It is interview season for students completing their final year of secondary school and seeking admission for the academic term starting in the autumn.
With personal statements finally completed after more drafts than they can recall, chasing academic referees, completing application forms and surviving the final scramble to upload documents, there's now nothing to do but wait nervously for interview calls. That and prepare for the final examination to meet their predicted grade requirements.
I find that students are more apprehensive about qualifying for an interview than the actual interview process. Students seem to have an innate confidence that they can make an impression if they can make it to an interview.
Today's students are well aware of the importance of interviews. Schools now have in-house guidance counsellors and career centres that help with résumé review and practise interviews. Some parents also enlist education consultants who record mock-interviews and give feedback after dissecting every word and nuance. There are books which are now career and subject-specific, and TED talks on the art of the interview and body language. So, it's not surprising that students today seem less apprehensive about the actual interview process compared to my own children and their peers - who interviewed for college admission in 2000.
In fact, I find that it is this overconfidence that can be a limiting factor for success. It especially manifests itself in the often-employed group interview section.
Students go in feeling a sense of competition with the rest of the group. While trying too hard to outshine and establish an edge over them, students often fail to impress.
Rachael Desgouttes, a popular teacher and coach who has considerable experience in this arena, offers students some important insights. She reminds them that the word interview has its origins in the French "entre voir" - to see between us.
