16+ Interview Tips for Top Schools Like Brighton College
The Brighton college interview is an incredibly important stage of the selection process and is often likely to contain a range of questions, including academic style questions. This is almost a certainty from my past experience of talking to students of mine who successfully gained a place at Brighton college after intensive Ivy Tutoring preparation.
The standard questions are quite similar across interviews and these include questions such as: interests, achievements, extra-curricular, favourite and least favourite subjects, strengths and weaknesses, contributions you expect to make to the school and its community, current affairs of interest and so on.
Then there are the unexpected yet fun questions such as: “If you could meet anyone famous, dead or alive, and ask them a question, who would you meet and what would you ask them?” Also, one that was asked at Brighton recently: “If you were made Prime Minister tomorrow, what are three things that you would implement?”
Some students find these questions easy and enjoyable over the traditional questions, and I find this depends on the students thinking style and the way they approach information and ideas; other students find these questions much more challenging, an rather than trying to cover every possible eventuality of question, what can be more useful is to brainstorm strategies for answering these types of question, and practising how to access that creative state of mind in the interview!
Finally, some of the more demanding schools, particularly Brighton College, may well ask the dreaded academic questions, which could be humanities based, or science and maths based. Some of these types of critical thinking-based questions are covered in the general paper (especially humanities based ones) but it can feel different when asked directly in an interview setting – as if you are being put under the spotlight.
Some possible questions depending on the subject could be about the real life applicability of areas like algebra or trigonometry, or a conceptual drill down into something like what volume actually is and why it is a cubic measurement. Within Physics you might be asked about Newtons Laws of Motion, what “freefall” actually means, what is “terminal velocity” and what photons are. And Historians could be quizzed on whether history is objective, and what its actual significance is.
The general theme is clear – to really test a student’s ability to think critically – and do not worry, this is a skill you can master, and definitely enough to pass the interview as well as the General Paper.
The Ivy Tutoring 16+ preparation is rigorous, comprehensive and adapted to the students learning style, using a blend of academic insight and NLP confidence building strategies. It is not just detached and academic; there is a distinct focus on aligning cognitive and emotional factors as well as and giving the kind of detailed feedback that allows your child to correct course as they go, until they master the strategy and feel confident and excited to sit the interview!