Help with college interviews

[Anonymous]

Just got a rate schedule update from prep matters and it lists mock interviews in the college counseling services. $250/hour.

[Anonymous]

For those of you who might find $250 prohibitive, you can probably do this yourself. Sit your kid down at the kitchen table and do a mock interview. Ask some tough questions. Like, "what do you want to do with your life" and "are you comfortable with diversity?" Help DC develop some ready answers with examples. Google some college interview questions.

(Note that most interviewers won't expect your kid to have his life planned out, but he will need to be articulate about his interests and how he's been looking at a range of possible careers.)

As staff at a government agency, I used to participate in "murder boards" for senior government officials, to help the officials prepare to testify to Congress. We'd ask all the really tough questions, the official would respond calmly and factually, and we'd discuss the best ways to respond. (BTW, this doesn't mean these senior government officials were a "bad fit" for testifying about their issues, just that testifying under pressure is a learned skill.)

Signed, Harvard loser

[Anonymous]

Any college interviewer who can be fooled by a few hours of prep shouldn't be doing the job. Teaching a child to be a socially adept young adult is a long process and you can't "cram" for charisma.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why would you try to prep a child to pretend he/she is something he/she is not? Finding the right college is all about finding the right fit. If your little cupcake can't look someone in the eye by 12th grade they aren't going to thrive in a school full of extroverts. You can't coach them through 4+ years of college.

What a misguided post. You obviously do not have high school aged kids. Good luck to your kis... Cough cough

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Any college interviewer who can be fooled by a few hours of prep shouldn't be doing the job. Teaching a child to be a socially adept young adult is a long process and you can't "cram" for charisma.

You keep missing the whole point - I doubt you've had kids go through the college application process.

For one thing, interviewers ARE also looking for some quiet hard workers. It's absolutely wrong to think that colleges want to build classes consisting of 100% "charismatic" individuals and the game here is about fooling them into thinking that you're another "charismatic" individual.

This is because interviewers understand that "socially adept" is completely different from having the skills to succeed in college. Interviewers know that success in college is more about work ethic, smarts, and having done the hard courses in hard school that prep for the intended major. Plenty of socially awkward kids succeed in college just fine, and you probably knew these kids in your own college.

Therefore, prepping for an interview is NOT about transforming yourself into a smooth, "socially adept" and "charismatic" persona. It's about learning the whole interview protocol. For example, anticipating some of the questions you will be inevitably be asked, and thinking about possible answers ahead of time. When the interviewer inevitably asks, "what do you want to do with your life," or "what are your passions," the kid needs to have at least something to say. When the interviewer gets to the inevitable, "do you have any questions?", the kid needs to have some questions of her own ready. It's about knowing who pays for the coffee at the Starbucks you're meeting at (if the interviewer insists, let them pay). Et cetera. It would be parental malpractice to let a kid go into a an interview blind, without knowing these obvious things about how interviews work. If you have ever gone on a job interview, you will understand this.

[Anonymous]

I wonder how much PP charges for her prep sessions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Why would you try to prep a child to pretend he/she is something he/she is not? Finding the right college is all about finding the right fit. If your little cupcake can't look someone in the eye by 12th grade they aren't going to thrive in a school full of extroverts. You can't coach them through 4+ years of college.


So you've never prepped for an important interview? I consider learning to prep for interviews an important life skill. (Also, the only colleges that only accept extroverts are clown colleges.)

+1. Of course, you prep for it like any important interview.

To be honest, I've never paid to have someone prepare me for an interview. The best advice for anyone looking for a good fit is "be yourself." If you pretend to be someone or something you are not, the lie will catch up to you.

+1. Be yourself. Don't try to fit the square peg in the round hole.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Any college interviewer who can be fooled by a few hours of prep shouldn't be doing the job. Teaching a child to be a socially adept young adult is a long process and you can't "cram" for charisma.

A true college interviewer yes. But most of these are done by alum volunteers who don't have the breadth of experience, see a few kids a year, and may come to the interview with biases.

It's not about charisma necessarily, it's about having some experience answering an off the wall question, sounding sincere in asking the interviewer questions, knowing how to pace your responses, knowing how the get in the key points you want to make. People practice for presentations, speeches, debates, interviews all the time in their professional life. Isn't this important enough to practice for?

My second kid was a natural at these but even he did better on the 8th one than the first one.

[Anonymous]

I've interviewed for my college as an alum. What I always looked for was them getting excited about some aspect of their life and telling me about it - be it travel, a research project, their family or part-time job. The hardest kids to interview were the ones who took 8 APs, studied all the time, never seemed to have fun, and couldn't really talk to me about what interested them most or why they wanted to attend college at all (except that they were expected to by mommy), much less this particular college.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I wonder how much PP charges for her prep sessions.

I'm not an interview prepper, I'm a parent with one kid who has gone through the process and another one who will soon. THAT's why I understand it a lot better than you, with your shallow, off-the-cuff snipes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Why would you try to prep a child to pretend he/she is something he/she is not? Finding the right college is all about finding the right fit. If your little cupcake can't look someone in the eye by 12th grade they aren't going to thrive in a school full of extroverts. You can't coach them through 4+ years of college.


So you've never prepped for an important interview? I consider learning to prep for interviews an important life skill. (Also, the only colleges that only accept extroverts are clown colleges.)

+1. Of course, you prep for it like any important interview.

To be honest, I've never paid to have someone prepare me for an interview. The best advice for anyone looking for a good fit is "be yourself." If you pretend to be someone or something you are not, the lie will catch up to you.

+1. Be yourself. Don't try to fit the square peg in the round hole.

Guys. This isn't about acting school so you can adopt a fake personality. It's about a very specific skill set that nobody is born knowing. How hard is that to understand? (Apparently, very hard!)

[Anonymous]

PP - how many college interviews have you sat through?

[Anonymous]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joie-jagerhyman/college-interview-tips_b_3453849.html

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:PP - how many college interviews have you sat through?

Probably not the PP you are referring to but I used to interview for my college. I did about 5 interviews a year, sometimes a few more if I participated in an interview day. I stopped doing them a while ago though as I felt that at my advanced age I really couldn't provide much perspective on the current life of the college.

They were always interesting but some kids were definitely more well prepared, or just more comfortable, than others. A few were just painful. Some of that was certainly personality, but some was preparation. The kids who did well were able to give at least somewhat detailed answers to questions, had at least some knowledge of the college (don't ask about the business classes/business school at my SLAC), and seemed to have some sort of interests outside of class that they could talk about with some enthusiasm.

One of my DCs is the one I referred to earlier as a natural at interviewing. He didn't do interview prep but did prepare quite a bit for each interview - to the point of researching the interviewer themselves (linked in came in handy) to get a sense of their perspective and adapt to the situation.

[Anonymous]

Ironically those who are comfortable in their own skin are probably the only ones who benefit from real preparation in a traditional senses, but those who want to reinvent themselves are most likely to hire coaches to "prep" them.