Group Interview Sevenoaks School

today I feel the pressure as results come out tomorrow. I don't what I was thinking and applied for bursary and its rejected so I a not sure if they will offer fee paying seat or not! although the email said outcome of exam is independent to bursary outcome

Ours came just after 9am, I remember because I was just logging into my PC at work. I was checking frantically too Brassy!

Oh ok

I got you

I don't know about this year but I meant for my daughter a couple of years ago.

@HandyGirl76 has results email came already ?

By the way, check your junk mail, our letter ended up there!

Best of luck to all who are aiming Sevenoaks

Yes good luck!

@Talbot53 thank you

Sevenoaks exam us over today . It was very chatty n not forced or formal interview .. super amiable env

No Sevenoaks experience, but if it's any help, we just went through the Reigate Grammar process and their group interview involved a very informal discussion with the Headmaster (simple questions, what do you like to do, who enjoys sports etc.) and then an activity that involved the kids looking at a few different interesting objects and items that had been laid out in a classroom.

I really wouldn't worry.

Yea maths was super easy n dc said 27 min to spare after checking twice !

eng finished 1 min to spare but I agree vr was slightly different n never seen problems

my child likes those unique questions more than anything else . It doesn’t mean he got them right but just he prefers those kinds over same 30 types of vr problems

@BrassyLocks

hope your DC paper went well .

my dc surprised me n he managed to finish English paper .

Group interview I totally forget to prepare for among all the panic for English timing .

Glad it’s over. wish you all the luck .

My daughter did the year 9 group interview a few years which I think is similar. They were asked to introduce someone else in the group (after a brief chat) and then were watched by a teacher as they debated a subject as a group. For them it something about what equipment they would keep on a boat that was sinking if they could only keep a limited number of things. The teacher facilitated the discussion so that they all had a chance to contribute. I'm told it's not about what answers they give but how they respond to the discussion and whether they demonstrate the behaviour and interest that teachers would want to see in a classroom.

I really don't think we could have prepared for it.

@BrassyLocks thank you . For English he is not able to write quickly enough . if he was allowed to type he will be fine. I m only trying to make him write faster on paper now.

vr 13 in 25min sounds about right n inline with grammar school exams

No idea really, I'm afraid, but I'd have thought it was more helpful to try some different question types than the exact level of difficulty. Reasoning tests are meant to be a lot about natural ability anyway. Back when we were doing VR and non-VR practice for 11+, I never found that either DC's scores improved all that much with practice, which kind of backs that up - I mean, they did a little bit to start with, but they plateaued pretty quickly.

It's definitely true that quite a few people take grammar places instead - I remember the school being very open about that on the exam day, and I've met quite a few who got in from wait list.

What a pita about the train strikes, I imagine that's stressful. Doubt they'll postpone though, sorry - term starts before the train strikes finish, and I can't imagine it would be easy to run entrance exams for hundreds of kids on a normal school day.

I hope you manage to get there OK and your DC isn't too stressed about it. It was a while ago now, but I remember being really anxious about how DC1 would manage, as she's not very confident, but actually it was honestly fine, even though she found one of the papers quite hard. She was definitely knackered by the end of the day, but quite cheerful. It was the last entrance exam we did, so it was a nice feeling to finish!

My son is at the moment really struggling with timings on eng paper . He is fine with maths .

vr we have done 10-11 books n he did clear iseb for Westminster so I m
hoping this level should be fine

I wonder too about passing marks on English especially as it’s giving me nightmares .

I am with you n hope exams dates shift by 3-4 weeks lol 😂

@BrassyLocks , is your dc sitting other private school exams as this will help you gauge the level they should be working at? As you know Sevenoaks is 1 of the top 10 schools in the U.K. and with only the option of IB at sixth form they are going to offer to high performing all rounders. I know dc at the school and the level of VR they were practising at this stage would make no difference to their outcome especially as most of the work was done during the previous summer in preparation for the grammar school entrance exams.
Enjoy the rest of the holiday and keep the nerves at bay.

I do think tutors like to exaggerate the extent to which they're 'in the know' (it's in their interests!). In this case, the english and maths papers are all on the website for anyone to access, and presumably tutors aren't going to know which questions are going to come up in the VR test (and there are loads of practice materials out there, available to anyone). If they do have an insight into the number of questions etc, I'm not sure that's really terribly useful (and my kids certainly never remember stuff like that 5 minutes later, so I doubt tutors have got terribly accurate information!). I can see that tutors could have a role in actually teaching children or helping them to work through past papers if parents aren't able to, but I doubt they've got much in the way of secret knowledge.

Same with interview practice. I'm involved in interviewing applicants in the workplace, and it's so obvious when people have planned little speeches or gone onto 'how to answer an interview question' websites, compared with actually behaving naturally and thinking on their feet. I imagine schools are pretty good at spotting over-prepped candidates a mile off.

Thank you
that’s super helpful .