School Interview Practice
A growing number of independent schools now include an interview as part of their entrance requirements, whereby they meet and talk to potential students wishing to join their community. The reasoning behind this is simple: they wish to accept not only the brightest students but those who are also articulate, confident and who have an interest in the world they live in.
Interview questions can be broadly categorised into types, from those which are designed to ascertain a prospective pupil’s attraction to the school and others which elicit information about the student’s own hobbies and interests to those which indicate the scholar’s understanding of wider issues and affairs both nationally and internationally. This text has been designed to give a flavour of the types of questions which may be asked at interview, together with suggestions as to why each question might be asked – you might wonder what information the interviewer hopes to glean from asking the question. Every interview question is followed by three exemplar answers, one which is judged poor, a second which is good and a third which is excellent. Each answer comes with a commentary which indicates how an interviewer might note each response together with hints and tips for making the answer even better.