The Applicant Asked Whether the Fish Was Alive

Correct. You cannot plan for a fish on the information supplied. A lesser applicant would have started talking. This one asked for the facts.

Langworthy said she loved that the school valued a child's creative thought process as much as her grades. She called it funky, quirky, small and scrappy.

Nobody preparing a child for an interview has ever covered the fish. We prepared the eldest for her kindergarten assessment in 2014 the way people prepare for a deposition. Name your favorite book. Look at the grown-up. Don't say "poop." She did all of it. On the way out, the interviewer asked her if she had any questions. She asked where the bathroom was. She had been holding it for forty minutes, because nobody had prepared her to ask.

In an Enrollment Management Association conversation about interviewing, Kila McCann, who works in admissions, told a story that she said still makes her laugh. A student who had spent the morning shadowing stood up halfway through his interview, in all seriousness, and asked, "Do you mind if I take a break? I really need some more of that hot chocolate from the dining hall."

She let him go. She was not annoyed, she said. It was an authentic moment.

I want to be very clear that I would not have let him go. I would have been impressed and then said no. This is why I am not in admissions.

The adults get nervous too. A guest writer on the same LA blog described searching a school's website for a couple of intelligent questions to ask at her parent interview, then trying to memorize them, and still getting butterflies.

The middle one has his first interview coming up, for a summer program. We practiced last night. I asked him what he would do with a fish and a slingshot. He asked what kind of fish. I said it didn't matter. He said then neither did the slingshot, and could he go get a snack.

He is going to do fine.