Q&A

You’ve been there. I’ve been there. In the folding chair. On the stage. In front of an auditorium full of anxious parents and students, on the edge of their seats. You are the guest of a feeder school who has asked you to join a panel. It’s fun. It’s Admissions 101. You’re actually encouraged NOT to talk about your own school. You’re just there to help, to give advice, to answer questions, to represent “our people”. It’s a rush, isn’t it?

I’ve been thinking about this since the Globe & Mail’s “Thought Du Jour” (there’s that French Canadian thing) earlier this week.

You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers.
You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions.
Naguib Mahfouz, Egyptian Nobel Laureate (1911-2006)

When you’re on the stage, what’s your sage advice? Mine has always been to focus on the interview. It is the one thing in their complete control. It’s real time, it’s raw, it’s live. Their grades and test scores are a record of their past. Even their essay is now gone and history. They have no control over what will be said on their recommendation. But they own the interview. I tell them that their questions are actually as important as their answers. (You should know if they have soccer before you get to the interview! Ask instead how many graduating seniors on the team.) I advise them that what they ask of us is as indicative of their character as their answers to our questions.

For the first time, however, I’ve been giving thought to the reverse. (I was reading on the plane!) Maybe shame on me. In the era of consumerism when it comes to prep school “shopping” and in our effort to attract our best possible applicants (“Even Harvard loses out to Yale sometimes,” I’ve told many a Board), maybe they’re thinking the same. Maybe they are as interested in our questions as they are our answers.

What is the goal of the interview: to judge, to probe, to inquire, to recruit, to discern, to uncover, to cultivate? What is our desired outcome? How do our questions and our answers get us there? What do they say about our schools? What do they say about us?

Anyone have a favourite interview question? Please post in the comments.