Guides · Updated 4 November 2026

Cornell Interview: Who Gets One (Architecture, Hotel, CAAAN) and How It Works

According to Cornell Undergraduate Admissions, personal interviews are neither required nor available for admission to any of Cornell's undergraduate programmes, with the exception of recorded submissions in the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning (AAP). Bachelor of Architecture (B.Arch.) applicants must submit a continuous, unedited video interview of no more than 3 minutes via SlideRoom by 1 November for Early Decision or 2 January for Regular Decision, and Bachelor of Fine Arts (B.F.A.) in Art applicants must submit a 3 to 5 minute video or audio interview recording by the same dates.

Cornell's policy on personal interviews for undergraduate admissions

AdmitMock is an AI mock interview app for Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial, UCL and US college alumni interviews: an AI interviewer asks the questions out loud, follows up, and shows you what to fix.

For the vast majority of undergraduate applicants, Cornell does not conduct admissions interviews. Cornell's official Undergraduate Admissions knowledge base states that no personal interviews are offered for any undergraduate programme outside of the Architecture requirement in the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning (AAP).

When you apply to Cornell via the Common Application, you apply directly to one of nine undergraduate colleges or schools, and you cannot change that college or school after submitting your application. Out of those nine colleges and schools, eight have no interview requirement or option at all. By our calculation from Cornell's 2023-2024 Common Data Set, Cornell received 67,846 first-year applications and admitted 5,358 students (a 7.90% overall acceptance rate), including 1,670 admitted from 9,515 Early Decision applicants (a 17.55% Early Decision acceptance rate).

Because live evaluative interviews are not part of the process, your college-specific supplemental essays and, where required, your creative portfolio or design supplement carry the weight of showing why your goals match the specific Cornell college or school you selected. If you are also applying to other Ivy League universities that do conduct live alumni conversations, you can compare how those work in our guides to the Harvard interview, the Princeton alumni interview, and the Dartmouth alumni interview.

Cornell interview and portfolio requirements by college

Every first-year applicant chooses one of Cornell's nine undergraduate colleges and schools. Only two programmes, both inside the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning (AAP), include a recorded interview submission via SlideRoom.

Several other majors require a portfolio or design supplement with no interview attached, and musically talented applicants to any undergraduate programme can submit an optional music supplement through the Cornell Applicant Portal by 6 November for Early Decision or 7 January for Regular Decision.

Cornell Architecture required 3-minute video interview

Applicants to the five-year Bachelor of Architecture programme in the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning must submit both a 15 to 20 slide portfolio and a recorded video interview through the Cornell AAP SlideRoom portal by the Early Decision or Regular Decision deadline shown in the table above. AAP Admissions does not accept late submissions or portfolios sent outside of SlideRoom, and AAP will not accept external transfer applicants for Fall 2027.

In your video interview, you must respond on camera to all three of the official prompts posted by the Department of Architecture:

• How do you express your creativity?
• Describe the design process and impact of one of your creative projects in art, design, architecture, or activism.
• Why do you want to study architecture?

Formatting rules and pacing plan for the Architecture video

Cornell AAP sets strict recording rules for the Architecture video interview. Because the video cannot be edited and cannot exceed 3 minutes in total across the 3 required prompts, you need to pace your answers across all 3 questions.

Before you record your take, check your setup against every rule on the Cornell AAP Architecture admissions page:

• Continuous filming: Record yourself answering all three prompts in a single, continuous take.
• 3-minute maximum: Your entire video must not exceed 3 minutes total.
• No editing or extra content: Do not cut, splice, edit, or insert slides, B-roll, or anything other than yourself responding to the three prompts.
• Accepted video file types: Upload your video to Cornell AAP SlideRoom in MOV, WMV, FLV, or MP4 format.
• Original work only: Do not outsource your portfolio to a third party or include AI-generated images. For group projects in your 15 to 20 slides, credit collaborators and state your exact role.
• Pacing plan (written by our team): Divide the 3-minute maximum evenly across the three prompts by spending roughly one-third of your recording on how you express creativity across mediums, one-third walking through the specific problem, iterations, materials, and impact of one creative project, and the final third explaining why you want to study the five-year Architecture curriculum at Cornell, stopping cleanly before the 3-minute limit.

Cornell Fine Arts 3 to 5 minute interview recording

While Cornell's general admissions FAQ mentions only Architecture when discussing video interviews, the official AAP Undergraduate Admissions page for Art specifies that Fine Arts applicants must also submit an Interview Recording as part of their Cornell AAP SlideRoom portfolio, alongside high-quality images or videos of at least 10 artworks and an Artist Statement.

