A Guide to Glimpse, ZeeMe, and Video Interviews in College Admissions
Written by College Flight Path®
A short, self-recorded video is now a standard optional component at a meaningful set of selective colleges, and a required, rubric-scored step in a smaller set of programs. The format is not a traditional interview. At most schools, it is a single unedited take of 60 to 120 seconds, submitted through a platform called Glimpse or through the college's own applicant portal, and read by admissions officers alongside the essays.
Three separate things get lumped together under "the video," and confusing them causes most of the preparation errors:
Send-anywhere video introductions — one recording, submitted to many colleges. Glimpse, a product of InitialView, is the dominant vehicle (InitialView).
School-run in-portal video responses — recorded inside a single college's system, often with a randomly assigned question and a hard cap on retakes. Swarthmore, Bowdoin, Wake Forest, and UChicago run their own (Swarthmore; Bowdoin).
Rubric-scored structured video assessments — Kira Talent and HireVue, scored against competency rubrics on numeric scales. In undergraduate education, these appear almost exclusively in direct-entry and accelerated nursing admission, where they are required (Kira Talent).
Two corrections belong at the top, because both circulate widely in outdated advice.
ZeeMee is no longer an admissions video product. Its site now operates as a roommate-matching and campus social app (ZeeMee). The last well-documented use of ZeeMee as an application component dates to 2017 at Virginia Tech (Virginia Tech). Students should not build an application strategy around it.
Glimpse belongs to InitialView, at initialview.com/glimpse. Colleges refer to it as "Glimpse by InitialView" (Occidental). A similarly named commercial site at glimpse.io is unrelated and should not be used as a reference point.
How Each Platform Actually Works
Two important notes: Glimpse locks a video once it has been sent, with a single unlock window opening December 15, which means a video recorded in a rush for an Early Decision deadline is the video every later school sees unless that unlock is used deliberately (Glimpse FAQs). And school-run responses are frequently one-and-done: Swarthmore assigns a random question, allows 30 seconds of preparation, up to two minutes of answer, and a maximum of two attempts (Swarthmore).
On Artificial Intelligence
No AI interviewer is in use in U.S. undergraduate admissions, and colleges say so explicitly. Northwestern states that "InitialView does not review or rate the interviews. Evaluation is done only by members of the admissions committee" (Northwestern), and Kenyon says the same of both InitialView and Vericant (Kenyon). Kira's scoring is performed by human reviewers against school-defined rubrics, with percentile standardization and outlier analytics applied afterward (Kira Talent). The algorithmic scoring students will meet later, in hiring, is a different matter and is treated in a later section.
Accessibility
Kira publishes the clearest accessibility position: its asynchronous assessments are WCAG 2.0 AA compliant, its live interviews are not yet, and accommodation requests route through Kira support to the program (Kira Talent). Students with documented accommodations should request them in writing before the invitation expires rather than after a first attempt has been consumed.
Which Colleges Use Video, and How
Policies are set annually, and several schools changed theirs within the last two cycles. Every row below reflects a published institutional page, and every row should be reverified against that page before a student submits.
Glimpse-accepting colleges with published video deadlines
Additional institutions accepting Glimpse or an InitialView video introduction include Vanderbilt, Rice, Notre Dame, Middlebury, Bennington, Binghamton, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Colgate, Holy Cross, Marymount Manhattan, and the University of La Verne. Middlebury accepts a 90-second video or audio file and treats it as the alternative when no alumni interviewer is available. Brown accepts Glimpse as one of three submission routes (Brown). InitialView reports more than 100 integrated colleges and delivery of materials to more than 400 institutions (Glimpse FAQs).
Colleges Running Their Own In-Portal Video
Washington University in St. Louis accepts a 90-second video and, unusually, permits editing. Denison and Boston University list an optional video submission without naming a platform.
Bowdoin's framing is the most useful sentence a nervous student can read: "This isn't an audition, a performance, or an interview—it's just an introduction" (Bowdoin).
Required, Rubric-Scored Programs
These are the highest-stakes video assessments an undergraduate is likely to face, and they behave far more like a hiring screen than like an admissions introduction.
Washington State frames its use plainly: the structured format "helps our admissions team mitigate the impact of bias" (WSU Nursing).
