Milena Zilo cried when the rejection letter arrived from the University of Denver, then she decided that school officials did not know enough about her and drove 12 miles from her home to tell them that. John Dolan, then the vice chancellor for enrollment, was away from his office, so she grabbed a brochure with his picture on it and went looking for him.

Zilo and Dolan had no way of knowing it at the time, but their awkward and emotional first meeting in April 2001 helped spur the private school to make personal interviews a required part of its application process.

DU, as the university calls itself, is in the midst of a 27-city series of 5,000 interviews -- an approach rivaled by only a few U.S. undergraduate institutions -- to see whether personal contact can improve what has become for many applicants a mysterious and angst-ridden ordeal.

"We want to give every kid an opportunity to give us his own voice and go beyond just test scores and GPA," said Michael L. Griffin, the assistant vice chancellor for enrollment.

Dolan recalled that when Zilo found him on campus and told him, in the accent of her native Albania, that he had made a big mistake, he said the usual polite things: It was not a reflection on her, and there were only a little more than 900 spaces in the freshman class. But when she persisted, he took her back to his office and listened.

She showed him a scrapbook of glowing recommendation letters, awards and other signs of achievement. She explained that attending the university had been her goal since she arrived in the United States with her family four years earlier. Dolan told her to wait, stepped out to confer with his staff and came back to inform her she was right. They had made a mistake and would not only admit her but also offer her a scholarship.

Then he began to think about what could be done to prevent losing any more applicants like her. "She was energetic, smart and focused," he said. "Just the kind of student we wanted."

The idea of giving every applicant a chance to explain himself or herself, as Zilo had done, took hold after University of Denver Chancellor Daniel L. Ritchie visited a business school in India that interviewed every candidate. Dolan and his staff experimented with interviews in a limited number of cities for two years. Then last month, they began, at a cost of $425,000, a full interview schedule to pick the Class of 2008.

The school's "Ammi Hyde interviews," named in honor of a student-oriented English professor, are conducted by three-member teams of faculty, staff and alumni. Each interview takes about 20 minutes, with applicants ushered into hotel conference rooms rented for the purpose. Washington area interviews are scheduled for Feb. 21 and 22 at the Bethesda Marriott, and those who cannot make the weekend sessions are interviewed by telephone, school officials said.

The university's Web site recommends that applicants wear business casual attire and advises them not to worry about giving right or wrong answers. "Think of it as your chance to show us the many ways in which you are motivated to learn, concerned with integrity and honesty, open to differences and new ideas [and] looking to contribute to the community," the Web site message states.

Early reviews from students have been good. Katherine Walsh, a freshman, said she was "very nervous that I would be caught off guard or something" when she walked in for her interview a year ago in Seattle. But, she said, "it made me think that DU did care to learn about what type of people they were going to accept, which shows they really do care about students."

Theo Chapman, a first-year student from Bishop Machebeuf High School in Denver, said he appreciates a system that encourages "penetrating questions that truly bring out the person that the transcripts, applications and other documents can't reveal."

University officials said the average SAT or ACT scores of admitted students may be lower as a result of the interview requirement, but they have not declined so far. They say they are happy to add students such as Zilo, who had low SAT scores but has been elected to the student senate and is active in eight other organizations as she pursues a degree in finance.

Only a handful of selective undergraduate programs, including those of Harvard, Princeton and Georgetown universities, require personal interviews. Usually, one interviewer chats with the applicant for about 45 minutes and sends a report to the admissions office. The interviews complicate the lives of the admissions staff and are a strain on the alumni who do most of the work in the evening or on weekends, but the few colleges that require them say the personal contact helps them make better decisions.

"For us, the interview personalizes the process and lets the candidate tell his or her story to a neutral party," said Charles A. Deacon, dean of admissions at Georgetown. "The interview is not about Georgetown but about the student and usually confirms what we know from the rest of the file, though sometimes it adds something crucial to the decision."

Marlyn McGrath Lewis, director of admissions at Harvard, said, "We think that more information is always better than less."

Some schools, such as Colorado College, have recently started optional interview programs that do not go as far as the DU requirement but provide more depth. "There is a set of students now who don't necessarily have the statistics but present themselves so well that they stand out in the overall process," said Matthew Bonser, senior assistant director of admission at Colorado College.

A recent survey by the National Association for College Admission Counseling found, however, that only about 10 percent of colleges attributed "considerable importance" to face-to-face interviews. Some guidance counselors think interviews put some withdrawn but otherwise outstanding applicants at a disadvantage.

Shirley Bloomquist, an educational consultant and college adviser, said that when she was a counselor at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Fairfax County, she learned that one very bright student was rejected by most of the colleges he applied to because he was shy and did not interview well.

Some admissions experts said they worry that high school seniors might feel overwhelmed facing three interviewers at once. But several applicants who went through the University of Denver selection process said that was not a problem.

"There was a very nice professor from DU and two alumni members," Walsh said of the panel she faced in Seattle. They asked about her hobbies, the last book outside of school that she liked and what she would do with $1 million. (She said she would spend half on a new house for her family and half for her high school's art program.)

"After it, I felt great," she said. "They really got a taste of who I was and what I was like as a person. They were so receptive to all I had to say, I was just relieved and excited."