How to do an interview

1. Read 20 poems aloud beforehand to improve projection and slow your speech

2. Be interested and interesting

3. Be thoughtful, which is to say, show yourself to be both intelligent and kind

4. Mirror the interviewer’s body language, and lean forward not back

5. What really excites you about life?

6. Why are bananas curved? (because they grow up towards the sun at first but then as they get bigger they start to curve down towards the earth because otherwise they’d make the plant top-heavy and it would fall over) BUT any thoughtful answer is good

7. What three adjectives would your friends use to describe you?

8. Why do you want to come here?

9. Why should we take you?

10.Who is the prime minister (read The Week)

11.Remember the first rule of showbusiness: Look ‘em in the eye, and speak from the heart.

12.In the interview, a ten-second silence will feel like a twenty-second one. Take your time before answering.

13.‘A man who always tells the truth doesn’t have to remember what he said’ (Mark Twain). Answer your interviewer honestly. However, an omission is not the same as a lie. If it’s a difficult question, think of two possible answers. Say the best one. If your favourite thing to do all day is play video games and eat snacks (I empathise), maybe go with your second thought.

14.Empathy, as I said earlier, can’t be faked. But it is a skill that can be learned like any other. Like many skills it looks innate and inborn; truthfully, it is the product of years of observation and practice. A recent study has shown that reading literary novels can boost empathy. In any case, reading a book that’s at least fifty years old before your interview is unlikely to hurt your chances.

15.Make it your business to know the basics of our political system – the names of the Prime Minister, Chancellor and Leader of the Opposition; the two main parties (the Conservatives/ Tories who traditionally represent the business- and property-owning classes, and Labour who traditionally represent the workers); the constituency system that elects 650 MPs to Parliament for a five-year term via the First Past the Post system (like tennis scoring, it means the winner can actually have fewer total points/ votes than the loser); the constitutional monarchy that means the Queen is the United Kingdom’s Head of State (like the American President) but has little real power (unlike the American President).

16.Research the school as you would a company before your job interview. These are grand old institutions with a distinct character that ends up imprinting themselves on their inmates. Ask yourself: What is special about this school? Eton, for example, will fly in a didgeridoo teacher from Australia if five boys express an interest in learning the instrument. A candidate should also try to relate what is special about the school to himself, for when that dreaded third archetypal question raises its ugly head: ‘Why do you want to come here?’

17.Relax. There are lots of other good schools.