Why do some private schools want to interview parents as part of application process and other privates don’t require?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:But what kind of parents are they looking for as part of interview or just confirming the assessment of the child during child’s interview?

You sound very naive unless you are being facetious. They want to know your pedigree and bank account and whether you will be a PIA.

This....but maybe to add another angle....they are building a community and parents are part of that community.

+1 its vetting for the crazies not for the deep pockets. I know they have their ways of figuring potential donors that does not requre interviewing. The interviewer learned very little about us if they were concerned with what we were wearing or any thing useless and superficial like that. The interview was all about our DC and our expectations for their education, and then how we see Sidwell helping fulfull those expectations. They are looking for normal, involved, yet well balanced community members to add, and no social climbers or curriculum jockeys.

Yep, this. Private schools pick the students AND families they want. A parent can completely torpedo their kid's prospects by having unreasonable expectations or acting in a way that can make the school look bad.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I expect it usually depends on how many applicants there are. For example, Catholic schools like O’Connell are so much larger than the independent privates, they simply couldn’t interview everyone. We didn’t come across any non-Catholic schools that didn’t do interviews during our process last year, so if you e found smaller independent schools that don’t interview I couldn’t speculate about them.

But it also differs across similarly sized competitive schools. Potomac doesn't interview parents but Sidwell, GDS, and Maret (smaller) do.

This must depend on the age at Potomac, as we have a parent interview scheduled for there, but for a younger age.

[Anonymous]

At our school they invited our child to do a 1 hour preschool visit and mentioned the parents should “stay and chat” during that time. When we got there it was clearly a structured interview, I felt bad that I didn’t think to bring my DH since they never used the words parent interview.

[Anonymous]

For the most part, the parent interviews seem to be them trying to convince you how great the school is. It may be a way to increase yield from among accepted students.

[Anonymous]

We never felt like we were being scrutinized during our parent interviews. No one asked anything about our education or background or finances. Pretty sure some of that would border on illegal lines of questioning.

All of our conversations were about our child, what we saw as their strengths and challenges, areas of interest, responsibilities, hobbies, programs of interest in the school we were applying to, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We never felt like we were being scrutinized during our parent interviews. No one asked anything about our education or background or finances. Pretty sure some of that would border on illegal lines of questioning.

All of our conversations were about our child, what we saw as their strengths and challenges, areas of interest, responsibilities, hobbies, programs of interest in the school we were applying to, etc.

Illegal? It's a private school. They are entering into a contract with you; they get to know who you are and if you are good for the money, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We never felt like we were being scrutinized during our parent interviews. No one asked anything about our education or background or finances. Pretty sure some of that would border on illegal lines of questioning.

All of our conversations were about our child, what we saw as their strengths and challenges, areas of interest, responsibilities, hobbies, programs of interest in the school we were applying to, etc.

No one asks about finances but questions are broad enough that it’s easy to weave in your educational experiences and how they shaped you/your career etc and what you what for your kid. You may have steered clear of everything personal but many don’t. It’s hard to be relatable when you don’t provide information about yourself. And many applications ask about parents’ jobs and education information. Finances are more opaque but if you aren’t requesting FA they know you have some $$ to burn.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We never felt like we were being scrutinized during our parent interviews. No one asked anything about our education or background or finances. Pretty sure some of that would border on illegal lines of questioning.

All of our conversations were about our child, what we saw as their strengths and challenges, areas of interest, responsibilities, hobbies, programs of interest in the school we were applying to, etc.

No one asks about finances but questions are broad enough that it’s easy to weave in your educational experiences and how they shaped you/your career etc and what you what for your kid. You may have steered clear of everything personal but many don’t. It’s hard to be relatable when you don’t provide information about yourself. And many applications ask about parents’ jobs and education information. Finances are more opaque but if you aren’t requesting FA they know you have some $$ to burn.

An example: “I love that X school has a sports requirement in Middle and Hugh School. My middle and high school had a sports requirement and I learned a lot from being on a team and structuring my time around practices and meets at a young age. I also discovered X sport which I went on to play at Harvard. Although Larla’s only four and we have no idea if she’ll be sporty, I think at the very least the requirement will allow her to try new things and teach her time management and teamwork.”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I personally thought the Maret/Sidwell parent interviews were extremely wierd for a high school student. I mean, it felt very much like our family was being vetted — what did we choose to wear? What did we choose to say? Did we say Harvard or “school in the NE”? For lower school, I get that you don’t have much else to go on, but for upper school, admissions seemed to be less about our kid and more about us. Which was the wrong vibe for me. We ended up at a school without parent interviews and that set the tone for our engagement with the school. Our child deals with our child’s schooling issues first and foremost. We have not had to step in. If we do, we expect that the child would’ve tried first. It’s actually not our high school experience but our child’s.