International Applicants and Merit Consideration
Northeastern, Brandeis, Colby, Kenyon, Muhlenberg, Stevens, Bowdoin, Swarthmore, and Rose-Hulman route international or non-U.S.-curriculum applicants toward InitialView or Vericant. Muhlenberg sets an InitialView deadline of February 1 and requires it for the Penn 3-4 BioDental pathway. The clearest link between an interview and money appears at Rochester, where the interview is "strongly recommended, especially if you wish to compete for merit-based scholarships" (University of Rochester).
Live Interviews Only
Several schools that come up frequently in list-building offer live conversations rather than recorded video. Lafayette conducts 25–30 minute Zoom interviews, one per cycle, from late June through mid-December. Whitman, Rochester Institute of Technology, and Denison are live-interview institutions. Marist's Florence program requires a 20–30 minute live interview. Quinnipiac's interview page is dated and should be confirmed directly.
Where No Video Requirement Was Found
No admissions video evidence was located for general first-year admission at Pittsburgh, Penn State, Delaware, South Carolina, Elon, Bucknell, Dickinson, Ursinus, Susquehanna, Temple, Clemson, Auburn, Alabama, Indiana, Hobart and William Smith, Sacred Heart, Fairfield, or Emerson. For lists weighted toward large public universities, video is largely a non-issue — which is itself planning information, because it concentrates video work onto a handful of schools rather than spreading it across a list.
One caution for anyone researching this independently: search engines return a Kira Talent page that appears to be about Elon but actually describes University of Waterloo Pharmacy, and another that appears to be about Susquehanna but describes MBA programs at Ivey, INSEAD, and St. Gallen. Neither supports a claim about those colleges.
What Admissions Officers Say They Are Evaluating
The published guidance is consistent and narrower than students assume. Production quality is not the variable.
Brown's Dean of Admissions, Logan Powell, describes the video as offering "another glimpse into the identity of the student," states that "the quality of production is not evaluated," and adds the line worth taping above a desk: "This isn't the Oscars" (U.S. News, April 23, 2026). Northwestern's guidance asks students to share what matters "especially if you feel it does not otherwise come through in the rest of your application," while Dean Liz Kinsley cautions that Glimpse "shouldn't be seen as a replacement for the discontinued alumni interviews" (Daily Northwestern, October 10, 2025). Brown frames its video option as something that "ensures equity across our applicant pool" (Brown).
Two facts change how the decision to record should be made.
Skipping an optional video does not carry a stated penalty. Northwestern and Rose-Hulman say applicants who skip it are "at no disadvantage," UChicago says students "will not be penalized," and Occidental says it "will not put you at a disadvantage" (Northwestern; Rose-Hulman; UChicago; Occidental).
Submission rates are low, which cuts both ways. Fewer than 10% of Northwestern applicants submitted a video in the first year the option existed, following the end of alumni interviews in October 2024 (Daily Northwestern). Brown introduced video in 2018 and ended alumni interviews in 2022 (U.S. News). A well-made video is therefore a differentiator in a thin field; a careless one stands out equally in the other direction.
No college publishes a numeric weight for the optional video. Any advice claiming a specific percentage is invented. The only genuine published rubrics belong to Kira, where schools set competency weights on 1–5 scales with percentile standardization applied across the applicant pool (Kira Talent).
Decision rule. Record the video when the application does not already convey how the student speaks, thinks aloud, or carries themselves — the quiet student whose transcript and essays read flat, the student whose extracurricular story needs a human voice, the international applicant whose curriculum is unfamiliar, or the applicant competing for merit money at a school that links interviews to scholarship review. Skip it when the student cannot produce something better than neutral, since a stated non-penalty for skipping is a real option and a bad take is not.
The Preparation Playbook
Setup
Every credible source converges on the same short list. Camera at eye level, with the student speaking to the lens rather than to the screen image (DePaul Career Center; AAMC). The London School of Economics suggests placing the camera slightly above eye level and framing head and upper body (LSE). Kansas State adds the rule of thirds for framing (K-State).
