KCJS October Interview for the 7+ Exam

[chiaseed]

Can anyone enlighten me what is involved in the Kings College Junior School's October interview for the 7+ applicants? I'm interested in the first interview i.e. not the activity morning that is typically held 1-2 weeks before the 7+ exam is held in January. The headmaster said at an Open Day that KCJS only wants "smart boys who are interested and interesting". Is it possible for candidates to be eliminated before the 7+ examination if they are not sufficiently interesting, articulate and intelligent in the interview? What questions are asked in the October interview? Do the boys need to do sight reading? Can they prepare for the interview?

It's not possible to be officially eliminated based on the interview -- obviously if you came in and tweaked the interviewer's nose or gave only monosyllabic answers throughout then you'd have to do something truly remarkable in the other two rounds to be offered a place, but you'd still be considered.

Questions are things like "Tell me about your family" or "Have you been to any other countries? Which was your favourite and why?" that sort of general chat. Likely to be asked about sports and music. IIRC they get given a passage to sight read out loud (and answer some questions on?). They get asked a maths question possibly to choose a times table to be tested on (might be asked to recite it or spot-checked individual sums) or what they think is a "hard sum" and can they solve it? They are interviewed in pairs, boys from two different schools in at the same time with the same interviewer.

Thank you very much Milk. How do the interviewers interview two Boys at the same time? Do they aanswer the same question in turn? So the interviewers can compare responses? Am guessing they can't ask the same maths question otherwise it's not fair on the first respondent. It sounds a bit weird.

In part I imagine it's so that they can get through the sheer number of boys they have to interview, but also I think it's genuinely to make it less intimidating for the boys as there are two of them and only one teacher. I think they do tend to ask the same questions but more in a promoting-chat kind of way and don't directly compare responses (after all, your DS isn't competing directly against his co-interviewee but against all the other boys) but I suspect that seeing how the boys interact with each other when thrown into the interview together may be a part of it? Who knows?