I don't get it. They asked you these questions? I toured Maret recently. Was turned off by the whole vibe.

NP. We were asked about our educational experiences while interviewing and my husband and I mentioned our colleges - we went to Amherst and Harvard. Why would anyone say “a school in the NE instead of the school? Just be yourself. It’s like dating - if you want to actually find a partner who you will get on with you act like yourself not a completely different person.

When we were asked about our educational experiences, we spoke about HS experiences and how they relate to what we want for our child. We never mentioned college - they didn't ask - but they can tell from our titles how much education we have.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I expect it usually depends on how many applicants there are. For example, Catholic schools like O’Connell are so much larger than the independent privates, they simply couldn’t interview everyone. We didn’t come across any non-Catholic schools that didn’t do interviews during our process last year, so if you e found smaller independent schools that don’t interview I couldn’t speculate about them.

But it also differs across similarly sized competitive schools. Potomac doesn't interview parents but Sidwell, GDS, and Maret (smaller) do.

This must depend on the age at Potomac, as we have a parent interview scheduled for there, but for a younger age.

HS has no parent interview at Potomac

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For the most part, the parent interviews seem to be them trying to convince you how great the school is. It may be a way to increase yield from among accepted students.

This has not been the case for us - applying for HS to mostly highly selective schools and some backups too. In all cases they wanted to know what we liked about our child, what our child was passionate about, what we wanted for our child in a HS, why we liked their school for our child, and whether they had any special needs. There was zero "sell". They were all thoughtful interviews and seemed on target for what an admissions committee would want to know. They are triangulating - getting this info from kid, from parent, from school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For the most part, the parent interviews seem to be them trying to convince you how great the school is. It may be a way to increase yield from among accepted students.

This has not been the case for us - applying for HS to mostly highly selective schools and some backups too. In all cases they wanted to know what we liked about our child, what our child was passionate about, what we wanted for our child in a HS, why we liked their school for our child, and whether they had any special needs. There was zero "sell". They were all thoughtful interviews and seemed on target for what an admissions committee would want to know. They are triangulating - getting this info from kid, from parent, from school.

This was our experience for HS interviews last year, as well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We never felt like we were being scrutinized during our parent interviews. No one asked anything about our education or background or finances. Pretty sure some of that would border on illegal lines of questioning.

All of our conversations were about our child, what we saw as their strengths and challenges, areas of interest, responsibilities, hobbies, programs of interest in the school we were applying to, etc.

No one asks about finances but questions are broad enough that it’s easy to weave in your educational experiences and how they shaped you/your career etc and what you what for your kid. You may have steered clear of everything personal but many don’t. It’s hard to be relatable when you don’t provide information about yourself. And many applications ask about parents’ jobs and education information. Finances are more opaque but if you aren’t requesting FA they know you have some $$ to burn.

I'm sure they find people who do this to be insufferable. There are plenty of uber wealthy families for admissions to choose from and they know who those people are before the interview even starts. Those people "have people" that have gotten that information across already. At no point in any of our interviews did we try to weave in financial or work related.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We never felt like we were being scrutinized during our parent interviews. No one asked anything about our education or background or finances. Pretty sure some of that would border on illegal lines of questioning.

All of our conversations were about our child, what we saw as their strengths and challenges, areas of interest, responsibilities, hobbies, programs of interest in the school we were applying to, etc.

No one asks about finances but questions are broad enough that it’s easy to weave in your educational experiences and how they shaped you/your career etc and what you what for your kid. You may have steered clear of everything personal but many don’t. It’s hard to be relatable when you don’t provide information about yourself. And many applications ask about parents’ jobs and education information. Finances are more opaque but if you aren’t requesting FA they know you have some $$ to burn.

An example: “I love that X school has a sports requirement in Middle and Hugh School. My middle and high school had a sports requirement and I learned a lot from being on a team and structuring my time around practices and meets at a young age. I also discovered X sport which I went on to play at Harvard. Although Larla’s only four and we have no idea if she’ll be sporty, I think at the very least the requirement will allow her to try new things and teach her time management and teamwork.”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I expect it usually depends on how many applicants there are. For example, Catholic schools like O’Connell are so much larger than the independent privates, they simply couldn’t interview everyone. We didn’t come across any non-Catholic schools that didn’t do interviews during our process last year, so if you e found smaller independent schools that don’t interview I couldn’t speculate about them.

But it also differs across similarly sized competitive schools. Potomac doesn't interview parents but Sidwell, GDS, and Maret (smaller) do.

This must depend on the age at Potomac, as we have a parent interview scheduled for there, but for a younger age.

HS has no parent interview at Potomac

The older the child the less parents matter. They’ll get a sense of your child from teacher and extracurricular recs, grades, and interview. Unless legacy or big donor I can’t see parents throwing it for HS.