Practice interviewing with your children

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well stop asking candidates the questions like " describe an academic challenge and how you overcame it". Those are stupid questions. Back in the day I would have thought "well, school comes easily so I've got nothing, but if I say that I'm an arrogant jerk. So crap, let me make something up". It's also a coachable question and I'm so sick of the answers that I do get. "Beauty pageant contestant" answers, I call them. The university has their resume and teacher recommendations.

Instead ask them questions designed to get them talking about themselves and not their resume. If the candidates can't say anything in response to "if you went into a bookstore, which section would you go to, and which sections would you avoid" then we might have someone not ready.

I am sure OP knows what she is doing.

I'm the PP, and I also do alumni interviews for an Ivy. The first kind of question only serves the prepped kids. It's appropriate for a job interview. We get our own guidance from the university, and they do not recommend questions like that. Alumni interviewers are not admissions officers. Our job is to get some of the color of the person, not hire them. I'm there to weed out psychos and provide some insight into their personality.

Where I do agree with the OP is the exhortation to please ensure your child has experience talking to adults. Kids who converse easily and can be engaging on a topic do well. I'm not really looking for the content of the answer (except for the question " why do you want to come to X University"? ) several if the candidates I interviewed who were accepted were one where I didn't write very much except "this person was so interesting and easy to talk to that I didn't get to take many notes."