I’ll be on one of seven panels. We have 50 first-year uni students to interview and 15 scholarships to award. The scholarships pay very well and provide the students with a year’s work experience at one of the sponsoring employers, so there’s always strong competition for the places.
I’ve just finished reading through the students’ application forms and they’re all such high achievers that it’s rather scary: fantastic secondary school academic results, endless examples of sporting prowess, musical accomplishments, community and charity involvement, Duke of Edinburgh awards etc. I feel quite inadequate as a result. 
It’s certainly going to be hard to choose among them.
Well, we’ve completed the interviews. There were some extremely good candidates, as well as some surprisingly poor ones (given how good their applications were). We had fun with this year’s “off the cuff” question: how would you go about estimating the number of cars in the Sydney metropolitan area?
Out of 50, I wouldn’t be surprised if ten per cent were of SE Asian origin.
There - saves you being tempted to bump it again!
Actually, I would appreciate it if you wrote more. Tell me about your decision making process. Was it heart breaking to turn down, “qualified appliants?”
I want to know more about what it was like.
We got about 30 minutes with each one. First we just chatted with them about their school studies and extra-curricular activities, partly to quell any nervousness and also to assess their level of maturity, communication skills etc. Then we asked them various questions to see how good they were at time management; problem solving; teamwork; initiative etc. We also tried to gauge their level of commitment to the course and assess the likelihood that they’d have the necessary determination to complete it.
As it turned out, the actual choice didn’t turn out to be as difficult as I thought it would be. Of the candidates that we interviewed, several were simply “outstanding” when compared with the others.
Forty per cent would be closer to the mark.