SWW interviews
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Anonymous
No one is saying that the Walls kids don't deserve to be there. Where was this said at all? They deserve to be there. However, the other kids with equivalent GPAs who were not admitted deserved to be there too. The kids who were admitted didn't do anything exceptional or distinguishing from an academic or character standpoint to be there. Listen, it was either pure luck or a looks/charisma thing. You can't convince any of us that a 5 minute interview done by a teenager had any hope of teasing out academic merit. I know you want to believe that your Walls child has some sort of intrinsic merit that was sussed out by a 16 year old interviewer in 5 minutes. But no, this didn't happen. |
Anonymous
well, how does their a$$ look like in those leggings? |
Anonymous
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Are the interviews with a student only or is there faculty/staff also?
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Anonymous
You do realize this is often how hiring decisions are made - just want to make sure that we know this stupidity extends beyond Walls. |
Anonymous
| There is always an adult, an interview would never be done by just students. In fact, my child’s interview last year was with only an adult, no students because we had to reschedule and I assume there were no students available at that time. According to previous poster(s?), I guess my child was determined to be good looking enough by this adult. Again, gross |
Anonymous
Unfortunately, this same type of thing happens with the college application process when it comes to ultra-selective schools. It starts feeling like chance and then those who don't get in start looking for reasons why and it's not a pretty conversation. |
Anonymous
+1...Only an adult and we were not in the room. Our interview followed... |
Anonymous
Wrong..no one deserves anything! The process is a lottery of the highest GPAs so what's the problem? With all the grade inflation everyone is leaning on, shouldn't be an issue. I guess that's not merit. If your "coached and tutored" kid could function without a pacifier, you wouldn't be so up in arms..... |
Anonymous
You are assuming they actual have a career and are not living of family money. The real world is not some utopia. |
Anonymous
Lovely. Do you think the faculty/staff interviewer has any input or just the students? The admissions process at SWW is seriously messed up. But all this about the kids running the show and only the cool kids are admitted is just wrong. Work to fix the system but leave the thirteen and fourteen yr olds out of it. It’s our mess, not theirs. |
Anonymous
| Yes but what is the school like outside of having good looking kids in it? Why do so many choose JR instead? |
Anonymous
| I have no evidence of this and this is just a hunch, so take it with a grain of salt, but I suspect that schools are looking at other factors beyond just the application and interviews. They don't want all the kids to come from Ward 3 for example. So they are probably looking for geographic diversity as well as other things outside of the formal application process. So yeah, in a way it is a crap shoot. It's unfortunate for sure. There should be multiple options for high achieving kids, not just two or three options. |
Anonymous
It's the staff..students have little input. Some interviews didn't have any students. Ours didn't have a student but was heavy on how much support we provide. |
Anonymous
They wanted to know if you were helicopter parents? Tiger parents? |
Anonymous
I'm the previous poster you are responding to here. You're right, deserve is probably not the right word for any of these students - ones who are there or ones who were not admitted, and it was me that used that term first, not stated that way earlier, so my bad. I do believe my two children who are at Walls are there because they did get good grades (I know, all grades are inflated, so they didn't really earn those either), they are competent and able to hold a conversation with an adult for 10 minutes (there were actually no students in my 2nd child's interview, so that actually doesn't apply here), they expressed an interest in wanting to be there during the interview, and are independent learners whose parents are actually pretty hands off with regards to school. So yeah, while I get there is a lot of luck involved, I'm not willing to chalk it up to just being luck or a looks/charisma thing, and the continued (false) narrative that the student interviewers are running the show here and only deciding who they want there based on how they look is doing no one any service - particularly the ones who didn't get admitted! I'm really sorry that your child did not get admitted to Walls and that you are still holding a lot of resentment about that. But you coming on here again and again saying that the ones who are there were just the good looking ones isn't really helping anyone looking to apply now - but maybe your goal is to encourage people not to apply? I really just don't get it... For those who do have upcoming interviews and have come here with questions - the school will actually send you/your child some tips for interviewing, including attire. Our first kid's interview was in person and our 2nd was online. Both met with the student first for about 10 minutes and then with us for about 5 minutes. I did feel that in the parent interview they are trying to get a sense of how "involved" you are with regards to your child's education. The school communicates very clearly that they expect students to be self-advocates and this has been demonstrated since our kids have been there, so as someone else asked, it does seem like they are trying to suss out how much of a helicopter or snow plow parent you are. I have also heard that some kids have said in interviews that they are interested in Walls because their parents want them to go there, so I think there is some sussing out of the kid's desire to attend themselves. I think that both of my kids were asked to share about a book they had recently read or their favorite book, or something like that. I really think they are asking this type of question to gauge the student's communication skills rather than judging them on the book specifically. And up until now, our experience has been fine. Walls is not perfect, or even great to be honest. It is fine. My kids are happy, they work hard but are not stressed by the amount of work, and are engaged socially. I have been a little disappointed at the amount of college counseling my junior has received up to now, but he has also not sought this out, which again, has been communicated clearly that the students need to do this. My kids are not big partiers and are still home or hang out with smaller groups of friends on the weekends. They know of kids who drink or smoke/eat weed, but I am fairly certain they are not engaging in that now and have not shared that they feel pressure to do so - we do talk about this quite a bit actually. The teachers have ranged from bad (unresponsive to emails, late in submitting grades, pretty unengaging) to great (engaging, communicative, challenging). Administration does send out fairly regular communication but I have not really had to engage much with them, so can't speak too much to that. I think that the past 2 years admission process has been a big challenge, due to Covid, dropping the test, figuring out how to do online interviews, losing the long term principal mid-year, etc. Remember that there is no "admissions department", like most private schools have, so all of the interviews are being done by staff and students outside of their regular work, so extending a little grace to an extremely frustrating and opaque process might be at least slightly warranted. Good luck! |