Guides · Updated 3 November 2026

InitialView Interview: Format, Questions and How to Prepare

An InitialView interview is a live, unscripted 12 to 15 minute video conversation with a trained interviewer followed by a 20-minute proctored writing sample, according to InitialView's official getting started guide. The standard fee is 265 USD, and you can send your ungraded recording and writing sample to as many universities as you like at no extra charge. 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.

What the InitialView interview includes

InitialView is a video interview platform used in university admissions so admissions officers can see and hear you in an unscripted setting. InitialView recommends the full interview for international applicants (both non-US citizens and US citizens studying outside the US) as well as homeschooled and non-traditional applicants.

Every session has two parts that run back to back. First, you have a 12 to 15 minute live, unscripted conversation with one of InitialView's trained interviewers, many of whom are former US admissions officers. Second, you complete a 20-minute proctored writing sample in response to an open-ended prompt.

For undergraduate and K-12 or boarding school applicants, the interviewer does not use a CV or any outside materials during the session. Only graduate and professional school applicants submit a brief CV in advance. Because the interviewer starts with a blank slate, what you choose to bring up in the first few minutes drives the entire conversation.

If you are a domestic US student attending a US high school, universities typically expect InitialView's other product, Glimpse (formerly called Elevator Pitch), rather than the full interview.

How the 12 to 15 minute conversation works

The spoken portion is not a pre-recorded automated test. You speak live on video with an interviewer who asks you to talk about yourself and then builds follow-up questions directly from what you say. InitialView notes on its FAQ page that even its own interviewers do not know the exact questions they will ask before the conversation starts.

The back-and-forth is designed to mimic classroom and campus conversations at a US university. Admissions officers watch the video to be 100 percent certain that you are the person answering the questions, without scripts, coaching or AI tools in the background.

InitialView gives one specific piece of preparation advice: before your session, think of a few things that make you unique, such as interests, accomplishments or experiences, with a particular emphasis on academic experiences, and look for natural moments to mention them. At the very end of every interview, the interviewer gives you an open opportunity to say whatever you would like before the recording stops.

How the 20-minute proctored writing sample works

Alongside the conversation, you complete a 20-minute proctored writing sample in response to an open-ended prompt. There is no word limit, and the sample is not graded.

InitialView explains that in the age of ChatGPT, admissions officers use this ungraded sample to confirm that you can put together clear sentences on your own and that the rest of your written application is authentic. They do not expect a polished essay that reads like a piece of literature. They want to see how you organise a basic response when given a fresh question and 20 minutes on the clock.

To make the most of the proctored window, spend a brief moment at the start choosing one direct position or story rather than trying to cover several disconnected ideas. Write in plain, natural sentences that match the voice in your main application essays, support your main point with a specific example from your schoolwork or daily life, and save a short moment at the end to read through your text and tidy up any unfinished sentences.

How colleges receive and review your interview

InitialView does not score, rate or write an evaluation of your interview or writing sample. Admissions officers receive the exact video recording and written text that you see in your portal.

Once your interview is completed, standard processing takes within 10 business days. If you are close to an application deadline, InitialView offers expedited processing in as little as 2 business days for an additional fee. InitialView recommends submitting your interview within a week after you submit your main application materials to a college so the video is in your file when the first review begins.

Your recording is never sent to any university without your permission. After your video is processed, you log in to your InitialView portal, watch the recording yourself, and select which colleges should receive it. You can send your interview and writing sample to as many colleges as you want at no extra cost.

• Virtual Stars: After 15 December, InitialView gives you two Virtual Stars inside your portal. You can assign these to two colleges of your choice to signal your top preferences during the Regular Decision round.
• Single Yellow Rose: Later in the admissions cycle, you receive one Single Yellow Rose in your portal, which you can send to a single college if you are placed on its waiting list.

Which colleges accept InitialView

InitialView states that its platform is integrated with most prominent colleges and universities at no cost to the institutions, and that almost all schools accept the interview. If you are unsure whether a specific university accepts InitialView, you can check directly with the university or email InitialView at contact@initialview.com. You can also compare how third-party videos fit alongside direct university interviews in our guide to which colleges offer interviews.

Different universities use InitialView in slightly different ways in their international admissions rules. Here is how Swarthmore College and Washington University in St. Louis state their official policies for fall 2027 admission:

• Swarthmore College: All first-year applicants attending high school outside the US (regardless of citizenship) are required to submit one of the following: a free Swarthmore Video Response recorded in the applicant portal, an official English proficiency exam result (TOEFL, IELTS or Duolingo English Test), or an InitialView (interview, Glimpse or VIVA) or Vericant video interview.
• Washington University in St. Louis (WashU): WashU does not conduct or offer evaluative admissions interviews, and international applicants for whom English is a second language must still submit TOEFL, IELTS or Duolingo scores unless exempted. In addition, WashU strongly encourages students to submit a third-party interview supplement such as InitialView to further demonstrate English proficiency. WashU explicitly states that students who choose not to submit an interview supplement will not be disadvantaged in the review process.

Fees, rescheduling and the 14-day retake rule

Booking an InitialView interview requires careful scheduling because the platform has strict policies on changes, cancellations and retakes. If the 265 USD fee is a financial hardship, you can request a fee waiver directly from a college to which you are applying, or through one of the Community-Based Organisations (CBOs) that partner with InitialView.

What happens if you retake the interview

You are allowed to do the InitialView interview more than once, provided you wait at least 14 days after the date of your previous completed interview and pay the interview fee again. Your second interview will be with a different interviewer and will cover different questions.

