Good luck to all the 6th formers at Mayfield applying to university for 2019. It was an honour for me to meet so many talented students and to help in preparing them for the challenge of upcoming university interviews.
This event last Saturday 1st December was sponsored and arranged by our MP Adam Holloway. Every year he brings together a wide group of volunteer interviewers from across the spectrum of academia, the professions and senior people in the public and private sectors, to put students through their paces in mock interviews. In a simulated, typical university interview situation, it gives them an opportunity to experience the kind of questions they may be asked. Then as a result, better prepare themselves for the real event.
I had the privilege of interviewing three students. If they are representative of our youth today, Gravesend and the country is blessed with a pool of talent for the future. I was impressed not just by their subject matter knowledge, but by their attitude, ethics and ambition.
If there was one big thread that came out in the feedback from the interviewers, it is the concept that students have to be prepared to sell themselves to their target university or college. The university is the buyer and the student is the seller. However for the top universities it is a buyers' market, where demand exceeds supply. In other words, there are more students than places available.
Therefore the better a prospective student satisfies the interests of the university in the way they answer interview questions, the better they will do. The key is to research and understand what those interests are, to anticipate the questions and to prepare answers that meet the needs of the uni.
The short guide attached fleshes out how a student may go about preparing for an interview in this way. It's free to download and comes with the disclaimer that it is not a bible for interview success, merely an idea to be adopted if the reader sees fit!