First-year Fine Arts portfolios follow the same Early Decision and Regular Decision dates in the table above, while Fall transfer applicants must submit by 15 March. Late submissions are not accepted. The 3 to 5 minute video or audio recording can be made on a phone without special editing or equipment, answering four specific questions:

• What do you enjoy about making, studying, or experiencing art?
• How does art connect to your future goals or plans?
• What makes something an artwork to you?
• Tell us about an artist, artwork, or creative project that interests you. Why?

Cornell Hotel School (Nolan) interview policy

Older third-party prep sites often mention a required interview for the Cornell Peter and Stephanie Nolan School of Hotel Administration, which is part of the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business. Under current Cornell Undergraduate Admissions policy, no personal interviews are offered for any undergraduate programme outside of AAP.

On the Nolan School's undergraduate admissions page, applicants apply through the Common Application by selecting the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business, Nolan School and submitting the required application and supplemental materials by the Early Decision, Regular Decision, or Fall external transfer deadlines. No interview is listed or offered.

How CAAAN (Cornell Alumni Admissions Ambassador Network) works

Older blogs describe the Cornell Alumni Admissions Ambassador Network (CAAAN) as offering optional pre-decision informational sessions, while Cornell's current official pages describe CAAAN's role differently.

On Cornell's official CAAAN page, CAAAN is described as a volunteer community of Cornell alumni across the United States and around the world who welcome newly admitted students to the Cornell family. Through Cornell's CUontheHill social network, CAAAN alumni connect with incoming first-year students to share stories, answer questions, and offer guidance as they make their college decisions.

If an alum reaches out to you or if you connect with alumni at a college fair, virtual visit, or admitted-student platform, treat the conversation as a friendly way to learn about campus life in Ithaca rather than an evaluated admissions test. You can keep a few thoughtful questions ready using our guide to questions to ask your alumni interviewer, or email the CAAAN office directly at caaan@cornell.edu if you have questions about alumni outreach.

How to prepare and record your Cornell AAP interview

In both the unedited 3-minute Architecture video and the 3 to 5 minute Fine Arts video or audio file, faculty reviewers are listening for how you think about making, form, process, and impact. Use this step-by-step checklist written by our team to prepare your submission before the SlideRoom deadline.

• Open your Cornell AAP SlideRoom account early: Confirm your application plan deadline and verify that your portfolio slides meet the exact limits (15 to 20 slides with no more than 2 per project for Architecture, or at least 10 artworks for Fine Arts).
• Pick one concrete project for Architecture Prompt 2: Choose a single project in art, design, architecture, or activism where you can name the initial constraint, how your design evolved through testing or sketching, and how the finished work affected real people or a physical space.
• Outline bullet points rather than a word-for-word script: Reading from a screen flattens your delivery. Put three bullet points per prompt on a sticky note right next to your camera lens so you maintain natural eye contact.
• Run a timed single-take rehearsal: For Architecture, film a full continuous practice run and check that your file stops under 3 minutes without any cuts or edits. Check that your exported file is in MOV, WMV, FLV, or MP4 format.
• Verify technical support contacts in advance: If you run into upload issues on SlideRoom, Cornell AAP instructs applicants to email aap-admissions@cornell.edu or SlideRoom technical support at support@slideroom.com before the deadline, as late portfolios are not accepted.

Transfer applicants and the Common Data Set

For transfer admission, Cornell's 2023-2024 Common Data Set lists interviews as "Required of Some" and shows 834 transfer students admitted from 6,581 transfer applications (a 12.67% transfer acceptance rate by our calculation). In practice, while the Department of Architecture is not accepting external Fall 2027 transfer applicants, Fine Arts transfer applicants must submit their 3 to 5 minute Interview Recording via SlideRoom by the 15 March transfer deadline.

Practise your interview out loud on AdmitMock.

Practice question

Questions in this style (from the official Cornell Architecture video prompts): Describe the design process and impact of one of your creative projects in art, design, architecture, or activism.

Example written by our team. The applicant is invented. "When our school's courtyard benches rotted through last autumn, I measured how students actually gathered between classes and noticed everyone stood near the warm brick wall of the boiler room. I sketched three modular seating layouts in charcoal, tested load angles with scrap pine in my garage, and built a curved bench from reclaimed cedar that seats twelve people facing one another rather than in a flat row."

The answer names a real spatial problem, walks through observation, sketching, and physical prototyping, and shows the human impact of the finished piece, leaving plenty of time for the other two Architecture prompts inside the 3-minute limit.

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