were my money makers though and seemed like a more heavy focus was placed on this.
Second event: Switch groups and then once you are sitting with your new group of 5-6 people you will get an envelope full of topics. Ex., "what do you think about race relations since the Michael Brown case" or "was the War on Terror effective" etc etc. One person randomly grabs a topic from the envelope and leads a discussion with their group. I feel like I did the best in my group because I quickly realized that letting people talk with no limit, when you are only allotted 3 minutes for the whole group is a bad thing. I watch a lot of debates so when my time in the group came I set up basic rules. I was the moderator meaning I have control. Before we started I told the rest of the group they get 30 seconds to make their point and then after everyone has gone, I will come back to the group and use what they said to ask questions and flush out more productive thoughts. It was a success and my run went the most smoothly IMO.
Third event: Pick one topic from the topics your group had talked about. Create a "day" to get students out talking about whatever issue you pick. Essentially if you were on a campus and your group had an unlimited budget, how would you get people to care about whatever issue you pick. After you pick a topic, create the "day" and then be ready to present how you will get students out participating. My group picked one about the Middle East, while almost every other group picked something about the Michael Brown case and race relations. Our logic was that since we are all veterans, we should leverage that to bring a different discussion you wouldn't normally see on these campuses (or at least not as talked about as say something like the Brown case). Each person in our group contributed an idea, and seeing as in my eyes I had the most unique idea (which isn't really too unique) I wanted to split the presentation talking time into "whatever idea you came up with, you talk about it". It led to everyone getting a fair shake and equal talking time. What was very unique to me was that there were groups who let ONE person talk about the whole thing. I actually think not working with women hindered some of the guys there because those women rolled over them, which.....this is a competition so more power to them. In two of the groups (out of three IIRC) with women, two let the woman speak the whole time. It was something I noted because I haven't worked with a lot of women during my career.
Last event: Essay on the spot. I forget all the topics you could write about, but I ended up writing about losing my faith as a black guy in a Christian majority country and blacks being some of the most religious people in the US. The prompt was basically "write about something that has/can cause you adversity in your life and would cause people to judge you before knowing you"...something to that effect. As they want leaders I connected this with my hope to be able to change who is seen as a "leader" in the black community because for whatever reason we still have Sharpton and Jackson as some of the biggest names. I used Carson's comments to show that I stay up with relevant political talk, and to show that everyone should feel welcome in the U.S., not just the group you are apart of (assuming you follow all the laws etc).
After that, overview of the schools and payment info. Pretty much if you make it, no matter what they will pay for you to get a Bachelor's from one of these top schools. They told us to wait for a call back to see if moved on to the next round which was a 1 on 1 interview.
I got a call back after a couple of hours and they wanted me to come in later that afternoon.
1 on 1 interview: I was drilled on my school history because I have not the best track record with school. I think if anything holds me back, it will be my history. My SAT scores are just above average so nothing to write home about. I had provided a writing sample and I had also written that essay a couple of hours before, both of which I were told were pretty good. For the record, I don't actually think I'm a good writer by any means.
We talked about Ranger Regiment and what it meant to be a Ranger. How it was different etc etc.
He then asked me if there was anything else I care about. I honestly wasn't prepared for this question and the only thing that saved me was just thinking and reading about leadership. I basically said that when I make it to college and if I'm apart of the program I don't just care about grades. Grades are extremely important and should be the main focus but I pointed out that we have a huge health crisis in teens and college aged students. Stress rates are at an all time high, along with all kinds of heart disease etc. As a Crossfit trainer and a lover of all things fitness (spiritual, physical, mental) I think it's important we focus on that as a group also. I talked about mentoring people in lifting and in general about life things. I stressed the importance of fitness as a way to better grades and better health, which will produce better leaders.
He asked me if I had any questions....I had used my really key question in the group interview and was the first one to ask a question (no doubts in my mind that it helped me get to the 1 on 1). I didn't have any more questions so he thanked me for my time.
I am now waiting about a month to see if I make it to the next interview in New York.
Make that OBJ yours.