Light from the front, never from behind — the single point on which DePaul, the AAMC, Kansas State, the University of Washington, HireVue, Spark Hire, and Wake Forest all agree (University of Washington; HireVue; Wake Forest). Use a blank wall, remove personal items from frame, and check for motion behind the student; Washington specifically warns about ceiling fans. Confirm audio on a test recording rather than assuming, and verify bandwidth — HireVue asks for at least 350 Kbps (HireVue).
Wardrobe
Career-center advice and admissions advice diverge here, and porting the wrong one across is a common error. For hiring interviews, dress exactly as for an in-person interview, head to toe, avoiding white and busy patterns and favoring solid light colors (University of Washington). For an admissions video introduction, Wake Forest sets the standard: "If it's okay to wear to school, it's okay to wear in the video" (Wake Forest). A blazer in a 90-second Glimpse video reads as costume, not polish.
Structuring 60 to 120 seconds
For an open introduction with no assigned prompt, such as Glimpse, a workable shape is roughly 15 seconds of orientation (who the student is and where they are from), 55 to 60 seconds on one specific thing they have done or think about with real detail, and 15 to 20 seconds on what they want to pursue next. One subject, told concretely, beats a résumé recited aloud.
For behavioral prompts — the norm in Kira, HireVue, and nursing program assessments — use STAR, and weight Action heavily. MIT's suggested time split is 20/10/60/10 across Situation, Task, Action, Result; Northwestern's is 15/10/50/25. Both make Action the longest segment (MIT CAPD; Northwestern). On a 90-second answer that means roughly 45 to 54 seconds of what the student personally did. MIT also advises preparing three to five stories as outlines rather than scripts, and using "I" rather than "we."
Rehearsal Limits
Practice against the real clock, because the clocks differ sharply: 15 seconds of preparation at Washington State, 30 seconds at Swarthmore and Bowdoin, 90 seconds at Boise State. The AAMC's guidance for asynchronous formats is to practice alone rather than with an interviewer, since that is the actual condition (AAMC). Use a phone timer and reserve room to close cleanly rather than being cut off mid-sentence (University of Washington). Asynchronous answer windows are commonly 30 to 90 seconds and often cannot be stopped and restarted (LSE).
Mistakes
Reading a script. Flagged by Wake Forest and by Glimpse's own guidance. It is visible on camera within a few seconds.
Over-rehearsing. LSE's instruction is blunt — "Don't over-rehearse!" — because heavily drilled answers land as "robotic or wooden" (LSE).
Manipulating the recording. Brown prohibits speeding up audio to fit more content (Brown); Duke does not permit editing software (Duke). Washington University in St. Louis is the exception that permits editing, which is why per-school rules must be read individually.
Sending before the video is right. Glimpse locks on send, with one unlock available from December 15 (Glimpse FAQs).
Cramming keywords. Washington warns that keyword-stuffing "can appear insincere," and for a human-read admissions video that guidance holds. Older advice to maximize word count reflects earlier algorithmic scoring models and has been superseded by competency-based scoring in hiring platforms.
Working Timeline
Late summer to early fall: identify which schools on the list accept or require video, and note each school's separate video deadline. These deadlines are frequently earlier than, or offset from, the application deadline.
Four weeks out: choose the single subject for the introduction. Draft as bullet outline, never as prose.
Three weeks out: record three untimed takes to find the natural version. Watch with the sound off once to check framing and energy, then with the picture off to check pacing.
Two weeks out: record on the clock, in the actual room, in the actual clothes.
One week out: submit. For Glimpse, submit to the full list only when the take is genuinely the best available, given the send lock.
After Early Decision results: if the December 15 unlock is available and the video no longer represents the student, replace it before Regular Decision sends.
Why This Matters Beyond The Application
The same format now sits at the front of internship and entry-level hiring, which makes practice in the fall of senior year an investment that pays off repeatedly across the following four years.
HireVue is the reference platform. Its current published mechanics are four to six asynchronous video questions plus two to three assessment games, 15 to 25 minutes total, with preparation time configurable from zero to five minutes or unlimited, and — notably — "Interview Question Retries: Unlimited" (HireVue 2025 AI Explainability Statement). Its candidate FAQ describes five to eight questions, under 20 to 30 minutes, and advises setting aside 45 minutes (HireVue). HireVue acquired Modern Hire in May 2023; the combined company reports more than 1,150 customers including over half of the Fortune 100 (HireVue).
