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

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

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]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.  [/quote]

This is how we feel.  If a school requires a parent interview for HS it will be a sign that it’s a bad fit for us. [/quote]

Went through the process for two kids.  The parent interview is an opportunity for both sides to assess fit.  Most of each of the interviews focused on the child, how the parents viewed the child, their goals for the child, etc., from the school's perspective (for triangulation, as others have mentioned).  From our side, it allowed us to inquire about things that were important to us but which our child might not have the courage to ask or skill to evaluate (for example, the school's learning center).  For a couple where there was a prior connection, more of the interview fell into the "shooting the shit" category.  But even when our younger was applying to the school our older girl was then still attending, we wanted to do the interview (which the school told us would be optional) because the second kid was different than the first and we had different questions.  I'd be more wary of a school that didn't take the opportunity to find out about the child through the parents' eyes or offer the opportunity for the parent to further explore what the school has to offer than one that encouraged or required it.  [/quote]
+1
We thought the parent interviews were a very useful and helpful part of the process for both sides. [/quote]

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