SW London grammar and private year 7 entry 2024.

[Hatty999]

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/secondary/4907226-sw-london-grammar-and-private-year-7-entry-2024

This is the previous link. Hope it works.

My dd would have enjoyed these different types of questions. She was asked the typical getting to know you types and what are your hobbies.

This thread is so helpful - did not know it was reed’s results day tomorrow! 😅

I bet your daughter would also enjoy our interview questions. I can share them later once the results are out. Hobbies and interests were among the questions asked.

Agree with you @BonjourCrisette

On the subject of supposedly 'weird' questions. I think there are tutor-proof questions or, at the very least, questions which you can pose and work out whether the approach taken by the applicant stems from previous formal practice or not. If it is the former, you can generally tease out the challenge until you get the candidate to a place where they are no longer following training steps (and then see how they manage it, which is presumably what they want to know if they follow that path). If the kid has not been formally prepared to field more open questions, this is evident pretty quickly and you can figure out whether their attitude (to 'not knowing' and trying to figure out) is one that fits within the range of what the school is looking for. All the above can be done in 15mins by an experienced interviewer.

Anyone heard from Reeds yet?

Reeds emails out!

As someone who has interviewed many graduates, I disagree with this statement. Interviewers are not mind readers and they only use open questions in certain cases. The judgment based on the open answers will also differ a lot depending on the interviewer and cannot be compared across.

Only questions that test the candidate’s knowledge or understanding of a topic or require them to provide proof are suitable for asking more questions and probing deeper, but not strange ones, which are ineffective and do not reveal much in a limited time span.

Refreshing inbox but nothing yet from Reeds!

It's a waitlist at Reed's for us - gutted!

The interview questions we received are unrelated to testing knowledge; they lean more towards creativity and imagination. I was surprised that no knowledge-based questions were asked. I heard about a girl being asked to discuss a woman who led a moment with historical impact, and such a question sounds more relevant to the interview.

We are very lucky to have a Reed’s offer. Feeling hugely grateful.

@222namechange Interviewers aren't mind reading but, in an academic context, trying to work out how responses map into 'teachability' and point to potential. It is not an exact science and cannot be quantified in the same way as right/wrong-type questions (the tests will do most of that). Interviewers will have some sort of scoring table and criteria in order to compare data. I mention the above from the pov of several years' worth of entry to higher education interviewing, not from having done school interviews. Some school interviews seem to follow the HEd model with which I am familiar.

The terms 'weird' and 'strange' may be part of the issue. What may seem weird to someone (perhaps because they had not anticipated it or cannot be measured in absolute terms) can be considered a perfectly reasonable probing question by a school. It depends on what they are looking for.

Ultimately, interviews are useful in that they help to match individuals to environment. If one finds a school's approach unsuitable (because it is perceived as unfair, strange, weird or unreasonable in any way), then that surely makes declining an offer much more straightforward.

DS has an offer for Reed's! Feeling relieved as it's the first offer we've had (and the only other concrete response so far has been a no to interview at KCS)

No email yet from Reed’s. Wonder why

Congratulations on the Reeds offers!

@WCSCT sorry to hear that. You may not get an answer today but the schools should be able to tell you roughly where you are on the WL. Worth asking if it’s your preferred school. 🤞

@Camordgh I don’t know much about the HEd model, but I have done some university admission interviews a few years ago, and to make sure the open questions were fair and suitable, we had more than one interviewer present and we based our decisions on the evidence from the interview notes. We usually avoided any weird or unexpected questions to give the candidates the benefit of the doubt. I guess private schools have more leeway in this process. The parents can ask for the interview notes of their children from the school according to GDPR after the process.

@222namechange , private schools admissions are different, the school is looking at the results of the entrance exams and then directing the questions so they differ between candidates. The parents have signed away rights to see feedback, they have paid a non refundable registration fee and signed up to the terms and conditions of admission to the school by this stage of the process. A private school can decide who to offer to, who to take from a waiting list and who to reject, it's up the school. The schools want a balance of musical. Sporty, academic, gender, ethnic group, bursary etc and use the admissions process to achieve this.

We had a Reed’s yes. Phew

Is the school taking ethnic diversity into account during the admission process? In multiple exam rounds, we observed that a significant number of candidates belong to one or two ethnic backgrounds. Does this imply that if most candidates share one background, the school aims to balance diversity by admitting fewer of them after the interview rounds? Is it worth noting that the westminster has more pupils from specific ethnic backgrounds?

@tennissquare Private schools have a lot of leeway in selecting their students, but they can’t deny you the right to ask for your own data that they hold about you under GDPR.

@222namechange I did mean university admission interviews, yes, and yes too to having more than one interviewer. Questions were discussed in advance too by a wider group of colleagues but these did include open questions which I suspect would fall under the 'weird' category mentioned in this thread precisely because they were not knowledge based. Some schools seem keen on identifying readiness to think creatively (once they are happy that their measure of knowledge basics is there) and that may reflect their interview approach (different types of interview for different candidates depending on what they already know about them). Others schools seem to decide exclusively on a measure of 'knowledge already acquired' with their interview serving as a sort of general check to confirm their decision.

I think that well-designed open questions are fairer and aim to offer a more balanced (less imbalanced?) playing field between candidates who have had access to excellent primary teaching and interview preparation and those who have not.

I don’t think they actively put a ceiling on those backgrounds which do seem to overindex - though would be interested to see if they do, but would have thought it if was borderline between say a SE Asian origin child and a black child, who are vastly under-resprsented, they might pick the black child to increase the diversity.

It's not ceilings but there has to be a mixture of every type of student to ensure a balanced school intake.