Before you book a retake, know the replacement rule: your most recent interview and writing sample automatically become the only version InitialView provides to admissions officers. You cannot complete the interview twice, compare the two videos, and choose to send your first attempt.

Practice questions in the InitialView style

InitialView does not use a fixed script, and your interviewer has no CV in front of them. That means the opening question is almost always an invitation to introduce yourself and your academic interests, followed by questions that dig into the specific examples you just mentioned. If you are also preparing for school-specific alumni conversations, see our full list of common alumni interview questions and our guides to the Harvard interview, MIT interview and Yale alumni interview.

Below are practice questions, example answers and writing prompts written by our team (all applicants in the examples are invented) to mirror how an unscripted InitialView session unfolds. None of these are leaked questions from InitialView.

• Opening academic hook: Tell me about a class or academic project from the past year that changed how you look at a subject you thought you already knew.
• Example written by our team. The applicant is invented: 'In my higher-level chemistry course, I used to treat reaction rates as pure maths on paper until I designed a titration experiment testing vitamin C degradation in local fruit juices. When my initial trials failed because of temperature shifts in our school lab, I had to rebuild my control method from scratch, which taught me how messy real experimental data actually is.'
• Independent initiative beyond the syllabus: Tell me about an academic topic or project you explored recently that pushed you beyond your regular school syllabus.
• Example written by our team. The applicant is invented: 'In our history class we spent very little time on post-war urban planning, so I started reading municipal archive maps of my city's old tram network. Comparing those historic transit lines with today's bus routes showed me why certain districts on the east side still have much longer commute times, and I ended up writing my extended essay on how transport maps shape local employment.'
• Unscripted follow-up on how you think: When you rebuilt that method, what was the hardest decision you had to make without your teacher stepping in?
• Example written by our team. The applicant is invented: 'I had to decide whether to narrow my temperature range or switch to a different indicator, because our lab only stays open briefly after school. I tested quick calibration runs on tap water first so I wouldn't waste my sample solutions, and that showed me the indicator endpoint was the real problem.'
• Personal context outside the classroom: Outside of your schoolwork, what is a responsibility or routine that takes up a lot of your week, and why does it matter to you?
• Example written by our team. The applicant is invented: 'Every Saturday morning I help run a bilingual reading hour at our neighbourhood library for children whose parents work weekend shifts. I started by just tidying bookshelves, but over the past year I began translating picture books aloud so the younger children could follow the story in both languages.'
• End-of-interview open mic (based on InitialView's closing step): Before we wrap up, is there anything else we haven't covered that you would like admissions officers to know about you?
• Example written by our team. The applicant is invented: 'We talked a lot about my chemistry research and weekend volunteering, but I also want to mention that I study at a high school where nobody has applied to universities outside our country before. Learning to connect my school syllabus to independent reading has made me really excited for seminar-style classes where students debate primary sources together.'
• 20-minute writing sample practice prompt: Think of a rule, custom or habit in your school or community that most people accept without question. In 20 minutes, explain whether you would keep it, change it or remove it, and why.
• Our team's tip: pick one concrete rule you have experienced first-hand, state your decision in the opening sentence, and explain both who benefits and who is held back by the current rule.
• Additional 20-minute writing sample practice prompt: Describe a time when you changed your mind about something important after listening to someone who disagreed with you.
• Our team's tip: focus on the specific conversation and the piece of evidence that shifted your thinking rather than trying to summarise a broad public debate.

A one-week preparation plan for InitialView

Because InitialView is unscripted, memorising word-for-word speeches will work against you as soon as the interviewer interrupts with a follow-up question. Our team built this step-by-step plan to help you prepare clear academic stories and spontaneous speaking habits without sounding rehearsed. Practise your interview out loud on AdmitMock.

Day 1 (Choose your academic anchors): Following InitialView's official advice, write down a few specific academic experiences, projects or books that genuinely excited you. For each experience, note what sparked your interest, an obstacle you hit, and what you learned so you can explain the substance of your work to someone who has never seen your school transcript.

Day 2 (Practise a concise introduction): Remember that undergraduate interviewers have no CV in front of them. Practise introducing yourself briefly so that you naturally drop conversational 'hooks' (both academic and personal) that invite an easy follow-up question from the interviewer.

Day 3 (Drill follow-up chains out loud): Have a friend or an AI interviewer ask you 'Why?' and 'How did that work in practice?' repeatedly on each of your academic anchors. Practise giving concise, conversational answers and pausing briefly to gather your thoughts rather than delivering long, memorised monologues.

Day 4 (20-minute timed writing run): Open a plain text document with spellcheck turned off, set a timer for 20 minutes, and write a response to an open-ended prompt. Focus on a clear main point in the opening sentence, concrete examples from your own life, and a moment at the end to fix obvious typos.

Day 5 (Prepare your closing statement): InitialView gives every applicant a chance at the end of the interview to say whatever they would like. Draft a few bullet points of what you will share at the end if those topics do not come up naturally during the conversation.

Day 6 (Full back-to-back simulation): Do a 12 to 15 minute live unscripted conversation back-to-back with a 20-minute timed writing prompt, using the exact desk, camera, lighting and headphones you will use on test day. If you also have direct college interviews coming up, prepare a few questions to ask your alumni interviewer for those separate sessions.

Day 7 (Rest and timeline check): Check your schedule to make sure your interview is at least 10 business days before you want colleges to see it, and review your academic bullet points one last time before sleeping.

AdmitMock is not affiliated with Oxford, Cambridge or any other university.