Named employers make the crossover concrete. Goldman Sachs describes an approximately 30-minute "HireVue interview" preceding two to five final-round campus interviews (Goldman Sachs). Unilever's recorded HireVue plus games process reduced time-to-hire from four months to four weeks, doubled applications from 15,000 to 30,000 in 90 days, expanded universities represented from 840 to 2,600, and reported 96% completion against a 50% baseline (Business Insider; Oracle case study). Claims that JPMorgan, EY, or Deloitte use one-way video could not be confirmed from first-party sources and should not be repeated as fact.
Adjacent tools students may encounter: Spark Hire, with configurable think time, take limits, and answer duration, and an explicit "No Automated Decisions" position (Spark Hire); Willo, used by more than 5,000 hiring teams (Willo); and Karat, which is a live 60-minute technical interview with a human engineer rather than a one-way recording (Karat). Conversational AI interviewers now exist in early-career hiring, including micro1's "Zara" (micro1) and HeyMilo's adaptive voice agent with third-party bias audits (HeyMilo).
What is actually scored, and what is not
HireVue's 2025 statement says its models are trained on roughly 60 expert raters with two to three ratings per answer against five-level behaviorally anchored scales, feeding 19 competency models, and states that "our AI relies only on what is said by the candidate" — explicitly excluding facial expression, body language, background, and tone (HireVue). Its candidate FAQ confirms no facial recognition (HireVue). Older reporting describing nonverbal scoring reflects earlier product generations and conflicts with the vendor's current disclosure.
Limitations are documented rather than hypothetical. A peer-reviewed study across more than 1,400 mock interviews found "significant bias in the commercial ASR services across nearly all comparisons" between ESL and non-ESL speakers, people of color and White speakers, and male and female speakers, while concluding that "the transcription bias did not translate into meaningful measurement bias for the ML interview scores" (study abstract, PubMed).
Student Rights
Illinois requires notice, an explanation of how the AI works, and consent before an AI-analyzed video interview; candidates may request deletion within 30 days, including backups, and employers relying solely on AI must report demographic data annually (Illinois General Assembly, 820 ILCS 42).
New York City requires an annual bias audit of automated employment decision tools, publication of results, and 10 business days' notice to candidates, with enforcement since July 5, 2023 (NYC Department of Consumer and Worker Protection).
Federal EEOC guidance applies established selection-procedure standards to these tools and holds employers responsible for vendor systems (EEOC).
ADA guidance from the Department of Justice expressly covers online video interviews and requires accessible alternatives (ADA.gov).
HireVue states that candidates may opt out of AI evaluation (HireVue).
Students should know these exist. Asking for an accommodation or a human review is a normal request, not an unusual one.
Admissions video versus hiring video
Frequently asked questions
Does one Glimpse video go to every school? Yes — that is the design, and it is also the risk. One take represents the student everywhere, so it must be strong enough for the most selective school on the list, and it locks on send with one unlock available from December 15 (Glimpse FAQs).
Is $22 the real cost? Yes, with fee waivers for students on free or reduced lunch, holders of SAT/ACT or College Board waivers, partner community-based organization students, and Armed Forces families. InitialView states that half of Glimpse revenue goes to college-access partners (Glimpse FAQs).
Can a student use ZeeMee? Not as an application component. ZeeMee now operates as a roommate and campus social app (ZeeMee).
Does a video substitute for a lost alumni interview? No. Northwestern's dean says explicitly that it should not be seen as a replacement (Daily Northwestern).
Should an anxious student on camera skip it? Often yes, given that four schools state in writing there is no disadvantage to skipping. Anxiety alone is not the deciding factor, though — the deciding factor is whether the finished take is better than neutral.
Do video deadlines match application deadlines? Frequently not. Wake Forest asks for video within five days of applying, Rhodes within a week of the deadline, Bentley up to a week after, and Duke, Northwestern, UChicago, Union, Connecticut College, and Lawrence publish separate dated video deadlines. Each school's video date belongs on the application calendar as its own line item.
Verification Note
College video policies change annually, and several institutions in this guide adopted, altered, or retired their options within the last two cycles. Confirm each requirement, deadline, platform, and word on editing directly against the institution's own admissions page before submitting.
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